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Best Poems Written by Don Simmons

Below are the all-time best Don Simmons poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | Don Simmons Poem

I Am

I AM  the voice of erstwhile nations

Mali
Ghana
and
Songhai
                                                                                                                                      
                                                                                                              

 I AM the river of all their sorrows
because their well has now gone dry

I AM
Africa

I AM Wisdom
The one who gave the world its seed

I AM the slave who broke his chains...
...behind their backs I learned to read

I AM the sound of children weeping
without guidance
Hope
or
Love

I AM their Keeper, I AM compassion
I AM their strength sent from above

I AM the echo of  Blackmen's protests
I AM Dark Hued, Caramel, and Tan

I AM a scholar and not inferior...
...I AM more than "three fifths" a man!

I AM the Sun, the Moon, the Galaxy
I AM the Dawn that brings the Light

I AM the eagle in all its glory
I AM the thought that takes to flight

I AM Maya, Brooks, and Sanchez
I AM the spark that lights the fuse

I AM the Dream that's reached fruition
I AM Woodson, Shabazz, and Hughes

I AM words that are not yet spoken
I AM all of the writers who go unheard

I AM their Spirit, I AM fulfillment...


..I AM..


A mixture of conscious stirred


By Don Simmons
Aka Poetiq1der

Details | Don Simmons Poem

Be Positive

Putrid pus proliferates/purposely preventing 
progression's passionate plea -
stifled cries...

Always ascending...and, assiduously avoiding 
any acrimonious amounts accrued along apathetic
apertures..."Still I Rise!"

Incessantly fighting the urge to just drop
out of this rancid Rat Race we call living

Still, to abandon sanguine thoughts totally topples the
tenacious toughness that took time to temper...never stop giving

Enervated entities economically embattled


Man, each day we face trouble/In every Third World A Struggle -
singed and burned I'm like stubble/but, like The Ashes Of The Phoenix 
to Resurrect from this rubble

Sometimes I shift towards arrogance; The Good Lord Keeps 
me humble

Lifting languid limbs loftily to overcome this present Flood

Be Positive is my motto, the flip side?
It's my Blood...

B+

Details | Don Simmons Poem

The Homeless Are Human Too

Imagine a vagrant...asleep on a bench
Imagine his body.....alive with foul stench
Picture this if you can/his life in the past
His mother a drunk, his father lives fast
Cast from his home at a tender young age
Still going to school at the puberty stage
Thrown to the streets to live as a bum
Nobody caring/his future looks glum
But, The Homeless Are Human, despite disbelief
Most even have Wisdom, bring comfort/relief
So, when you start thinking they belong locked in a zoo
Just remember my Friends....that this could be you

Details | Don Simmons Poem

New York City - Midtown

 No Mickey, Minnie, or Goofy- no Jimmy The Cricket
                The spirit of Sodom is Gomorrah...what I see is plain "Wicked"

                     Neon lit buildings and business bright nights...
              A terse description of 8th Ave - I see somethings not right

                      Jailbait pimps fishing for girlish age bodies
              Port of Authority freaks craving school boy young hotties

                   A bunco, a scam - the cards of "Monte" are three...
                    White kids from Jersey seeking fake/fresh Ids

                Cabbies waiting for fares/get their plates/it's too late
                    Little courtesy or English and overpriced rates

               Electronic stores, you have restaurants; a myriad of stands
                                        that vend snacks

                You can have a wad roll of money, yet still looked at if Black

                  The Homeless Are Human, it's the truth not conjecture
                  It seems to keep them sans housing gives Midtown its texture

                Fleabag hotels are great bargains/I've heard there's four legged pests
                 You've paid your money - there's danger, but you still can't have guests

                Mounted units, Blue grunts to keep the rich ones protected
                The last Toe Tag said "No One", why wasn't that crime detected?

                   A Vagrant says that he's hungry to everyone that he greets
                   You can't see the flame touch the Pyrex/it's the crack that he eats

                 On the trains I see animals, sometimes you'd think a new species
                 Most of those stations need cleaning....in my sight Human Feces

                Poetiq visions/my heart troubled/ I had no choice but expound
                It goes down daily in the Crab Apple/New York City....Midtown

Details | Don Simmons Poem

New York City - Vicious Cycle

Pushed to the edge by reality, yes, these verses will stifle.

A revolving door always present; New York City....Vicious Cycle.

This is a poem about the hardships, and monotony of this age

The world unchanging in its essence....many problems to assuage.

Why is our purlieu in such predicaments, the morass so intense?

It seems the fire has been extinguished; in other words we've acquiesced.

Hallways, alleys, subway stations/where the weak and troubled roam.

Considered dross by our society, that's why the streets became their home.

Our youth in dire straits, how can they be redeemed?

High school dropouts, teenage suicide, and for meth my brothers fiend.

Homeless people are anathema; we seldom love the poor…

New York City...Vicious Cycle....where daily living is abhorred.

A nimbus cloud, can't see the acme/ Where Then Can Love Be Found?

The cacophony breaks the silence; the voice of weeping does resound.

Welfare parents in a quandary, just barely scraping by.

Elderly people doing no better...though receiving S.S.I.

New York City....Vicious Cycle, spreading like a deadly cancer.

Minority children disenfranchised; drug dealing is their answer.

Boys and girls, young and pretty/ jailbait, nowhere to run.

A perfect target for a pedophile; their tender lives have just begun.

Dark specters in every borough; people lost and living trifle.

Eight million stories, naked truth...New York City...Vicious Cycle.

Details | Don Simmons Poem

Fotw

There he is again/searching...
for me - the object of his disdain/
his bete noire

Looking at him through the facets of my vision...
- He is a hulking one of them

The ones who seek to cut off my already
truncated life

Swish! a swift and practiced mano
takes aim

Lo Mein from last night's relvelry
my launch to escape

....too evasive...

Yet, my aggravation is apparent -
if only to myself

Agitated setae sit stilly upon a
bottled back

Nonetheless, I take this latest attack
in stride....An insignificant setback in this
current battle between he and I/between I
and them

Since this is a constant struggle/one that has
probably been going on since the inception of time...

I profoundly ponder past assualts from
whilom ages

Is this the Genocide that my brothers from 
another phylum speak of through the whisper mill?

For, I am also Black, but very
uncomely/I am Black, but the sun
has not made me so...

No!...

I have attained my shape, size, and melanin
through the evolutionary hand of creation

Still, do I deserve to procreate,
to be fruitful and multiply?

Each day my numbers diminish
and nobody questions why?

Yet, every attempt to exterminate my existence
is met with a well executed jete

Since hardly anyone is successful the first time

I then let the momentum carry me high
and away/until I once again become a
negroid speck on a drab canvas

....A canvas that only I can bring color to...

...F.O.T.W?...


Fly On The Wall

Details | Don Simmons Poem

Why

Why are children beaten and maimed?
Why are Black men imprisoned when framed?
Why do the poor live each day with a sigh?
Why are we born, grow old and just die?

Why do we backstab, betray a true friend
Why does the rain from Heaven descend?
Many people are wealthy, then Why is there lack?
Why is everything evil equated with Black?

We say kids are our future/a glory divine
Then Why Conyers Georgia and Why Columbine?

Between the young and the old, a generational gap
Why do we scorn and misunderstand Rap?
We have love for The Lord, and frown on abortion
Why does corporate America engage in extortion?

Once Prayers guided schools, but now it seems it's too late
Why the separation between the Church and the State?
Divided we fall, and united we stand
Then, Why does Great Africa exist by a strand?

"The Land Of The Free", in our lore it's been told
Yet, now there's few rainbows and even less pots of gold
All the signs are before us, still our vision stays blurred
Why believe a False Prophet instead of God's Word?

The Anti Christ/Beast/and Babylon's Whore
Why Osama Bin Laden and rumors of war?

I'm groping in darkness for answers with no concrete reply
So, I'll continue my sojourn...with the question of....Why?


Why? 2002

Details | Don Simmons Poem

This Is the Life These Eyes Have Seen

Always swimming against the current, traveling a path that wasn't clean
A Pandora's Box of past experiences...This Is The Life These Eyes Have Seen
I remember when in grade school/sad at home/and fewer friends
In the throes of a shattered childhood...into the abyss this youth descends
Reading, Writing, and some Arithmetic, it was The Three R'S which kept me sane
Yet, in my psyche a storm was raging; nimbostratus and soaking rain...
By junior high much more than wretched/abuse endured would set the tone
Dark Midtown blocks, a hustler's playground...those streets of pain I walked alone
Things were done, it's called survival, deeds mostly wrong but, sometimes right
Only God above could Love me, a desperate child who sought The Light
I knew boys who sold their "manhood", a tragic fate, they sold their soul
Forty Second the eighties quicksand, and many kids were swallowed whole
Ingest these words of tribulation/I freebased when just sixteen
By nineteen on crack and fiending...This Is The Life These Eyes Have Seen
Chasing the cloud, yes, on a mission, losing sleep to find the drugs
Looking for hits, but, finding nothing/a thousand specks on darkened rugs
Then came prison/another nightmare/just twenty six/a second bid
Introspection/ineffable loneliness to pay for all the things I did
Striving hard to avoid all conflict, encountering things that made men fear
I went so deep within my spirit; no one could ever hurt me there
Adult years of daily suffering/teenage times that weren't serene
Still, several Blessings amongst the hardships....This Is The Life These Eyes Have Seen

Details | Don Simmons Poem

Freedom Was Always Calling - a Poet's Prison Memoir

Throughout the years of bars and fences, several things kept me from falling
My Faith in God, My Mom, My Writing...and, that Freedom Was Always Calling
The nightmare started in "93", shipped off to do a second bid
I knew my mother was hurting deeply from all of the pain her silence hid
Downstate was another dagger, the lonely days, the nights, the "Draft"
In times of peace the seagulls shrieking...and, I could have sworn at me they laughed
Then came Green Haven/the pain continued; those forty months in just a cell
Abundant vermin, to live determined...where most Co's were scarred as well
College courses would keep me focused, mixing with others who sought degrees
To be well rounded my reading varied from Og Mandino to Sophocles 
All was good, then times grew darker, by "95" my health had waned
Some forsook me while others wondered how my Trust in God remained
On bended knees I prayed this daily..."Not my will be done, but thine"
Then I was showed One set of "Footprints" which I knew could not be mine
Deliverance came, yes things got better; I thought my sorrows were finally gone
Until I left to live in Fishkill, which in truth was Matteawan 
Intellectually I was their equal, they had no choice, but to grin and bear it
For, I knew their books, their words, their history...and many things deemed esoteric
Bogus tickets, the box, harassment, they thought I'd fold from all the stress
Still, what would I be if I didn't suffer?...a spineless man who acquiesced 
People have asked me how I survived it, a prison life sometimes appalling
I inhaled deeply, and finally told them...That Freedom Was Always Calling


Freedom Was Always Calling by Poetiq1der aka Don Simmons

Details | Don Simmons Poem

A Poem For the Erudite

A Poem For The Erudite, it sure will be hot
Take the time out to listen, rubbish it's not
Straight from the life of a perspicacious young man
Try and comprehend it...I sure hope you can
There's a lot I can tell you, but I'll make it laconic
Words to astound/it works like a tonic
But, it all isn't good, I'm sure you'll agree
I robbed to support crack, went on a spree
Nonetheless, I must tell you about erstwhile things
About Cause and "Affect" and what it all brings
It started with punishment and led to abuse
Stomped, punched, and kicked like a piece of refuse
That was at home, a total nightmare
Told my story to many, few seemed to care
Yet, at school it was different, oui, au contraire 
There were many happy times, but, in all they were rare
Still, to escape from my father, a partial reprieve 
An escape so traumatic, you can hardly conceive
Fascinated by study, entwined in my thought
Trying to achieve, Knowledge I sought...
Then came junior high school, another hill to climb
Still, being abused....now etched deep in my mind
Then came the reefer, then came the coke
Life became heavy/like being grasped with a choke
Playing hooky from school to hang on "The Deuce" 
Leaving sadness behind/youth on the loose
Coming home at all hours, high on the drugs
Fending off admonishment/not verbally/with shrugs
Now, we come to part of my Crack addiction
On a mission to " Scotty"/incarceration/great friction
On a mission nuff years, retaining intelligent potential
Well, I couldn't lose everything, the mind is essential
But, through all this in prison, you can't know my chagrin
For nothing egregious/no unredeemable sin
But, remember I told you about Cause and Affect?
Recalled in my poem, I helped you reflect
Being abused was profound, a real heartache
There were many times I thought, my life I would take
But, instead I turned to crack/searching in vain
I know to crack you say/how gravely inane
Yet, there's a moral to this story/my life in review
I was abused and kicked crack....and you can kick too