Posts from — June 2008

Invisible Man

hopeless

helpless

man child

black child

daddy never claimed you

mama never named you

raised you in ignorance

sent you into the world defenseless

snatching glances of cardboard people

through broken slats of whitewashed

picket fences

called upon to witness

the destruction of your kind

bamboozled into thinking the world

cared about the education of your mind

told to man up and suffer through the pain

told that the brown-skinned love you sought

was a ball and chain

designed to keep you down

and bleed away success

5 kids no job now who to blame for this mess

wall of mistrust constructed of lily white lies

taking to the bottle and smoke to hide your cries

forced to keep your heart deep undercover

I can see your struggles

I can see you, brother

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed. Well let’s see.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you love.

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Charlotte Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (many, but not all. )
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34 Emma – Jane Austen
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52 Dune – Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses – James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession – AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

So, 43 out of 100. Not bad. (Of course, most of these were read in high school or earlier. AP English. ) How did you do?

… after reading the first half of “Slave” by Mende Nazer

—————————————-

untitled 9

nightmare

awakens me

breathing hard

heart thunders in my chest

i turn my back

on the Western night

and touch

my forehead

to the ground

praying intensely

for my God to deliver me

and bless me with strength

to rally for my sisters

and brothers

in captivity

held under threat of

death and destruction

stolen from their loved ones

birth names denied

Ya Rabb

hear my cry

i don’t know
if i can do this

i don’t know if i can pour out my pain
into a crystal glass and
present it as a gift
ignoring
the battered pitcher
that’s been in my family
for years

i don’t know
if i can learn to swim
to float among the bodies
in this ocean called
The Diaspora
you have my eyes
and i have your hair
but we are unable
to speak
because
our tongues
shriveled from misuse
have started
to die

i’m not sure
if you can hear me
when i knock on the glass
that separates us
and attempt to tell you
my name
you see me and blankly
turn away

i’m not sure if you care
i’m not sure who to blame

i might have been your sister
yet only i was ripped
from the womb
and given to hands
that shook
with glee
i don’t know
if you
remember
me

or

if you’ve ever wondered
about Little Girl Lost
about the tree
that was planted for me
that sways and whispers
my shameful secrets
when the wind blows
through its leaves

i don’t know
if you know
that
cotton and cane and cocoa
were nourished with my blood
and empires were built
on my back
that
even today
my body has been
stolen and sold
and my captors
won’t even let me pray

i’m not sure if you care
i’m not sure who to blame

i don’t know if you realize
that i can see
my mother
in your eyes
or
that i can see
my father’s stature
in your spine
the absence of elders
in this community
is only out-paced
by the young ones
who die
out-numbered and
out-gunned
in riots of the soul

i don’t know
the troubles you’ve seen
or when
you started to feel
that wariness that overcomes you
when there’s a stranger
in your land
because your precious stones
your precious rubber
your precious metals
are in danger
the things you were given
for beauty
Others
feel encouraged to steal

i don’t know
if we can heal
maybe the ocean
has split off into rivers
dumping us
mixed up
on muddy banks
far from home

i don’t know if i can do this
because you won’t look at me
i don’t know if i can care
because of my own
missing history
i’m not sure
if you know my name
which was lost when i left those shores
and the ties that bind us
are rapidly thinning threads
straining
to lift us up together
until they break
and
we fall

I can’t think. I have 0 concentration today. I will try my hardest, in between bites of this delicious veggie burger I made earlier, to post SOMETHING worth reading.

Blackness

I am immortal, invincible
But I will continue

But I am still here.
I was there
Watching
The Pyramids erected

They cut out my tongue

But I am still here.
I was there
Feeling
The bite of leg irons
The sting of the lash
Blood seeping

My soul has grown old,
But I am still here.
I was there
Illiterate
Illegitimate
Unwanted child
Unloved wife
Overworked husband
The men women children

But still here am I.
I was dragged from counters
buses, ballot boxes, schools
I was beaten bitten

But I am strong
And I can survive

I am still here.
For now.

random thoughts 1

information superhighway
got a traffic jam at 2 a.m.
stalling me
on my journey
to dig up the
Tree of Knowledge
called Conspiracy
at its root
planting it in my
backyard
to keep watch on its
evil fruit

Well, this was sort of difficult to write. I experienced a variety of emotions, including anger, disgust, helplessness and fear. I ask that you really consider the implications as you read this….
——————————-

living shadows

see Black Boy running
stumbling
case of soda pop
bag of chips
can of beans down his pants
rushing
to his makeshift home
in a formerly known land
his innocence was lost
washed away when the river jumped
the bridge
when the Kalashnikov sounded
when all the cattle died
because the war was fought
in his backyard

he is the man
the sole protector
of 3 young sistas
and an Elder brotha
whose body has been crippled
by years of misuse
he is the last toehold
of stability
on a ground that has
devastation
in waves

see Black Boy hustlin’ and dreamin’
at his corner stand
incense and oils
copies of music and
movies still showing
at the theater downtown
need a watch? need a chain?
he’s got what you crave
carry your bag? sweep your porch?
if you feed me i can be
your slave

see him looking
at the books shoved in the corner
kicked under the table
the ones he cannot read
because the school burned down
and the teachers fled
in the night
escaping the flames

see Black Girl shiver
in the rain
with her sign at her feet
will work for food
will sing for water
will kiss you for 50 cents
family turned her out
afraid of the virus in her veins
the baby in her shawl
listless
clinging
to a milk-less breast
too tired to cry
or close his eyes against the flies

see her crawl
and beg
and plead
with no words
just an upturned palm
an empty basket
where her young one used to rest
carries all her belongings
when its time to
move
again

see the people
you refuse to see
when you drop your eyes
avert your gaze
lock your car doors
and turn off the news
thanking God that
it’s not
you

twist of fate
trial of God
interference of shaitan
high placed corruption
tearing the fabric of society
the aftermath of
new colonies
this is
home

lost onez

we wuz gonna be superstars

wid poofy hair and painted red lips

sashay our hips

across the stage

while the world worshiped

at out feet and the drumbeat

matched our heartbeat

and sent us higher

and we thought we reigned

we wuz Queens in our own right

dreaming expensive dreams

wid dangling hoop earrings

and trinkets and things

spending the imaginary millions

the Rock Man promised us

and all we had to do wuz choose

we wuz gonna be superstars

but the light burnt out

and the night turned cold

heat flashed around us

suffocating me teasing me

forcing me from my spot

hiding underneath the flesh

of my sister while the cameras rolled

Rock Man shook the hand

of Mr. Big Shot Man

his skeletal grin stretched tight

across his face

the Blue Boys came

and they took her away

slapped me in chains

we wuz gonna be free

from agony and tranquility

would flow through our souls

but the peace i got

looked not like the piece i sought

of the amerikan dream

my sister is dust

and me a former shell

of the raising hell

Queen i used to be

when the street lights come on

that’s my cue to be

the superstar i never wished to be

Peace and blessings!

My plan was to come here, post a new piece that I’ve been working on, and drop hints about the collection of poetry I am putting together. Instead, I went online, and got bogged down with details about ISBN and copyright and epublishing. Perhaps when my brain clears and I can piece together a coherent thought, I’ll get back to that new poem.