88

Posted on March 17, 2010 by urbansonnets

I'm closing in on an open verger;

I can already taste the fruit on trees,
can hear the birds sing amidst the verdure
do-re-mis floating in the gentle breeze:
I must stay awhile here if I'm to write
the epic of my blood, the manifest
movements of my people from strong to right –
must remain just outside the garden's nest:
I am a new pilgrim without an age –
not timeless, just meaning "asymptotic,"
as my point must forever mis-engage
from the hardline of actual knowlege:
And so I'll peer into the clearing's mouth,
but my vision commences further south.
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87

Posted on March 17, 2010 by urbansonnets

Just as catastrophe incarnate

I tremble, throbbing and boiling inside,
with flesh so putrid I have to scorn it,
and a fallow vision to redivide:
I'd take water and air over flame, earth;
I'd take blue or grey over the blue tip,
since the gamut is every color worth
blending, not clarity when bright eyes slip:
The red sun reflected itself neatly,
with the moonlight nestled on its right flank,
so I could drink of its oceans sweetly,
but solely lukewarm water filled my tank:
Until the sun got hot and water boiled,
and I learned to see clear why I have toiled.
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86

Posted on March 15, 2010 by urbansonnets

I am the monstrous villain of the sea,

and I sing to myself so happily;
I sing across the trade winds cryptically
in hope that ancient seafarers hear me:
From the Ivory Coast to the Petén,
I recite from my entrails into waves,
chant from the dreamseat for mystic brethren
and sistren on aqueous bars and staves:
My song is dangerous to flesh pirates –
I favor travelers that sing as they row,
seeing visions as they raise their eyelids
and new horizons open from the flow:
I love to sing in full fluidity –
my sea-saw tells the truest history.
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85

Posted on March 15, 2010 by urbansonnets

I am the monstrous villain of the sea

and I am bleeding on the ocean floor,
for my veins reunite not one but three
races of man: the devil, rich and poor:
To put it in other terms, I am dead.
There is no movement in the lonely flows
of currents and brine, where dark spirits fled
when life on land was likened to gallows:
To put it in other terms, I am dead.
There is no motion in this deep ocean –
My boat was sunk generations ahead
of my current condition as human:
I am bleeding into the saltiness,
and salt and salt and salt means great distress.
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84

Posted on March 15, 2010 by urbansonnets

I am the monstrous villain of the sea

on earth, and my birth was long prophesied 
by those with a mind to make history
conform to their strictures as memory:
I woke to the smell of rocks, the color
of blood, mixed with chalk, poured down impassive
against the azure which seemed to hover
in bright relief against earth, aggressive:
I was born at this very point of cut
between the brown and blue, between green
and the clear blade of the cut as not cut –
Here I emerged from waters so pristine:
The ground is fertile around me, and I
live off its fruit – but I die for its dye.
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83

Posted on March 14, 2010 by urbansonnets

The deep, dark paths of foreign steps unwind

before the eyes and hand of a dreamer
who is not welcome here, despite his mind
or heart, his art, mores or demeanor:
But yet the path unfolds through the mountains,
heading down from the monastic center,
and the bushes and shrubs shoot like fountains
before his noble steps dare to enter:
It's lush here and green despite the arid
conditions, since the mind takes occasion
to shower the earth and air with humid
streams of vision, of dreams, of creation:
Voilà the fruits of this fruitless labor,
this man descends so we all can savor.
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Old School Sonnets, vol. 4

Posted on March 10, 2010 by urbansonnets
Cimarrón: See My Run (dedicated to the Saramaka)

Never is the mind so tested as when
the spirit throbs and the heart is quickened
by the dark pulse of dreams always undone
due to the deeds of the poisoned, sickened:
Because that mind must take care not to bend
like the creek that curves towards water thickened
by the murky earth where its charge will end
where the cayman spirit lurks, unflinching:
But tests are for passing, and your mind flies
through sky and/or sea, and the swamp is dead
beneath the jets of your wake, clear ripples
float, wafting waves of smoke, and you dribble
Down the dreams of your blood, which nobly fled
from the sitting race where life itself lies.
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82

Posted on March 10, 2010 by urbansonnets

In my underwater dream, mermaids flowed

to flute, harpsichord and violin swings,
moving tails and hands holding shells that glowed
in the crisp blue – mother of living things:
I heard the harpsichord sound the deepest – 
its fusion of tension and percussion,
drawing textures that bleed like palettes, blessed
by the hand that, quivering, made motion:
I can only follow suit, so I swim,
I propel my body into the flow
of a timeless depth, of a muted time
only heard underneath, that is, below:
I could lie in the sand a thousand years
and still not fathom what the water hears.
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81

Posted on March 7, 2010 by urbansonnets

When the running man was finally played out,

they all continued to stand there, rapping
their fingers against the blue and yellow
tiles on the wall, lit up by the magic:
I was outside, trying to get inside,
and I tapped at the door, as the cold air
made me waddle, hopping to keep inside
all the fury that I was and am here:
In the back of my mind, I could see the
lights strobing, swirling colored souls like leaves
in the autumn, dried out by the weather:
Dance itself was the oak tree around which
this foliage decided to decay, crisp.
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80

Posted on March 6, 2010 by urbansonnets

I'm holding a banana in my hand,

a bright gold one, shading toward natal red, 
a strange bitter fruit, ripped from fertile land –
I hold it in my heart and in my head:
The peel pulls back like a pair of scissors
before the coming cut – the blades are dull,
however, so I use my incisors:
Similarly, the ram is shorn of its
horns, while the black sheep is lost in the pack,
until I shave off its wool and it fits
for its lack of difference (scorned as "off-track" –
though, of course, the track, too, was once savage
till "fate" cut it), and is less than average.
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