Dis poetry is like a riddim dat drops
De tongue fires a riddim dat shoots like shots
Dis poetry is designed fe rantin
Dance hall style, big mouth chanting,
Dis poetry nar put yu to sleep
Preaching follow me
Like yu is blind sheep,
Dis poetry is not Party Political
Not designed fe dose who are critical.
Dis poetry is wid me when I gu to me bed
......
These are poems about change, poems about transitions, poems about bachelors recanting, poems about life and death...
Unfoldings
by Michael R. Burch
for Vicki
Time unfolds ...
......
I come from a musical place
Where they shoot me for my song
And my brother has been tortured
By my brother in my land.
I come from a beautiful place
Where they hate my shade of skin
They don't like the way I pray
And they ban free poetry.
......
the phone rang at 03:08
unknown number
Well, the bleeding wound
on his forehead prevented him
from sleeping anyway
He picked up
"Yeah?"
......
Why do I write?
.
Is that because writing is the act of being alive as Ryad said?
Even when I cannot breathe, I can write what suffocates me before my heart stops beating. I would point to the sun and make my last poem out of rays instead of words.
Is it because I’m still not healed yet?
But how much does it take? Three years of medication, 3 thousand words per month, 3 colors of dying, 6 new haircuts. I’ll break the record if I kept changing, I’ll break the record but I will not be healed.
Is it because, I write cuz I can do nothing about my rage, the rage that I don’t even recognize?
Writing is my "detoxification", but what if I was made of poison? When will I be healed?
......
I am a bearded
poet philosopher -
or a homeless man.
Laying awake in the early hours of the morning and I can’t help but wonder of things I know to be true and right and good. Or do I really know? Cogito, ergo sum _ I think, therefore I am, or so it goes.
For when my thoughts wake in the place where dreams and sleep collide, my questions are eternal and the void never-ending. Yes, I would give my right eye like the All-father to drink from wisdom’s well.
I think about time and chaos and existence and I have more questions and no answers.
For did time exist before the word itself or was it born from chaos as it is said all things were.
Every star we see in the night sky is centuries old, it’s light just a ghost of a flame that burnt hundreds of years ago.
......
O memories of long ago
I never thought I'd miss you
I still remember those times
Never thought they'd be the best of times
Oh, how I long for those days
Hard as they were, painful even
They are the loveliest, nonetheless
Younger me would've been perplexed
If she knew I want those days back!
But perhaps that's how life is
......
What kind of honor, what kind of pride,
That steals a life, and lets justice slide,
For love’s sweet crime, blood is spilled,
This cruel game, where mercy is killed.
Old traditions, customs so bleak,
Where women are stories, forbidden to speak,
No right to live, no dreams to bloom,
What kind of society, what kind of doom?
......
Why do I write?
.
Is that because writing is the act of being alive as Ryad said?
Even when I cannot breathe, I can write what suffocates me before my heart stops beating. I would point to the sun and make my last poem out of rays instead of words.
Is it because I’m still not healed yet?
But how much does it take? Three years of medication, 3 thousand words per month, 3 colors of dying, 6 new haircuts. I’ll break the record if I kept changing, I’ll break the record but I will not be healed.
Is it because, I write cuz I can do nothing about my rage, the rage that I don’t even recognize?
Writing is my "detoxification", but what if I was made of poison? When will I be healed?
......