Kisses my cheek with such harmony
That I can’t speak
Cool and explosive
Licking the hair away from my face
As I grip the steering wheel and steer
Deeper into the rhythm
The sound resonates
Vibrates down my column
I cant think
You touch me and my thoughts strap suicide bombs to their chest
You kiss me
And they sit in the middle of brain,
quietly about to detonate
The roar of the train as it passes through what can only be classified
as mountains carried by Gods. They are beautiful
like huge bleeding rocks covered with thick layers of everest trees
that suddenly drop into clear sparkling river beds
as water runs over white and gray stones
Suheir Hammad writes a poem to her brothers about the 9/11 tragedy
I saw you
In a lilac grove of streets
Catacomb of buses
Comings and goings
Heres and theres
I thought about you as I paid my fare
Fairly certain of the where I was
And had been
Since you happened
I bare more of
Myself than I care to bear
I saw you
Sitting with kings
In my dreams
Spitting gold, telling them all there is to know
I saw your shadow
Old and gray
Bask in the presence of a thousand laughs
Surrounded by family
I saw you
Seeing me
That shit was deep
Deeper than anything I can conceive
Of accurately without explicative
Nervous, you know
I curse the day I discovered language was not enough
I knew
How to say whatever I wanted in poetry
Then I saw you
Bend into each other
Trees stretching towards the sun
Wanting. That is always and forever.
To be curled up
Fetal
And endlessly warm. Underneath it all
Lies heat
Strong and sweet
Herbed lavender sweat
Sleep.
My black is silent as the core of an iris
is dark as an obsidian gem
My black is night
We move through it with ease
the woman with groceries didn’t hear our paw padded sneakers creep on the concrete behind her
We are hunters
The red heart beat flashes blood as we run, tracking mis-deedful prints
I dodge black bodies swinging in my night
jump fenced hurdles
while some turn and fight
refusing to become the hunted
We unload barks that reach to the moon, resonate through people’s bedrooms, and shatter darkened windows
My claws grip the bricks as I maneuver past them
down an alleyway
into the corner
keeping low
and to the shadows, comfortable like warm pillows
I am a… lone, quiet and antsy
listening to the sound of my night stained by blood and rain
I whimper to mother moon
Save me from this city
She doesn’t hear me?
Return to the prowl hungry
from unanswered howls.
Another love poem, new point of view.
For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life’s heart.
-excerpt from Kahlil Gibran on Love
Muhammad Ali recites a poem he wrote as a response for one prisoner in the face of adversity.
If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursed lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
O kinsmen! We must meet the common foe!
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one death blow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!
The Poetry Corner 