Norman Washington Manley (From Pages)
The mind is a womb
Copulate it
Let the semen of reason
Part the legs of its cervix
And you will see
When moth struggles before its born
The power of its dreams for flight
Words are eggs, you know
Virginal eggs,
I saw him hatch them into bricks
Of ideas that he could carve
Like an Edna exhibit
All copulation must spontaneous
A true gentleman has that gift
Not to force his feelings
On his betrothed
He was also scholar, you know
A sort of poet
That prefer metaphors to the conflict
Of chisel and wood
He had such a mastery of the rhetoric
I mean he understood them better than us
For he did not only speak like them
But spoke their strategy better than them
I sometimes wondered how he knew himself
Apart.
Its sort of seemed ironic
That he did have the anger that Fanon composed
Unless wit is a subtle part of it
May be environment is such a part of it
The cool, I mean
We say that about Manchesterians
Roxborough,
If it could produce the soldier-scholar
Could not have produced just a little fire
Even for the cremation of his brother, Roy
Perhaps it was the mix blood ...
Busta said that his mother was Taino
I do not understand is who mixed them though
There is an overt statement of force to be made
A rape scrubbed from the memory
For how could one half of hm
Become so invisible ...
The mission I mean.
I must rule
More than wood, and more
Than water
For my destiny
Is more than what men may leech
So I am not exploited
I am killed for this robbery
And here I am left
A dead man on a throne
Here I am
Shrouded with self government
And staring into the empty eyes
Of children
So why do I love him then
Was it alone because my father
Fashioned my world for me
Gave me this icon
For proximity the barbarians
Who snatched my mother
Washing her white linen one day
From the sweet river
Do not take that thought to the bank
Where my children play
This man deserves his accolade
If only for taking blindness from my mind
If only for letting me know
The chain had never rattled their
And even in their own words
I could look at the world
And ask "why not?"
He gave me a ladder to my education
That was some gift,
Quite the best of all I am given
O it so beautiful to copulate the mind
Or hold hands through the annals
And see this Manley,
This little fountain of great ambition
Flowing at my lips.
Copyright © David Smalling | Year Posted 2010
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