Dudley Square Cries

Hear the living cries of Dudley Square woes!

The heartbeat of Boston reveals

Life’s blood victories and defeats

Newborn babies in strollers
Young mothers, seasoned mothers
Fathers too!

Strolling,
And rolling,

To make a hustle to work

They go

Reading Boston Metro

Cell phones singing curses loudly of

Love’s soap opera gossip gone wrong

Or tender muted sounds of love’s promise

Look at the fine apparels worn to protect or expose

The appearance of a hidden soul

The lows and highs of self worth and self esteem

In arrays of bright and dark colors fashioned

Smells of

Restaurants, fruit stands and vendors calling
Sweet cooings of flying doves above
Living, breathing, moaning Dudley Square

Cry on!  Cry on!  Cry on!

Photo credit: "Faces of Dudley" by Ernesto Valencia, www.picturingroxbury.wordpress.com

Dudley Square II

Vegetable soup stirring, daddies maybe,
crying babies, mamas talking loud

Ebonics flying, see hips swinging?
Women, men walkin’ – or are they swaying?
Hear the wind blowing?
Birds chirping, flies flying
Sounds crying, tires screeching

Horns justa blowing
Culture moving
White, yellow, black and red
No need to salute a flag
Look at heat risin’!
Chicken gumbo soup in motion
Boiling!

What you say?
Poetry in motion
Swinging and justa swaying
Ha!  That’s Dudley Square!

Dudley Square III

There’s a be-bop de-bop in the square

Something’s always going down

Sounds of a circus coming to town

Be-Bo-De-Bop
Be-Bo-De-Bop

Right here in the core of Dudley Square

The colorful cartoon reality ringing

Out another rhythmic beat

Marvin Gaye – “What’s Going On”

Be-Bo-De-Bop
Be-Bo-De-Bop

A woman hungry is asking for a dollar

Be-Bo-De-Bop
Be-Bo-De-Bop
           
Preacher man preaching from the good book

Be-Bo-De-Bop
Be-Bo-De-Bop

See the man on crack walking unsteadily toward you
Asking for your money

Be-Bo-De-Bop
Be-Bo-De-Bop

My Father's Hands

March 3, 2010

Look!
 Don’t cover up your faces!
See my father’s hands.
Yes, they are filled with deformities now.
drawn up in the form
of a lion’s paw.
What a story these hands could tell you
which formed my family’s world.
With praying hands
strong provider hands
tying my shoe lace when I did not know how
helping hand for algebra homework
and making chicken gumbo
carpenter hands holding a hammer,
rhythmically and melodiously nailing, fixing things
yet like a protective lion, tenderly brushing away my pain from my childhood
woundings.
Hands fixing bandage on a scraped knee as I learned
to ride my bicycle, “The Green Hornet.”
These hands painted walls in strokes of ease.
and drywalled houses
Dad could cement bricks together like icing a cake.
Hands which measured walls with a look.
These hands worked long hard hours until midnight.
Hands of excellence
so don’t you cover up your face or look away!
Like the nails in my Jesus’ hands,
see my father’s hands!

Easier with You (First version, written in my twenties)

Shades drawn, closing out a hazy dawn
while a jazzman playing low from a scratchy stereo
sounds of last night's song.

And lazy on my pillow, I stray into a glowy mellow.
There I wander into the beauty of living and filled with
a newness sown by you.

And it’s easier with you breathing beside me, ‘cause
you've taken away all the hollow nights and days when
time was just too free.  My reasons in loving you are in
the things you prove.  It's so much easier with you.

Daylight hustles into the city's glare, and to face another
day with thoughts of running away to roads that call me there.
Although I want to follow and drown into a stony sorrow,
but since you've entered into my sinking future and filled it with
the power of love, I find that all that is, is so much Easier
With You.

Easier With You (second version, written in my senior years)

With shades drawn, closing out a hazy dawn
I still embrace the rhythm of last night's song.
Waves of a jazzman's horn is playing low
while a singer's voice wanders off into a whisper.
I have become entangled within a dream.  There
I find myself moving so very slow, as the music
plays softly from a scratchy stereo.

And lazy on my pillow, I stray into a glowy mellow.
Where my heart is racing to catch each beat.
There I wander into the beauty of a new beginning
overshadowed by the fear of yesterday's memories.
Those words of thunder and betrayal of trust.  Now
forgotten, now so faraway, now, my heart is filled
with a newness sown by you.

And it's easier with you breathing here beside me.
You've never doubted me.  You've allowed me to talk
forever about who or what I plan to be.  Even though
I sound so outrageous, so silly about staying free -
like a purple, green and yellow winged butterfly.
I mean, you care about me.  You're a first!

Daylight hustles into the city's glare, and to face
another day with thoughts of running away to roads
that call me there.  Although I want to follow and
drown into a stony sorrow.  I remember your touch
and your sighs.  Now that you've entered my life and filled
it with a powerful love.  I need to be here.  All that is
good in life and all that is really real is so much easier
with you.

The Mirror

The mirror, the mirror hanging there
So small, so plain, so unaware,
Of looks, and blinks and teeth so white,
Fore fills its duty to give delight.
To those who pass by without a care,
Who gawk and giggle and hope to dare,
To believe whatever tales it shows
The secret desires that no one knows.
Kept hidden and quiet by a blank cold stare
From half closed eyes full of hurt and despair.
 
Oh the outward masks we show
To others who believe they think they know:
     The beauty queen, the soccer pro,
              A dancer's dream,
     The boatmen's row, an idol's song,
              A love story so very wrong.
 
A mirror only knows why a reflection glows,
A mirror only shows what the mind already knows,
No matter how much primping and smiling I see
I relish that old mirror who reflects back at me.

The Shell

My inner being has long been emptied into rivers of time long forgotten by me. 

As I lay deep within the riverbed, the hardness of my shell still draws visitors of endless seaweeds that cling for a moment before moving on.   I yearn for them to stay awhile and keep me amused. 

Why should I beg for comfort, let all things pass through to where they must go?  My shell cannot weep for itself, nor can it laugh or ask for forgiveness for being empty.  I am broken by the turbulence of the quaking floor.   It has left me with swirls of ingenious lines of pale yellow, blue, orange, pink and a heavy moss of green.

I have become a beacon when the morning sun shines on all my parts, transforming me into a fascination picked up by new hands.

Although a part of me is lost forever, the spirit of my soul still lays buried deep within.  I will always be protected against the changing times of nature.

If you see me and care to listen, my tales of the sea are true.

Cushite Nation, Arise

 

 

Arise, this is your finest hour

The dawning of a new day

Arise and take your place

Fulfill your destiny

Shake-off the sack cloth and ashes. Put on the garment of praise

How shall they be led?

Except ye Arise Cushite Nation, Arise

Remember when God called you and set you above many as Kings and Queens

Remember when God anointed you and called you Great

Gird up your loins

Remember not your captivity

This is your finest hour

This is your time in the kingdom

Arise Cushite Nation, Arise

Miss Edith

There is wisdom in her

The way she surveyed the room sitting proudly in her seat

I knew that behind the gentleness in her smile there were years of hard learned lessons

There is wisdom in her eyes

The knowledge and the stories that she could drop

I would love to sit at her feet with my head on her knee as she speaks her story gently to me

There’s wisdom in her face

Not in the lines that crease it but in the regal way she walks into the room

The past and the present came with her

I saw the future in her too

There’s wisdom in her hands

They way she gracefully folds them in her lap,

I wonder how many babies those hands have gently caressed, how many braids have been platted with those graceful hands

I saw the past, the present

and the future in her too

There is wisdom in her.