The Poetry Marathon

I pray differently now

No bells, whistles, thou’s or therefore’s

I pray mostly like a fool

Just foolish enough to trust silence

Will laugh at my arrogance

And bandage my wounds

I pray like a man who knows endings

And who trusts next steps

I pray like a man determined to make friends

Life is too short for making enemies.

I pray…to become prayer

Moon at my back porch

God’s eye and holy stoppage

Humid August breeze

Everyone knows that

garlic, cheese, pepper and shrimp

are what goes in grits

“I volunteered to untell the story.

I came back to erase an idea

Because some thoughts are meant to be buried

Some before they even begin.”

Rya, from the movie In the Shadow of the Moon (2019, Netflix)

On those humid summer evenings

Pregnant stars driven back by streetlights

The children would gather around a flickering flashlight

Crowded together in that flimsy tent

And tell fantastical tales of the great undoing.

It takes a child’s eye

to remember the future

where words failed

covenant devolved into curse

where monsters were necessary,

heroes and she-roes few,

bold, overmatched, outflanked…and necessary

Perhaps children are so wise

because they have to deal with us…

and the bitter medicine of childhood,

that power to untell the wounding

comes when we are weak and still small

But…because they are still small enough

that their wings can still lift their weight

the small spark inside still knows how to seek the flickering flashlight,

that crowding together in a flimsy tent is still medicine,

and so is untelling the cutting lie

before the monsters become necessary

In order to explore

the depths of my soul

I bought a diving bell.

Sparing no expense,

I also hired a professional crew

(like the ones you’d see on one of those over-produced documentaries)

I even hired a research professor from an Ivy league university,

Just for good measure.

We planned, prepared and trained

for what seemed like forever

for the mission of a lifetime.

When the long-anticipated day finally arrived,

the bell christened, stocked, staffed

and with great fanfare slowly lowered into my soul

There was only one problem…

I wasn’t in there

Tap

Your toes yeah

Snap

Fingers yea

In

a jazzy groove

Heed

the warning

No

half stepping

Jazz

will make you move

Stuck. In a rut.

I called for a muse

The gods sent Audre Lorde

World-weary and wise

If silence will not save me

then confusion will not salve me

If Einstein is right,

then the Earth rises up to catch us

because we live in a curved spacetime.

And I also know

that it is no small matter

that legs are my lineage

Whether it is a dream or not

it doesn’t matter

But somehow Life has conspired

to find me here, now, with you….

I find myself…

With this mountain

Stranger…kinfolk…

This imperfect black strength

This beautiful scarred freedom

My history…my possibility…and more…

I am small with a mountain in my belly

Because You are here

Keeping me company

That…and my coffee

I’ve grown to take mine

with just enough cream, just enough sugar

and a hint of bitter bite at the back….

I find myself…

With this quantum of wildness

Stranger…kinfolk…

This buoyant black strength

of a vulnerable, unanswerable question

A sacrament to respond…to tend…to tenderness….

To raise a wildness

is never an easy thing

especially in these evil days

that plot against black boys

But grace has conspired

for a moment’s respite

to lay all my burdens down

Size is only a matter of time my Son

one day, I pray, the Mountain of God

will grow you tall like me

My beautiful black boy wildness

My history…my possibility…and more…

Keeping me company

That…and my coffee

I’ve grown to take mine

with just enough cream, just enough sugar

and a hint of bitter bite at the back….

“But the Lord God called to me and said to me ‘Where are You?'”

(paraphrase of Genesis 3:9)

To the One Who Hides

this was not just any fear

this fear had a name

It is the fear of being found wanting

Pursued by Life

Breathless