Quasi-triple Bronze - A dedication to Heather from Mrz. Badvo
Posted 15 Oct 2004 at 18:18 UTC by badvogato
Inspired by Robert Frost's poem "Triple Bronze", plus a most recent encounter with the writing of Ewuare Osayande "Art at War - Revolutionary art against cultural imperalism" on Black Commentator issue 108, also to commemorate our Big Brother raph's divorcing mass
Quasi-triple Bronze
- A dedication to Heather from Mrz. Badvogato of Allthings.GO
Professor Heather,
Be my confessor
for i am having an affair
with your once-beloved man.
Forgiveness comes and goes
Between Him and me
Compassion sways unbound
within this crowded virgule hall.
Should you ask us all,
Who's the fairest of all?
He says
my invention and intention
is one of the fairest at my best.
I say
I love its bareness
but I AM the fairest.
But the crowd roared
Obey nature and man's rule
only then will thy beauty shine through.
So I asked
What is nature and man
But I AM?
God looks down from above
His voice thunders in a hiss
If thou seek me
AllThings.GO
but I in Thee.
ps. Robert Frost's "Triple Bronze" ( with addition of quasi-part/ by brother badvo)
* Triple Bronze
The Infinite's being so wide
Is the reason the Power provide
For inner defense my hide
For next defense outside.
I made myself this time
Of wood or granite or lime
A wall too hard for crime
Either to breach or climb.
Then a number us agree
On a national/sexual boundary.
And that defense makes three
Between too much and me.
Ewuare Osayande's two poems reminds me of the battle we lost on Pedro the Dildo's brown city yet we triumphed with PJ and POT's exodus underground...
EWUARE OSAYANDE
*Lowcoup Too <#low>*
*Doin' Time
*Lowcoup Too*
*/for Amiri Baraka who coined the term/*
*we speak*
*in sub-verse-ive speech*
*lowcoup*
*we done overthrew yr language long time ago*
*we diction dictators who dominate the national dialogue*
*not what you hear on the news*
*but what is heard in the streets of America*
*where the masses are active*
*and alive*
*as our language*
*slave legacy lingers*
*deep structure is a motherfucker*
*fucking up your grammatical structure*
*sinful syntax*
*we transgress rules that stress*
*what is correct or incorrect*
*every time we open our mouths*
*cant no amount of schooling stop this*
*we slow down the lingo*
*with our Southern drawl*
*talking bout ya'll instead of you*
*bout finnin to instead of going to*
*say what needs to be said*
*this be our linguistic legacy*
*we be lying&signifying*
*why you think much of our discussion*
*consists of dissing&cussing?*
*black boasting*
*is burnt toasting*
*we dont play wit wat we say*
*venomous vernacular*
*we spit fire*
*got molatov cocktails burning under our tongues*
*we'll blow a hole in yo head*
*with our oral arsenals*
*we use words as weapons*
*battling on lyrical terrain*
*where most fear to tread*
*cuz language is power*
*know that once the word is written on the page*
*it dies*
*all the books you've read*
*the words are dead*
*only that which is spoken remains alive*
*this is how culture thrives*
*like the people who speak it*
*we need speech to reach the masses*
*not those academic asses*
*but the masses*
*who dont got no BAs, MBAs or PhDs*
*these are the people we communicate with*
*those who speak their first tongue*
*on the workplace*
*where CEOs try to control how folk flow*
*on the DL*
*paranoid professionals*
*wanna call for one language laws*
*to be enforced*
*but you cant control*
*what rolls off the tongues*
*of those who work for you*
*cuz theirs is a lingo of liberation*
*always changing inflections and definitions*
*anarchy articulations*
*syllables laced with cyanide*
*murdering you with murmurings*
*under our breath*
*rebellious rhetoric*
*communicating ideas that undermine*
*your authority*
*this is lowcoup*
*we done overthrew yr language long time ago*
*the american dialect is ours*
*and we aint gonna be satisfied*
*til the rest of country is ours too*
*Doin' Time*
*the downward spiral*
*caught in the vortex of a life with a question mark*
*the time*
*that keeps on tickin*
*keeps tickin*
*that refuses to be paused*
*in spite of the pain*
*there is no respite for the weary*
*no time-out*
*to plan, to strategize*
*our way outta this mess*
*so the babies keep being born*
*begotten and forgotten*
*hearts growed colder*
*frost-bitten by bitterness*
*each day looking Grief in its grill*
*its reflection seen on our faces*
*our lives been turned into feces*
*the waste of this place*
*as the slums expand*
*our demands -have fallen upon ears deafened*
*by the sound of gold cuff-linked hands exchanging*
*million dollar deals for the real estate*
*that is the land we live on*
*our get-out-the-ghetto desires have been blighted*
*our existence is a sham*
*a crying shame*
*each day*
*someone new to blame*
*holed up in inner-city cement huts*
*stressing out a livin?*
*that aint easy*
*that aint no cristal stair*
*we climb on top of each other*
*just to get out of the basement of our bitterness*
*no accommodations we gots*
*barely a cot and pot to piss in*
*our lives are survival of the downpressed*
*instinct kicks in*
*when all rational ends*
*have been deaded*
*dilapidated determinations*
*accommodated dreams*
*our labor affords us no luxuries*
*lack the means to make our lives meaningful*
*just mean*
*just mean*
*just means that we are*
*constantly conjuring up some meager semblance of an
existence*
*from the junk yard scraps piled high in the industrial
waste plants*
*of this juggernaut of bars and stars*
*where we are locked down in our own demise*
*hand-cuffed to our misery*
*and there aint no escape*
*no there aint no escape*
*no getting free from this place*
*the whole planet is patrolled*
*and we are being caged right in our homes*
*where peace is a prayer that never gets answered*
*while the wealthiest go to sleep each night*
*never worrying over*
*what new misery will meet them tomorrow*
*but each minute we contemplate*
*consciously and unconsciously*
*the ever-present possibility of heartache*
*in existential anguish*
*our pain is perpetual*
*and time keeps on tickin*
*keeps on tickin*
*and tickin*
*and*
*black life been a crime since Jamestown 1619*
*and we still*
*doin? time*
*still doin? time*
*still*
*doin? time*
Dear Prof. Moorey,
It's been a while
i have a young son now
a walkie and talkie Gregoriy
and a terrible two too
almost three when next Feburary shall flee.
As for me
i've been thinking about
how to come forth a definition
on a forth language
to hang on a Halloween scary tree.
There are the first three
mathematics, music and body language
and the forth is just a mixing bag
of the primal three
for donkey, monkey and robo-bee.
if i can't become a master and a slave
of the first three
it'll never stop me
from mixing them up in my cup of tea
and offer it to my little Gregoriy.
Together with bits of history
from his mother's old and new country lane
many broken potty and fresh old poetry
to yoyo ma and gogo games
along side those letters ABC sung by Robert Frosty.
Trust me
there's more about the beauty of language
as every new human being must ponder upon it
or else he ceases to be
a primal being as God has made him to be.
A poison Tree
I was angry with my friend,
I tol my wrath, my wrath did end;
I was angry with my foe,
I told it not, my wrath did grow.
And I water'd it in fears,
Night and morning with my tears;
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.
And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright;
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine,
And into my garden stole
When the night had veil'd the pole;
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretch'd beneath the tree.
HeHeHoHoHaHa Oolala...
No Platonic Love
Tell me no more of minds embracing minds,
And hearts exchange'd for hearts;
that spirits spirits meet, as winds do winds,
And mix their subt'lest parts;
That two unbodied essences may kiss,
And then like Angels, twists and feel one Bliss.
I was that silly thing that once was wrought
To practice this thin love;
I climb'd from sex to soul, from soul to thought;
But thinking there to move,
Headlong I rolled from thought to soul, and then
From soul I lighted at the sex again.
As some strict down-looked men pretend to fast,
Who yet in closets eat;
So lovers who profess they spirits taste,
Feed yet no grosser meat;
I know they boast they souls to souls convey,
Howeve'r they meet, the body is the way.
Come, I will undeceive thee, they that tread
Those vain aerial ways,
Are like young heirs and alchemists misled
To waste their wealth and days,
For searching thus to be for ever rich,
They only find a med'cine for the itch.
And God says there ain't no sex and body with M & M playtonic gay.
NOSTALGIA FOR THE PRESENT
I don't know about the rest of you,
but I feel the curelest
nostalgia - not for the past -
but nostalgia for the present.
A novice desires to approach the Lord
but is permitted to do so only by her Superior.
I beg to be joined, without intermediary
to the present.
It's as if I had done something wrong,
Not I even - but others.
I fall down in a field and feel
nostalgia for the living earth.
No one can ever tear you away,
and yet when I embrace you again
I feel overcome by terrible pain
as if you were being stolen from me.
When I hear the nasty tirades
of a friend who has taken a false step,
I don't look for what he seems to be,
I grieve for what he really is.
A window opening on a garden
will not redeem loneliness.
I long not for art - I c hoke
on my craving for the reality.
And when the Mafia laughs in my face
idiotically, I say:
"Idiots are all in the past. The present
calls for fuller understanding."
Black water spurts from the faucet,
Blackish water, stale water,
rusty water flows from the faucet - I'll wait
for the real water to come.
Whatever is past is past. So much the better.
But I bite at it as at a mystery,
nostalgia for the impending
present.
And I'll never catch hold of it.
*note: stopped by a local 'half price' bookstore and got back home with these three books. "Nostalgia for the present", poems by Andrei Voznesensky; "The Inferno of Dante" - a new verse translation by Robert Pinsky; "The Robert Frost Reader" - poetry and prose (edited by Edward Connery Lathem, et al). As if by divine intervention, they simply appeared on the shelf for my ownership. darn.
The Definition of Love
My love is of a birth as rare
As 'tis for object strange and high:
It was begotten by Despair
Upon Impossibility.
Magnanimous Despair alone
Could show me so divine a thing,
Where febble Hope could ne'er have flown
But vainly flapped its tinsel wing.
And yet I quickly might arrive
Where my extended soul is fixed,
But Fate does iron wedges drive,
And always crowds itself betwixt.
For Fate with jealous eye does see
Two perfect loves, nor lets them close:
Their union would her ruin be,
And her tyrannic power depose.
And therefore her decrees of steel
Us as the distant poles have placed,
(Though love's whole world on us doth wheel)
Not by themselves to be embraced.
Unless the giddy heaven fall,
And earth some new convulsion tear,
And, us to join, the world should all
Be cramped into a planisphere.
As lines, so loves oblique may well
Themselves in every angle greet;
But ours, so truly parallel,
Though infinite, can never meet.
Therefore the love which us doth bind,
But fate so enviously debars
Is the conjunction of the mind,
And opposition of the stars.
SILENT TINGLING
(translated by Allen Ginsberg)
Must be thousands of sweet gourmets rustling through
leaf crowded branches, thrushes cracking seedling shells
all over America like crystalline carillon bells,
a really strange silent tingling.
Silent carillons, not to celebrate Main Street
but rustling up some food their only scene --
No miracle but millions of hungry souls
silently tingling.
This tingling silence heralds
an orgy of hermit thrushes eating,
like thousands of song-men's clapsticks clacking
or faraway Moscow's million bells
-- some dream collective -- generational vogue.
Thrush communes don't be afraid of the big Broom,
your flock continues an ancient tradition,
now all over America - collective marriage;
though some detractors put down your in-group, not big enough!
A silent Individualist in top hat & tails drest
coffinlike denounces your collective struggles in bed --
but his own wife wears rings on every finger,
as if she would up in a group marriage.
This gentle gang's only enemy's insects
cleaning up bark parasites - silently, silently --
Anybody can crush bones and oink louder
but can't beat this silent tingling.
Fast New York Sydney chicks --
thanks Brisbane birds & Chicago thrushes
for your own silent tingling - your cities' trees'
leaves tremble like golden curlicues on Byzantine crosses
Maybe someday our descendants
'll ask about this poet - What'd he sing about?
I didn't ring Halleluiah bells, I didn't clang leg-irons,
I was silently tingling.
TO BE IN LOVE
To be in love
Is to touch with a lighter hand.
In yourself you stretch, you are well.
You look at things
Through his eyes.
A cardinal is red.
A sky is blue.
Suddenly you know he knows too.
He is not there but
You know you are tasting together
The winter, or a light spring weather.
His hand to take your hand is
overmuch.
Too much to bear.
You cannot look in his eyes
Because your pulse must not say
What must not be said.
When he
Shuts a door-
Is not there
Your arms are water.
And you are free
With a ghastly freedom.
You are the beautiful half
Of a golden hurt.
You remember and covet his mouth
To touch, to whisper on.
Oh when to declare
Is certain Death!
Oh when to apprize
Is to mesmerize
To see fall down, the Column of Gold,
Into the commonest ash.