Friday, April 23, 2010
Update
Okay, so I am now moving towards lanching the recording of the poetry album, but I am looking for a good bass player. As soon as I find one, I will be well on my way. Wish me luck. You can also connect with me on Facebook.
Wednesday, December 09, 2009
Hung
Do you know what it is like to be
Hung? (Sung)
Do you know what it is like to be
Hung? (Sung)
No I’m not talking about that popular definition of
Hung. (Sung)
Like a bird in the air suspended in mid flight
Hung(Sung)
A multicolored rainbow of feathers in flight
Hung(Sung)
Seven stars, in alignment
Hung(Sung)
The rising of the sea to meet the moon
Hung(Sung)
The red skinned branches of the Sequoia
Hung (Sung)
The oily olive of the Serengeti trees
Hung(Sung)
The peak of a pyramid, an opulent brief reprieve
Hung(Sung)
Yes we all have ideas of what it is like to be
Hung(Sung)
Even here among these yonder popular trees we know what it means to be
Hung(Sung)
Scarlet goodbye letters amongst bitter battered leaves
Hung(Sung)
In the right place, but in the wrong skin
Hung(Sung)
Wrong skin, and right men and you can be
Hung(Sung)
Judge, Trial but no Jury
Hung (Sung)
Still, I don’t think you really understand what it is to be
Hung(Sung)
I mean, when friends become removed like a coat from the hanger
Hung(Sung)
When the lips of the beloved are colder than the stranger
Hung(Sung)
When everything in you says run, but still, you face the danger
Hung (Sung)
When your love is counted in the seconds it takes
When the seconds it takes become without time
Hung(Sung)
As they drug you through the cities whipped and scarred
While those you’d given everything refused to look you in the eye
Hung(Sung)
Oh I don’t really think you know what it is to be
Hung (Sung)
Mangled sentences, sparsely separated
Hung(Sung)
Speech cut off mid---
Hung(Sung)
A wine drenched rag hitting the skin like sizzles
Hung (Sung)
A nail in the hand, a nail in the foot
Hung(Sung)
Who do you think you are, anyway, to say that the Lord redeems? they yell.
Hung(Sung)
Hoisted, lifted up with only a white loin cloth
Praying because this is not a walk that you want, but you choose to walk
Hung(Sung)
For your mighty acts, crowned with thorns
For your loving words fed a fist
Hung(Sung)
For your holy nature clothed in dust
Hung(Sung)
Gave your blood, we spat on you
Sung Verse:
Hung!
Pieced in the side!
For the sins of a world so cold
They shun the love they needed to survive
Oh Holy, Holy, Holy
You, that Hung
Or Worthy, Worthy, Worthy
Is the Lamb that hung
Poem (Spoken)
Prince of Peace
The Great I Am
The holy hope
Of every man
You sit upon
The Throne of Grace
That hangs above
This broken place
Clear bright sound of Angels singing echoing day and night
Hung upon a darkened cross,
Yet you are the light
Do you really understand what it means to be
Hung? (Sung)
Do you really understand how much you’re worth and for this he was
Hung?(Sung)
If you understood how much the Father was willing to pay to release
you from the devil’s grip,
your mouth would be filled with so much praise you could no longer use it to speak
And when you approached the throne of grace you’d bow your head in this scared place
It would be
Hung (Sung)
Hung(Sung)
Hung (Sung)
(Sung)
In reverence
In Honor
In Love
Saturday, December 05, 2009
Miss Mary's Blues
Miss Mary Mack
Mack, Mack
All dressed in Black
Black Black
With Silver Buttons
Butttons, Buttons
All down her Back
Back, Back
She asked her mother
Mother, Mother
For fifteen Cents
Cents, cents
to see the Elephants
Eleplants, Elephants
Jump the Fence
Fence Fence
Miss Mary Mack
Mack Mack
All dressed in Black
Black, Black
She's on her way
Way Way
to get her man
Back Back Back
She went to town
Town Town
to buy some Shoes
Shoes Shoes
With Silver Heels
Heels, Heels
Give him the Blues
Blues Blues
She was so Fine
Fine Fine
By Innate design
Design, Design
That all the Men
Men Men
Stood in a Line
Line Line
They begged and Pleaded
Pleaded, Pleaded
For Mary's hand
Hand, Hand
Even her Sorry
Sorry Sorry
Cheating Man
Man Man
But Mary Loved
Loved Loved
Her Self enough
Nuff, Nuff
To walk away
Way, Way
With a Tuff Strut
Strutt Strut
You see she loved herself
Self Self
She is God's Best
Best Best
and she don't settle
Settle, Settle
For Nothing
Less, Less, less
Mack, Mack
All dressed in Black
Black Black
With Silver Buttons
Butttons, Buttons
All down her Back
Back, Back
She asked her mother
Mother, Mother
For fifteen Cents
Cents, cents
to see the Elephants
Eleplants, Elephants
Jump the Fence
Fence Fence
Miss Mary Mack
Mack Mack
All dressed in Black
Black, Black
She's on her way
Way Way
to get her man
Back Back Back
She went to town
Town Town
to buy some Shoes
Shoes Shoes
With Silver Heels
Heels, Heels
Give him the Blues
Blues Blues
She was so Fine
Fine Fine
By Innate design
Design, Design
That all the Men
Men Men
Stood in a Line
Line Line
They begged and Pleaded
Pleaded, Pleaded
For Mary's hand
Hand, Hand
Even her Sorry
Sorry Sorry
Cheating Man
Man Man
But Mary Loved
Loved Loved
Her Self enough
Nuff, Nuff
To walk away
Way, Way
With a Tuff Strut
Strutt Strut
You see she loved herself
Self Self
She is God's Best
Best Best
and she don't settle
Settle, Settle
For Nothing
Less, Less, less
Tuesday, December 01, 2009
bitter rinds
wrath
is the dried and fully fermented fatty seed
of the cacao tree
from which chocolate is made
typically with a machete
pulp and cocoa seeds
are removed
and the rind is discarded
You must always handle wrath carefully,
In order to separate the curse from the crème
But the fool
walks in the bitters
ego sticking to his feet
like chocolate
with no sugar to cull
and humble
the tart
a chocolatier refined yet without history
nor recipe;
definitely not a chocolate-maker
for these are two different things;
the quick man opens
harvested pods are opened
eating it all,
rinds and seeds and pulp
before it liquefies
he thinks to himself,
I will be first,
he picks patience
and shoves it pass his lips
never tasting it
what was once herbal medicine
he sips in a strong hot cup
that burns the tongue
but chills the ribs
when they try to warn him
that too much, of even this treasured sweet
is poison
doesn't bother to laugh at irony
of old men who have tamed the seeds all their life
their laughter light, and creamy
like time
i guess
to a dying man
a sense of
humor is always first to go?
Monday, November 30, 2009
Welcome to the New Worth Watering Blog
Now that I'm taking this new journey, please register as a follower so I can update you on all things new....and speaking of new...a new poem..
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.
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.
Friday, September 11, 2009
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.
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.
Saturday, June 06, 2009
Places without water
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
(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
Friday, January 02, 2009
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
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