Studio8 - Uniting the Arts

My first year of college, just up the street from Hampton U, the sogenante confederate battle flag was flown from the campus center to mark Southern Heritage Week. It was emblazoned with the words "Heritage, not Hate"--my gut recoiled.

I grew in a multi-colored family south of the Mason-Dixon line ...

Venus in the bright star's orbit,
Venus in the gaze of Tannhäuser—
me in time with Pluto, instead with Pluto,
if I am the is who holds the was-a-planet
with no power by Jove
and no moon of my own
but with eccentric pathways
sometimes nearer, sometimes farther and frozen away—
no moon, but a can on ...

No promises, no premises: I march in time with nemeses
I've trained to jump-track grimaces that travel through my crevices—
but still I don't know what it is I'm jumping, skipping, timing, dripping—
worship services I'm lipping outta sync with time I'm tripping
spit the chewed-up chaw I'm dipping ...

I'm gonna buy each bum his booze for Lent
and cigarettes for ev'ry homeless fucker
till the dough I make is baked and spent
on dope for dregs whose lives are down on luck.
To help her education, I'ma tuck
my dollars in the crackstrap of a whore,
but, if the traffick's thick and I get stuck,
I'll pay ...

Late Ma, alas, rots; err of eros: evil is as selfless as I live, sore for rest or salaam, et al.

or

Tie it: dog, dire wolf, flower, id. God, tie it.

or

Peek, man! O eye, on am , keep!

or

Erupt! I'd do (odd) it pure.

or

"No" 'tis it I sit on.

or

small, all "am"s

or...

Welcome to Georgia!

The sign in front of you is meant to be welcoming,
but it simply reminds you
You are not home.



This is a truth!

An awful bought of IBS in college...walking halfway across campus to my apartment, past the limitless hoards of springtime Colonial Williamsburg tourists ...

Where Abram came to pitch his tent,
where Ishmael was sent,
where Isaac's laugh was saved from death,
where Voice and Word and Holy Breath
would found a house for love,
is there to be, in honesty,
beneath an olive branch or dove,
no room for someone new like me?

The tune was hummed and unharmonious
and happy as it slid in unison
upon itself— as if the song (begun
with unseen sparrows, whose melodious,
kurt whistles shape the parsimonious
advancement of today ) was threadyarn spun
in fables: rocks and plants and beasts who run
for moral good from more ...

As much a joy to read as the book that, yes, I received and read and enjoyed!

I'd never seen her face before,
I never let me look;
perhaps I feared I might adore
the pages of her book.

I'd never read the stories writ
in lines that frame her eyes,
parentheses that somehow fit
her smiling lips' surprise.

But when she paused to answer me
when I'd proposed to her
I lingered on ...

I grew out of trouble early—traded boys-are-boys for girly —
study took out brawl for book and shook the dual err in burly—
nothing pearly in the gates of peace, but therein yeast to grow released—
and I increased against false comments to a selfhood full of vomits,
purges of the deathly dirges ...

She's spoken through the prophets we believe
and, orthodox, continues still to bless
and speak and stir wherever they'd confess—
those elements of universe that weave
together life and all its siblings: Eve
and Adam, rock and windstorm, no and yes—
that she is not a spirit to suppress
but celebrate ...

" Und kannst du mich remember, please,
als someone du vergibts? " geschries
ein Mann, who mit sein heart, would love
to be die dream du träumtest of,
if only du could wiedersehen
dein life mit me before the pain
ich caused, wenn ich dein heart attacked
als ich, dein face, für shame gesmackt
because ...

The wealthiest feast in the slums
is rich by a small share of crumbs—
quite richer, in fact,
than caviar snacked
by privilege's bric-a-brac bums.

Much more than just those two lines. Thanks!