kidnap

ever been kidnapped
by a poet
if i were a poet
i’d kidnap you

put you in my phrases
and meter you to jones beach
or maybe coney island
or maybe just to my house

lyric you in lilacs
dash you in the rain
alliterate the beach
to complement my see

play the lyre for you
ode you with my love song
anything to win you
wrap you in the red Black green
show you off to mama

yeah if i were
a poet i’d kid
nap you

Nikki Giiovanni

For even as lov…

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

“If We Must Die,” in Harlem Shadows: The Poems of Claude McKay

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!

“I have been on…

“I have been one acquainted with the night. I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.
I have out walked the furthest city light. “– from Robert Frost’s Acquainted with the Night

https://i0.wp.com/www.scenicreflections.com/files/Dark_Rain_Wallpaper__yvt2.jpg

I have been acquainted with the night

I have seen blood splatters in splintered floors

stepped in them from the absence of light

stared at the moon until dawn won the fight

in the sky, I

have lied to the dark

insisting that I wasn’t afraid as knuckles met face

in this cuticle of space

how many nights will it take to break 

the circle of family abuse 

in full swing when the lights aren’t in use.

–A. Long