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Poetry from The Dreadlocks Tree
Self-Portrait
My face is tempered fire
It promises victory in emotional desertion
The stained teardrop under my eye
Is a kiss from my childhood nuances
That gave me my second name
My scars are my grays
And my grays are my father
A discovery I made during the first receding tides
My nose tells the story of sugar cane fields
I was not there yet
When Shango slipped through their fingers
But the hairs around my mouth
Come from a Portuguese slave ship
That colored my skin
When it first crossed my forehead
The world is full of wonderful faces
If mine doesn’t smile,
It’s only my mother preparing her day.
Poetry is Spirit
Poetry is spirit trying to get at something
Like staying up late in the night
Playing tag with sleeplessness
Poetry is passion rushing in and out of itself
Like the hurried music of Baraka and Shange
Alive and soaring through space and back
Poetry is pain not having a resting place
You can’t hold it,
Put it down
Or leave it
Because it’s indefinite
And yet, you create it
Poetry is dance coming thru
Like Alvin Ailey never died
Just look at how the brothas
Shoot up to the basket!
Poetry is anger raging through your veins
You can’t hold it,
Put it down
Or leave it
Because it’s much bigger than you
And yet, you control it
Poetry is pleading for resurrection
For love to come in
And this time
Maybe
To stay
Poetry is spirit trying to get at something.
My other pen is poetry. The first time I read at an open mic was in Harlem’s legendary Frank Silvera Workshop. I had just begun teaching writing to young incarcerated males on Rikers Island and was introducing them to names like Sonya Sanchez, Amiri Baraka, Ntozake Shange, Wole Soyinka and other wordsmiths I studied during my undergraduate years at CCNY. And in turn, they introduced me to the new generation of jalis who we now know as KRS-ONE, Tupac Shakur, Lauryn Hill, Mos Def, The Roots, Chuck D, Talib Kweli; and still keeping the focus on community, Kendrick Lamar.
Mention my name at Sister’s Bookstore and Café, and you’ll hear stories of me and other local griots harmonizing through word. You can also find me in the very first issue of J Journal – New Writing on Justice of John Jay College (CUNY); Durham Center for Documentary Studies; and Chicken Bones, the coolest on-line pan-African think tank. Whether it takes three pages to say it or one word says it all, the human expression on paper and in art form allows us to continue the tradition of interpreting the complexities and contradictions of life, and of the self.