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The line


Never outdone.
Never out maneuvered.
Flies even when falling.

Has learned more from mistakes
Than success.
And success is no accident.

Looking into a soul of a native son
That has spanned many lifetimes
But always seems to know its way home

Landscapes of archetypes
Drawing still forms, in raging skies
In sharp curves
Like the line of a pencil
Before it breaks
He sees the shape of things to come
And pushes the led weight
Holding the line
Until the line becomes art

And yet, in the stillness,
There is the quiet space
Of a heart that has seen the dark bend of the road
And yet, dared to walk
And today, that heart will walk the walk
They said you would never
Never letting the world know
How high the price was

God wants you to know that
He sees. And hears.
And God too is a lawman. And an artist. And a visionary.
And he too has put the pen to the paper
Seeking to push the line.
And even when it is hard to believe
He believed in you.

the rose

In the sand, the storms, the snow
It grows;
Where concrete meets the lean line
Of green, a seed waiting, listening for a whispered word: why not here?
It grows;
When history meets the darkened veil of a time
When ships of precious cargo
that weren’t expected to comesailed in chained and bound, yet not broken
It grows;
A fluttering prayer
A beating wish
A railing arm
The hands of grandma still smooth
In all the rough places
Pressed together like petals
Praying for rain, rain, rain
To fall upon her grandson It grows;
In the quiet of that 2 am madness
When all the earth is stirring, yet still
And the corners of your mind fold into
The questions you never dared to ask yourself
It grows;In the electric flight of the feeble hand
Of a 106 year old queen
Who pressed a silver screen
Electing to choose a 400 year old promise
Over an age old lie
It grows;
Gracefully; a brown hand of
A global ghetto child
On a roof top over looking the over skyline
Eyes watching God, bigger than you can see
smaller than you can hope
It grows;
In the moment when seeing is no longer believing
And believing is no longer knowing
And knowing is a street number
To a house with more rooms than can be counted or viewed
Asking you to remove your shoes
And enter the holy groundIt grows;
The pattern of the stars
Outlined stitches in time
Stitches dropped into the ear of
Patterned faith cut into
Northern stars leading to a freedom unseen
It grows;
The echo of a heart as it craves the very essence of
The thing that must fill Its drum
It grows;
In a still small place
On Calvary
When the waiting of the world
Hung like a sentence cut mid-
It grows;
Here lies the rose of Sharon
The lily of the valley
Growing in the places

That they said nothing good could come.

Thrusting it’s yellow limbs like rays into the draped darkened corners where the hunger hungit has begun;
the saying to the world
rise and shine
I am the one
I am the one
Who will grow in the sand, and the storms and the snows
While the soil may claim ignorance
The sun knowsIn a world filled with darkness
The light is more beautiful because we know
beauty comes from broken things
and the common spaces
are the dwelling grounds for uncommon kings
the song of the coldest winter
preludes the opus of the spring
and it
It grows.
it grows.
it grows.

Places without water

Sometimes my house is river without the music
The music has run out of windows and doors
Left deep carvings in rocks an quarries
And only wet humectants lie
Evaporating sheaths of stream
Vicariously suspended in the silence
Trapped beneath a hard surface of hope
Whispering for rain

Another Way to Say Goodbye

(song)

Hello there
Is anybody there?
I’m speaking to you from my heart
but the sound is caught mid air

I’m tired of
Giving what I got
and loving you for what you’re not
That ain’t cool…ain’t cool

I keep hoping
in your best
When my hope’s worth so much less
Than my attention
But I’ll play the fool

Who will come and make it right
If I don’t stand and fight tonight
This fight
With you for me, for me?

And I don’t want to talk
To you
Anymore
There’s nothing left to say
And I don’t want to talk to you
Anymore
Hello is just another way, to say goodbye
Bye, bye, bye
Bye, bye, bye


You gave me roses in the springtime,
And tulips in june
Roadside weeds in autumn
But on this summer afternoon
Your love is the coldest winter
----that I’ve ever known

Week by week
And month by month
Year by year
Time lives to die
When you talk to me
Your speech is empty
as your eyes
Every hello is just another goodbye
Waiting for someone to let go first
I know it hurts, but

Repeat
I don’t want to talk
To you
Anymore
There’s nothing left to say
And I don’t want to talk to you
Anymore
Hello is just another way, to say goodbye
Bye, bye, bye
Bye, bye, bye

I keep on searching and trying to find
A reason why I gave you my piece of mind
Left the doors open wide
For you to walk inside and make a mess of me

Now we have a house but no home
We have hope without will
We have a form of godliness
But we have no peace to be still
You claim you gave me everything
But the only thing I wanted you to give was
You

But that you cannot do
So I’m through--

Repeat
And I don’t want to talk
To you
Anymore
There’s nothing left to say
And I don’t want to talk to you
Anymore
Hello is just another way, to say goodbye
Bye, bye, bye
Bye, bye, bye

I know it was the blood

I know it was the blood
(In memory of the lives lost
To the senseless thing that we know as
Man’s inhumanity to man, dedicated to City of Oakland)

Oh the inhumanity of it---

I woke up this morning
With my mind
(Stayed on jesus)
Woke up this morning with my mind
(stayed on Jesus)
Hallejulah
This poem
Racing through my left ventricle
And out of my right
It lines up at my leg
(ready)
And races towards my stomach
(set)
Pivots at the heart
(go!)
Booking through my right temple
Hard heels of hard thoughts thudding squarely in the
Softness of my mind
This poem woke up today and shook me
shouted inside me
So that my body still quakes from the after effects
like the shots
That rung out
On east 73rd
When four blues fell with purple hearts
And none said a mumbling word?
While windows of wandering eyes look on
And wail
“where is the love?”
Love that was so obstructively spoiled and curd
As four men fought breath
a death
They did not deserve.
And yet this poem is not straight,
It’s curved
This poem is unwilling clipped
And shaky and suspicious
And full of grainy cell phone images
And the reality of no more second chances
For black boy be free
Like the shot that
said happy new year, Mr. Grant
And yet this poem cries tears while you rant

Oh the inhumanity of it

This poem cries
And wails the deep raging sorrow that wells up in my eyes and damns my soldier’s soul
but my tears are ice
It is cold in here
It is so cold that the words of this poem
Crack and break and flake
As they hit the harshness of hallow breath
Of the darkened mind
Of people who somehow seem to believe that
Life is a series of harsh justifications
Pow! Period, POW! period, POW! period. POW! period
Followed by three letters
Wet like war paint
Hollered from either side
Subject, verb, predicate.

They deserved it.

Harder than any shot fired
Is the gunfire of the human heart

Oh the inhumanity of it

The weight of the cross is heavy on my mind today
As I stand at the center of it
And wonder Jesus
Why?
Why in the world in this, the winter of our soul’s discontent
Is this song, this poem so this poem so
hot, unmindful, and unrepentantly retractable and red?
Why is this poem pleads to the living
To understand the humanity of the dead

Oh the inhumanity of it all
But is it really inhuman for human beings
To dehumanize each other
For blindness is to sight as
Black is to white
As sin is to cover
as
Brother is to other?
Yes in deed
I plead my brothers
To heed love’s creed
Yet still we bleed
More cain than able
To hear red seas crying out from
The killing fields
As all of Heaven hopes and waits
That maybe we as a people
Will finally get
This poem?


Because I refuse to believe that this poem is
simply a sign of our times
we’ve seen this poem before
Same theme, usual suspects
This poem is bleeding out the nail scarred holes
Called Calvary
For a man imprisoned by hate
So that love could be free
Because you see this poem is the blood that cries out for
Us, even when we are too cold to cry for each other
This is a poem that sticks closer than a brother
And with a last breath says, “Son, behold your mother”

This poem was broken and bloodied for you
Nailed to splintered wood post for you
Fed sour wine of hate for you
And yet
This poem loves you
while shouted at, spit on, beat, dehumanized,
This poem dies, but will not be funeralized

This poem is your mother’s smile
Your brother’s eyes
Your sister’s feet
And your father’s hands
This poem cries out for the four fallen soldiers
Tends to the wounds of the new years day dawn
This poem warms the chill of the frozen hearts
With a simple breath in the cool of the day
This poem is beaten, bloodied, but not defeated
But is universal, triumphant and utterly divine
Even when it is in human
This poem is daring
Because there is only one, hurt, one salvation, one love
One blood
Falling as a fountain
from a man who died so we could live
The redness cries out Father forgive
And because he died, this poem lives
And with it he left a hope so great it rips the curtain that divides us
healing the aching quake
That shook my spirit last night
and woke me up early this morning
with my mind

Stayed on Jesus

And
I know it was the blood
I know it was the blood
I know it was the blood
For me.
One day when I was lost
He died upon the cross
And I know it was the blood for me

don't know what to do with this

deep wells

of deep rivers

with muddy bottoms

and cotton

a

sooty past

running through

creekbeds and river sides

into concrete oasis

yet the sand stings feet

the blast of obliterated sound

the slapping of cheeks

the pounding of feet

the gnashing of teeth

the

and then,

a pause

uncrdeciiously

the page turns

and I see color

Rest in the key of "Promises" (dedicated to Barack Obama)

silence
slips inside
the tuba

quiet casts a brassy glow
upon the shadowy saxophone

amended
twins,
the french horn and clarinet

accompanied by
the hollow throat
of acoustic breath

and the night belts out what magic is left behind, and returns the breath
to its proper rest

the prayer without words of
empty eyes
full of the moment

Can't you hear it?
the baited still of
a willing will

fog falling freshly
as white on
keys
into early morning's ears

sweet as a lover's mouth
dancing with praise?

and then;

as with in the beginning
was the word
and the word was with
the director
speaking in sounds that created space and time
a universal pause, followed by a lifted voice
in place of a hand

and everything that has breath stands still

-- harmony in the
key of f

maybe?

humm
maybe you are
my
marcus
thwarted by an int eruption called "black history"
fussing at me to get home on time
delighted by witty banter
frustrated by my stubborn ways
that refuse to m......m.....move.

maybe that's why I am so scared of you--

inviting me into intellectual adventures
without the fuss
working to build a life beyond the ruin of this

whispering under your breath
what a dang fool I am
praying that I'll hear.

Kryptonite

he is the kind that will make pretty babies
and ugly tears

a hulking super man
who still longs for his mama's breasts
after a day of misadventures in manhood

his smile crawls inside spaces that it shouldn't
scurrying inside the empty spaces
between thoughts and dreams
late at night
when I don't want to be bothered

he is
unrepentantly popular
even
in the most unflattering light

like an undone cookie
smelling rich
but tasting poor

and yet,
despite my better judgement

I fight myself from tasting the batter

Chicago, 2008

Like a sweet fragrance
It rises;
Scorched streets yield transformed trees
Oasis of human hope
Grown in a desert
Bees swoon to the flower of
its harvest height

The implausible garden
Broke the hard earth
drank dark days
And came up spring--

Deliverance dances in the streets
Burning again with the hope we thought had failed us
After being auctioned off at the very steps of the great columns
Of hope itself

We can--

Open tightly held fists
after holding on so long to expose

palm
Sunday

Given way
To hot prayer, salient desire,
historic hallelujah--

hope unhinged
the earth.

the aftershocks are vivid:
heard beyond the grave, savored beyond the sky
Given beyond the gift
Makeshift tambourines herald
broken silver links
a roaring applause
filled with five generations of prayers
prevailed