Author: A. Long

The Day Misery Knocks

Posted on by A. Long

Don’t fret the day misery

knocked at your door

you knew he’d come

take off his shoes

break all your rules

put a squeeze on your toothpaste tube

dirty up the tub

use all the ice cubes

He hadn’t lain in your lap

to tell you he’d stay

If he reaches the door, leaving

he comes right back immediately, saying

i left my keys

can you wash these

more time please

to gather his things

But remember this

you are king of all you survey

if misery has overstayed a welcome

show him the way

because only you have the key

Envoy to Palestine

Posted on by A. Long

I’ve come to this one grassy hill
in Ramallah, off Tokyo Street,
to a place a few red anemones
& a sheaf of wheat on Darwish’s grave.
A borrowed line transported me beneath
a Babylonian moon & I found myself
lucky to have the shadow of a coat
as warmth, listening to a poet’s song
of Jerusalem, the hum of a red string
Caesar stole off Gilgamesh’s lute.
I know a prison of sunlight on the skin.
The land I come from they also dreamt
before they arrived in towering ships
battered by the hard Atlantic winds.
Crows followed me from my home.
My coyote heart is an old runagate
redskin, a noble savage, still Lakota,
& I knew the bow before the arch.
I feel the wildflowers, all the grasses
& insects singing to me. My sacred dead
is the dust of restless plains I come from,
& I love when it gets into my eyes & mouth
telling me of the roads behind & ahead.
I go back to broken treaties & smallpox,
the irony of barbed wire. Your envoy
could be a reprobate whose inheritance
is no more than a swig of firewater.
The sun made a temple of the bones
of my tribe. I know a dried-up riverbed
& extinct animals live in your nightmares
sharp as shark teeth from my mountains
strung into this brave necklace around
my neck. I hear Chief Standing Bear
saying to Judge Dundy, “I am a man,”
& now I know why I’d rather die a poet
than a warrior, tattoo & tomahawk.
–Yusef Komunyakaa

House Of Spring

Posted on by A. Long

Hundreds of open flowers

all come from

the one branch

Look

all their colors

appear in my garden

I open the clattering gate

and in the wind

I see

the spring sunlight

already it has reached

worlds with out number

–Muso Soseki, Japan

 

South

Posted on by A. Long

the stench wafts up

something indistinguishable

against your will

you taste the air

trying to identify the smell

what is that

putrid garbage onions

slowly you sniff sniff snuff

until a big whiff chokes you up

like the burning of bleach

gasping for a sterile breath

The Ceiling

Posted on by A. Long

The view swallows me whole

from down here

it’s cold

i look up

into the light

outlining my hands with darkness

as i reach

past my station

and my level

and my class

and my knowing

into tomorrow

pushing a lil further

the sticky bits of yesterday’s dreams

clung to my skin

broken stems of possibilities

scrape and bleed

past more dusty realities

ineffable

straining my arms until they were sore…

further still