|
Details |
L'nass Shango Poem
Before I scarred the page
Raging what your letters cannot invent
Let me invite you to other books
I wrote before you owed me wage
For all maladjustment and discontent
Tettering on tentacles on hooks
Invite you to an open age
Of change and discourse transfigurment.
In a quiet moment read again
Shards of clay and artefacts beyond
A material functional disdain.
Look at the words like old bones
Bringing chromosomal tablets to rinse
The eyes of prejudices and conceit
You may wince
At what your arrogance did delete.
I have winced for years in broken jars
Unleashing rivulets of tears
For I gave you humanity as a gift, stars
Gave you dust and vessel for it
Time etched your abuse against this spirit
As you idolized barren observations
As if them alone could tell truths
Without the presence of experience.
Strange how you so prone to the material
Destroyed so much of its substance
In us. Yet it is inescapbale in the footprints of dust
The chromosomal bridges in our bodies
Linking us, reaffirming the gift again
Documents on my body like a stain
Irreducible by Mercator's illusions
There is no survival without the spiritual.
After protests, marches, firehoses and ropes
Still hanging from leftover branches of fear
I have earned the right to forgive you
The inherent gift make me your brother, here.
So now let us turn the map upside down
And draw again the latitudes unbending
In a straight line to your old thoughts,
Can we agree about the silence of the moon
Is a prohibiting noise in our head, a blind despair.
Copyright © L'Nass Shango | Year Posted 2009
|
Details |
L'nass Shango Poem
This morning I woke up and bend my knees
To enter the highest of holy place
Here from my Patmos to see the Shekinah seas
And taste the eucharist of grace.
I am praying man, for prayer is the only eye
I have to see the things unseen
The promise of choral trumpets in the sky
When from this life I am weaned.
Sometimes day's burden invisible gets heavy here
Until I lift my prayer up
When suddenly cares like clouds disappear
From the proffered cup.
O I bend my knees to give HIM thanks, to ask
For favors for my friends
And in HIS peace awhile with HIM to bask
Till blessing for my children descends.
I pray for country too, and strangers far unknown
That they for therapy could shake
Some compassion from compassion's throne
And know the joy I have awake.
Copyright © L'Nass Shango | Year Posted 2009
|
Details |
L'nass Shango Poem
Sigh you wind whispering willows
Green sentinels of the ocean blue
Her feet edge no more the billows
Where canoes dock and salt sprays spew
Sigh for the loss of responsiblity
Sigh for the death of sensibility
See you not these cold, worn stones
That in their stoic composure stay
And water laps sand muted of groans
Though a mutual tenant passed away
O willows weep, for the sun is set
On my heart made barren by regret.
She lived here without pretense or grief
Scrubbing floors, clothes, pots, and pans
For pittance spent as dust in a sieve
She earned her status with her hands
And knew all the fishermen by name
Who sold her the small ones when she came.
By light of night she fed her family food
And by the faith of her soul she stood
Against fear or doubt, grace was the mood
Tears was from the smoke of cooking wood
Weep then for the lady gone in silence
And stir the stones to standard sentience
Copyright © L'Nass Shango | Year Posted 2009
|
Details |
L'nass Shango Poem
Refrain
You shimmering waves on the ocean blue
Dance not again, he cannot dance with you
You weeping forests where the winds wail too
Let your bright tears fall in the pool of dew
The world of pop will never be the same again
The king is dead, and life is a dream so vain.
Do you ask me why does my sorrow flow so
Endlessly for him? Is he not gone the way
Of men that many went before? O I do know
My time may not be long, and lessons delay.
Who do think was the man in the mirror? did
You see us there, did you know it oppressed him
When like wanton dogs drugged and rabid
Went heedless along the callous way being dim.
Look at the dance videos again, tell me
You see the what he begs to beat it. Off the wall
Are shadows falling like an inner expose
Where he internalized the world, and yet did call
In many songs - his troubled world was us
But now the king's sun set to dust, and we
Remain to heed and weep the vanity of lust
The tangled truths of out tentacled history!
Michael was God's gift to our season, and how I
Wish he would dance for me across the tribal plains
Of Africa again, where warriors ride in the sky
Through the fire make us brothers without chains
A global oneness where dreams deny the child
Nothing again. O death, what oneness beyond this
Can we find? Treat him kindly there, be mild
To him who in this troubled life knew no bliss.
Michael I miss you; O genius, sleep now in peace
The storms of life are over, the lightning ends
And droughts will come again, but I'll never cease
To proclaim your virtues to foes and friends;
Sleep beloved. Your glory stream in summer's eye
And Harlem's street are filled, old men remember
And old women interrupt their planning to cry
Farewell, Michael ... the grandest star is but an ember.
Copyright © L'Nass Shango | Year Posted 2009
|
Details |
L'nass Shango Poem
Refrain:
You shimmering waves on the ocean blue
Dance not again, he cannot dance with you
You weeping forests where the winds wail too
Let your bright tears fall in the pool of dew
The world of pop will never be the same again
The king is dead, and life is a dream so vain.
Did you know the king? Did you listen him sing?
Did you hear his heart breaking like daylight
In each song? Did you see him dance, or bring
Your sense to space invisible wounding his flight?
I was thirteen, just walking away from twelve in
Time when dreams lie broken at the white wall
I heard with his brothers five, and saw him spin
The great magician dancing for each curtain call.
Time spanned dust: a five year old sensation rose
In white clouds with black glory beaming rainbow
"Stop the love you save may your own" had expose
The urgency of his soul: the anathema of scarecrow.
O, but who will listen to the artist's pain? Did you
Stop and think that rage could become so beautiful
On stage? Michael sang and still you had no clue
About the hell he was going through. Twas wonderful
How he became the initiator of our reconciliation. O
"You and I must make a pact, we must bring salvation back
Where there is love, I’ll be there" they sang, and so
All the while building a bridge between White and Black
"I’ll reach out my hand to you, I’ll have faith in all you do
Just call my name and I’ll be there" but we doomed forgot
What cities were burning, and what he was yearning to do
The subtext to greatness has an eternal sorrow for plot.
Copyright © L'Nass Shango | Year Posted 2009
|
Details |
L'nass Shango Poem
My family is everywhere like wild seeds sown
On the whim and bluster of a wind
Some left for Cuba before the revolution
Bring green stalks of sweet grass to sugar
And are still there, root sunken in the earth
Grafted branches without memory now
Or recognition of ancestral home,
Separated by language and new history
Thick as the depth of our watery boundaries.
Some in Panama built the canal, but no bridge
For home when their meagre cents were spent
Too soon. I met a few with little knowledge
But no anxiety for early morning mist of blue
Over the mountain, looking still to see them
Coming home like birds when summer is done.
Some went to Venezuela to see the oil
They said was black as Africa in the new world
Brazil: there football is more than economy
Gladiators: bloodless troubadors of the new army
And many drifted into the squalor of Costa Rica,
Nicaragua, Ecuador, searching for light
Amidst old civilizations brought to ruins
By Conquistadores majesty and Roman might.
The only one who report are those from Canada
Is it because of the language, because they proper
As they do in America. Is there nothing in them
That longs for home, to leave the Mexico to her Aztecs
Her cactus lace with golden strands of sun.
When I was in Germany, Austria, France, far away
As Holland, Rhine and Danube linking invisble
Heritage, I met them, distancing the old decay
"We are thinking to move to Taiwan or Japan"
They told me, poverty does make a barren land
So I understand the boat people, not lying
Like Columbus, they seek the same treasure
And yet for their truth reap some displeasure.
I could package it for them to sell, but cannot agree
When the wind rattle the wattle of desolation.
My family is everywhere scattered like wild seeds
In fresh forests fretting with the burden of the wind.
Copyright © L'Nass Shango | Year Posted 2009
|
Details |
L'nass Shango Poem
Birth begins the tragedy in us. Life's
First sound is a blank scream
Against sorrow's hidden portends of strifes
All we know are mirages and dream.
Mother took the news staring at the sky
She must have cried inside
For I have no evidence else. There's no why
For it ... how my rage defied
Her callous front ... he was her first boy
The only hero she spoke well
Of, his name was the formula for joy
In our house: anecdotes tell
Of his escapades ... youth defying fate
He had a cat's tenacity for life
And from evil wills found a golden gate
Of scholarship and exotic wife.
I remember when the years pulled him back
All he came with was a bag
Of books, and a couple suits in novel sack
His eyes time warped, a lag
Of missing years and loneliness enfolding him
But he was handsome still
And my soul cartwheeled at joy's fresh brim
Those moments that he filled
When eyes first contact spelled pride to claim
This aristocrat like a medal
I could wear. So young he was, her true flame
The son of love's sweet recital!
And many days sitting in his shadow, I heard
Him dream big things like stars
Far away, warm things like a fluttering bird
Things made bright to cover scars
In the sore of memory. His mind was his cliff
A risky place in the high winds
And closer to the edge for the Grail he'd drift
O how the giddy world spins!
He died in Kingston: William came and went
And my mother looked at the sky
But until she died, about his memory was silent
And I forever wonder why.
I loved him, you know, he was the first best thing
A poor child had to claim or show
The world ... with him I was no more common. A king
He made me in his gold of glow
Something that I looked forward to meet in me. I,
Like mother, been silence since
But sometimes my heart just heave and would cry
For time this love cannot rinse
And I that moment cannot comprehend, that death
Gave no notice to his lauded day
And like common dust on a wild wind's balmy breath
My brother was swiftly swept away.
Copyright © L'Nass Shango | Year Posted 2009
|
Details |
L'nass Shango Poem
written on time’s page
with finite syllables of dust
he spelled my heritage
from earth to sky
along an umbilical line of faith
we fluttered from the lips of fingers
fully form for purpose
written on an invisible calculus
that bring monarchs where birth mark lingers
and salmons somersaulting sluice and streams
turtles, penguins, and herons white wings
netted in design with nested tabula rasa mind
I have an argument
against the beginning begotten from a bang
before atom or element
I have an argument against force and natural laws
at work without mass or embodiment
for embryonic gravity or forces weak or strong
I have an argument
that the singularity could not become more than fragment
of energy again if a single atom explode
its forces flocking away from fusion
for energy fission to explode
a theory
flimsy as spiders web
dethroning my majesty gulped
in primeval slime unlinked history from love
minimizing the particular time of our becoming on ships
that met the stagnant eyes of swampy thoughts … shuddering
in vain
the whip cracks louder than pain -
and on our black blistered backs … crumbling
soils in desertification threw some syllables skywards for mercy
starvation winds with sickle clouds of rain
they lie again ... leaving us without inheritance
for all our labors, lost, and grievance
what bang can buck the strain
and bring us broken souls to glory again?
Copyright © L'Nass Shango | Year Posted 2009
|
Details |
L'nass Shango Poem
My island slept for years in the care
Of Tainos, Caribs and Arawak
Their canoes on the sea breast bare
Dreaming of milk from manioc
The swamps unscarred, trees secure
Batos and songs rinsed in the azure.
Then came doom laden caravels came
Prancing with Conquistadores
Their swords to slaughter, then to shame
The Ave Marias slutted by whores
Whose blazing balls of canons denied
The sufficient death of the crucified.
My island was the Mary Magdalene held
For ransome in the frying lust
For gold, the continental wars spelled
A trembling virginity in the dust
A lost of idyllic grace, where bloody men
Sowed the evil inherited again and again.
From Spanish to French, Spanish to British
How callous is all history
A spectre publishing the marginal brutish
Shrivelled glory of identity.
And still my Mary, her alabastor box a gift
This tropic wonder, this lignum vitae of thrift
From empty tomb to broken hearted disciple
Evanglizes the Mahoe dawn
Over the Blue Mountain where peace ripple
On the motto, still the fawn
In the forest brings the stag to court
This island stands ready to file a good report.
Copyright © L'Nass Shango | Year Posted 2009
|
Details |
L'nass Shango Poem
We are in our fall before the season comes
Misting eyes and dropping a dandy heart
A sullen silence around the bee hive hums
History has no center left, facts fall apart
I have nothing left for honey but my words
Listening cleanse the eyes to see forever
Soon the sky flocks with all departing birds
Old bonds are unbroken, new loves sever
But to come again in heat and passion and lie
Cradled against the unknown of life's tomorrows
So summer goes, and sweet flowers will die
To bloom again as carpet for graves of sorrows.
Soon gold will fall from trees in a gray misty shroud
And all that was green will be brown and dim
And wild grass will bow where the land was ploughed
And wind will tap on its trumpet life's requiem
Copyright © L'Nass Shango | Year Posted 2009
|
|