Get Well Soon!
For Madelyn McKay, this May!
M~magical, moonlighted May
A~ asteroids, in the sky play
Y~yacht club lights flicker on the bay
5/2/2021
~1~
Letter me with lines that I may distil
The sovereign sweetness of your flaming will
Teach me to sing of dusty flowers pure
And maiden's savaged innocence no more
To scorn, for you in all emotions soar
Though self-exiled from our tropical shore
Great poet, who brought Apollo's lyre here
O could you walk again your Harlem now
And find a lullaby for our dispear
And steal of words to edifice our vow
For we tingle with the doom we must hate
And all around us broken, tired of late
They sing self songs, until spring flies to ice
While in your rapture vice too would suffice.
[Claude Mckay was a Jamaican poet, pioneer of the Harlem Rennaissnce, who died in penury in Chicago, after turning from Communism and its lucre to the Catholic faith. His poem "if we must die"was used by Churchill to motivate the allies into war]
The day was glorious, sun splitting the sky,
Sat down in utter bewilderment I asked myself why,
It started round with one miss Mckay around 5 years ago or so,
When i think of you i wonder what I meant,
Your hair so black like the darkest of nights,
Your eyes they shone like the brightest of lights,
Your skin so soft yet tanned to perfection,
From the island of Ceylon a Godess among the living,
Your voice it carried on the morning breeze,
What could you see in a man like me,
Whenever i saw you my heart skipped a beat,
I was bereft of my senses, my train of thought lost,
Speachless forever it was like I was lost,
Lost at sea like a wandering soul,
Traversing the void like a ghoul in days of old,
It makes no sense to me at all,
Why do we desire what we can't attain,
Life is about surviving, defeating the mundane,
But love oh love it destroys my heart,
It sends me deeper and deeper into the black,
But i beg thee head not my words of woe,
For love the destroyer, it can also make you whole.
Countee Cullen knew you, and you nectared him
Lambent voice when Harlem was wrapped in night
Artist and rebel, African singer of Grecian hymn
Umbilical to Jamaica, nightingale in Nietzschean flight
Deny not the laurels I lay at your feet
Encourage me to measure as I sing your feat.
Mentor of Langston from the village desk
Chronicler of blackness in its untenderness
Kingston remembers your ballads and text
Ark of nation language, before the temptress
Yarned with the tongue that feeds our bitterness.