Poems

Poem For Black Boys (With special love to James)

Posted on by A. Long

Where are your heroes, my little Black ones
You are the Indian you so disdainfully shoot
Not the big bad sheriff on his faggoty white horse

You should play run-away-slave
Or Mau Mau
These are more in line with your history

Ask your mothers for a Rap Brown gun
Santa just may comply if you wish hard enough
Ask for CULLURD instead on Monopoly
DO NOT SIT DO NOT FOLLOW KING
GO DIRECTLY TO STREETS
This is a game you can win.

As you sit there with all your understanding eyes
You know the truth of what I’m saying
Play Back-to-Black
Grow a natural and practice vandalism
These are useful games (some say a skill even learned)

There is a new game I must tell you of
Its called Catch The Leader Lying
(and knowing your sense of the absurd you will enjoy this)

also a company called revolution has just issued a special kit for little boys called Burn Baby
I’m told it has full instructions on how to siphon gas and fill a bottle

Then our old friend Hide and Seek becomes valid
Because we have much to seek and ourselves to hide from a lecherous dog

And this poem I give is worth much more than any nickle bag or ten cent toy
And you will understand all too soon
That you, my children of battle, are your heroes
You must invent your own games and teach us old ones how to play.
4/2/67……..

–Nikki Giovanni

Ode To Mom

Posted on by A. Long

more lovely than anyone

light on a dark road

backbone, best friend

rebel flower

they could all drown in a pond of our laughter

hereafter

teach me to be like you

straight to the chase

bold in the face

anointed

a woman who knows her place is wherever she chooses

hustler

no comparison

my aspiration to be

you know they say we look like you

and i accept that proudly

that i have known the dead

Posted on by A. Long

that I have known the dead and now I’m
dying
as they spoon the succotash and
noodles
into a skull
past
caring.

that I have known the dead and now I’m
dying
in a world long ago
gone

leaving this is
nothing.
loving it was
too.

that I have known the dead and now I’m
dying
fingers thin to the
bone,
I offer no
prayers.

that I have known the dead and now I’m
dying

dying
I have known the dead

here on earth
and elsewhere;
alone now,
alone then,
alone.

–Charles Bukowski

This Is How They Love You Back

Posted on by A. Long

This is how they love you back

I could stand here nakedly offering

him the key to my forever

He’d hesitate

 

This is how they love you back

say I am in love with love but

not the idea of your love just hers

or I could’ve sworn I heard a knocking on my heart

I just forgot to open the door

 

This is how they love you back

let me hold your hand here

before anyone sees

let me be me

because being an ass

is all I want to be

I don’t want the responsibility of your happiness

whatever you have to give though

I’ll take, gladly

 

This is how they love you back

I could suffocate on the waiting

 

This is how they love you back

This is how it feels

This is how it sounds

This is how it is

We burrow tears

bracing the leveesforgetnotheart1o1

against the flood gates so that they won’t break

and we struggle

deep in the trench of giving

we sweat

to find footing in the mud

 

This is how they love you back

all smiles and wide gaped laughter

 

This is how they love you back

without trusting or knowing

 

This is how they love you

This is how they love you

This is how it feels

This is how it sounds

and we hurt

holding onto nothing

but struggle

 

This is how we leave you just a little bit freer

This how we love us back

This is for the last time I found myself wanting

This is for the comparisons

and mood swings

the general dismissal of my things

the leavings

the I need to work on my own feelings

the fifteen missed messages

and unheard phone rings

 

This is how we love us back

apply pressure to the muscle

gently squeeze

don’t forget to breathe

this is how it feels

this is how it sounds

this is how it is

 

 

 

Wind’s Foam

Posted on by A. Long

Nothing lasts, behold.
Behold how the leaves, the flowers, the old villagers,
the pose of rivers’ dancing, the brazen pitchers and
the fire of hookah
and the flock of grown up girls gradually diminish
like the monsoon of Hilsa fish !
The yellow leaves, sounding in the wind,
fall down on the droughty desolate land.
The foreign ducks too,
on whose bodies there are millions of bubbles, fly away
into the shallow blue cup of the sky.

Why doesn’t anything last long?
The corrugated iron sheet, the hay or the muddy walls
and the undecaying banyan tree of village
get uprooted by the terrible typhoon of Chittagong.
The plaster splits and in the long run the mosque of our village,
like our Faith, collapses down with a heavy crash.

The nests of sparrows, the love, the twigs and tendrils
and the covers of books fall off twisted.
By the water’s bite of the Meghna,
the crops’ green scream of the horizon starts trembling.
The houses float, float the pitchers and the cowsheds.
Like the affection of my elder sister, the old
embroidered pillow gets also sunk.
After the decay of dwelling-houses, nothing exists more.
Only the birds, fond of water, flying in the sky
wipe off the foam of wind from their beaks.

–Al Mahmud, Bangladesh

Madness

Posted on by A. Long

madness is

wearing your ex’s bracelet next to the current boyfriend’s on the same wrist while fighting with your new best friend about your old one

madness is

puberty and periods and prom

madness is

four kids at bed time

madness is

the new

madness is

that good good, the kind you stayed awake for

madness is

music

madness is

getting pissy drunk on a Tuesday in preparation for the weekend so you forget about the job you hate

and somehow

my madness is

love

pure, like hunger, and the stabbing reminder that you are

Just For A Time

Posted on by A. Long

Oh how you used to walk
With that insouciant smile
I liked to hear you talk
And your style
Pleased me for a while.You were my early love
New as a day breaking in Spring
You were the image of
Everything
That caused me to sing.

I don’t like reminiscing
Nostalgia is not my forte
I don’t spill tears
On yesterday’s years
But honesty makes me say,
You were a precious pearl
How I loved to see you shine,
You were the perfect girl.
And you were mine.
For a time.
For a time.
Just for a time.

–Maya Angelou

R.I.P

I Think I Fell In Love Today…

Posted on by A. Long

i think i fell in love today…

is what he said

over dinner and baked bread

i swallowed whatever it was

boiling in my head

and waited

for the careless callousness

of a passing comment to fade

to blow away inflamed rage

like waves of steam off my sage salmon

to shovel the hurt back down

my throat and drown it

what else had he done today

where had i been

work this morning

salty kiss goodbye?

had that been a sign

no playful banter or texts

grocery shopping i spent an extra hour

trying to get everything on the lists

so i wouldn’t have to make two trips

I’m knee deep in mangoes

because i know he likes them ripe

and he’s out falling in love

a quick surveillance

yields an unsatisfactory availability of weaponry

butter knives

can’t really do damage

…with salmon…

with

salmon

that

i …cooked

after digesting

what would’ve been

a light dusting

of my own foot

he smirks, tiny

calm

can we eat salmon more often

Small Container, Fury

Posted on by A. Long

Rembrandt paints his carcass of beef.

You see a little blood near the poppies

and don’t think of detachment.

Humbert and his girl are driving across America.

One has a thirst so unslakeable, one walks

right into the river.

How exciting spring is! and how errant,

holding out love and death

like a platter of the daintiest cakes.

As I do my work, I think, let me topple,

wear thin. Let the world eat me, but

then, let the world sob, not me.

–By Sandra Lim from The Wilderness (W.W. Norton, 2014).

My Stop Is Grand

Posted on by A. Long

I have no illusion
some fusion
of force and form
will save me,
bewilderment
of bonelight
ungrave me

as when the L
shooting through a hell
of ratty alleys
where nothing thrives
but soot
and the ratlike lives
that have learned to eat it

screechingly peacocked
a grace of sparks
so far out and above
the fast curve that jostled
and fastened us
into a single shock of—
I will not call it love

but at least some brief
and no doubt illusionary belief
that in some surge of brain
we were all seeing
one thing:
a lone unearned loveliness
struck from an iron pain.

Already it was gone.
Already it was bone,
the gray sky
and the encroaching skyline
pecked so clean
by raptor night
I shuddered at the cold gleam

we hurtled toward
like some insentient herd
plunging underground at Clark
and Division.
And yet all that day
I had a kind of vision
that’s never gone completely away

of immense clear-paned towers
and endlessly expendable hours
through which I walked
teeming human streets,
filled with a shine
that was most intimately me
and not mine.

–Christian Wiman