212

Posted on February 19, 2011 by urbansonnets
Material eyes, material eyes,

see fluent seas through material eyes;
takes a paid vacation to realize
that material eyes always disguise:
See the hills there so green, the blue and white
splashed across the line, away from my touch;
I shut my eyelids to lock in the sight
of matterless passions before the crush:
Or crutch, I mean, like the Cross, the Pope
to the Catholic universe once comprised
of anti-imperial waves of hope,
of time too full to Materialize:
Then gentility won, and then the State;
Material eyes look with measured hate.
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211

Posted on February 19, 2011 by urbansonnets

New beginnings are found when least welcome,

after tragic loss, or when the truth dies
under humid sheets (at least under some),
or when the plane leaves earth for the dark skies:
I've landed, I'm settled. I'm strong and free
from weak linkage, from wreckage, from control
at the pale hands of the uncontrolled sea
that emanates from un-knowing its role:
Should water find its own or sublimate
itself into vapid, reusable 
cycles of clouds and rain, of birth and mate
and end as a means, as a crucible:
Can't take the fire? Don't sit by the hearth!
I've too many dreams to just walk on earth.
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210

Posted on February 16, 2011 by urbansonnets

I don't know what to say, but it'll flow
and vibrate and shatter the cold air here
with the songs of spirit, the love below
and above and around; the truth is near:
It approaches, every time I see hope
or trust, or thanks, in the eyes of those I've
touched in some way with my compassion's scope,
from youthful to wise, the dead and alive:
And even those who don't see my soul's aim,
and misread or even attempt to thwart
me, only prove the point in this life's game,
which, like headless sculptures, is still just art:
I stand on ripples of love and hunger;
Why scratch the itch? I'm not getting younger.

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209

Posted on February 15, 2011 by urbansonnets

We commune with spirits when the lights get

loose enough to just reach out and kiss one!
Think about it: loose lights, sparkling cider
in glasses with neon stems; freon
hems the hemlock hairdos that sisters wore
since Sherman Hemsley moved on out to sea;
My marina harbors a New Navy;
no armaments, just coins and change machines:
Look at this lucre, Luther? Look, my man!
We can wish truth away for a lifespan
on this deck, from this hold, in this hold, see!
We are tragic grumets on the sea's scene!
Mar i cel – were we A-rabs since they're Moors?
No, Maury, we're captains on ocean floors!
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208

Posted on February 15, 2011 by urbansonnets

The grass is greener when there ain't no graze;

cow eyes are glazed with the slick glass eye look
till you feed 'em and burst 'em with grass, maize (?)
and shave'em, slice 'em, put 'em on the hook:
Or off. Must the pious "stevedore" doff
his brain into the poet's lap notebook
or new laptop or digi camera
as "neat" pieces of "quaint" ephemera :
What it really is is peripheral –
I sing (eye zing?, – izing?), if that's a word;
Oh you made it up? Well, I'd never heard:
You're too literate, babe; I'm figural:
We are living in our matériel
workspaces, for we are true headcases.
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207

Posted on February 15, 2011 by urbansonnets

Circles and lights, they circle the turnpike

when it's well past the night and haze is free,
and hay isn't free – you pay with your pike
or it scorches your throat on-you-we:
That was a joke. Don't take it for scripture,
though it's written in cursive; discursive
flows regurgitative, tossing back pure
and utter clichés; no reimbursive 
gestures thrown at congenial jesters who're
deluded by language into loving
all men, all things, every figment moving
under this patchwork of shredder manure:
So, please have you your way, burgher Kings
and Queens or queans (if you know what that means). 
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206

Posted on February 15, 2011 by urbansonnets

I missed an appointment. It was a dream.

No, it was true. I missed the appointment
for real. No, it was a delusive dream
like sec'lar kings anointed with ointment:
Bengué, bengal tiger – icey hot balm –
put 'em together and watch it splatter
the "palace" walls with relax and calm;
you call it "art," I say it don't matter:
In fatter days, like when the mangoes dropped
off trees and not eyes, off peels and not skies
to fall on baldhead eagles of untapped
potential – until some "potentate" "dies":
There's so much violence in these divisions;
why not peel off towards swift, sweeter missions?
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205

Posted on February 13, 2011 by urbansonnets

Today I found out that a broken heart

is just a metaphor, if the real one
shines brilliantly, stitched with a golden part,
painting rhythms in its rays like the sun:
He's knocking at the door now. The soldier
stands under the lintel, musket shouldered,
with his steady grimace betraying fear
as he returned to the home he once fled:
He thought it was for war; no it was peace
that he deserted his roots to take arms
up over the plume; in his old room fleece
quilts nurtured the bed with old homespun charms:
He saw a notebook, brand new, to the right,
and with a knowing grin began to write.
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204

Posted on February 11, 2011 by urbansonnets

Ain't nothing wrong with being African –

whether full or partial, you are holy
and whole; throw your fears in the plastic can,
and be your truths, reflect your past fully:
But look to the future, look toward the brook
that drags itself languid over the earth;
as it pulses forward, its veins do brook
the exotic pastures of a wider berth:
Pastures not postures; wider not whiter;
I derive my status from the true Source
in our mothers and fathers who, brighter
than the sun, dreamed our tragic, magic course:
Tragic because self-respect had been lost,
till looking seaward magic sight-lines crossed.
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203

Posted on February 11, 2011 by urbansonnets
Img_0042

The grass is greener on the other side

of the call from the depths of true spirit,
which means one must repaint our sinner's hide,
turn the penitent's pelt into lyric:
I have pained all day with no brush handy
with which to paint out these pangs of patience
perhaps overspent pining for candy
when my plans are better served by prescience:
And so I aim to depict the future
not as still life nor as acuarela,
not as dead nature or karmic suture
but as living culture, lienzo, tela:
I'm re-rooting my cellar with flowers;
each clipped stem kills the death that devours
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