LIVING IN THE USA: MALCOLM LONDON, NICK MAKOHA, LADAN OSMAN
***********************************************************************************************
MALCOLM LONDON
Never Too Late
There’s
one thing the richest man can never purchase
Yesterday
It feels like
Yesterday I sat
Indian-style around my grandfather’s armchair
Suspended above my
head
Like a skyline
His belly beneath
denim overalls
Wreaking of Old Spice
and drinking Mississippi Cotton Gin
He would say
Before nodding off
the the Wheel of Fortune
and waking up when
someone turned the station
If you are early
You are on time
And if you are on
time
You are late
But it is never too
late for your time
The richest man can
never purchase
Yesterday
Yesterday my grandma
says she sees
Everything
On the block
She complains about
friends
My cousin brings into
the house
Off the street
Late at night to use
her bathroom
She fuss always,
But always
Let folk use her
bathroom
The richest man can
never purchase
Yesterday
But could purchase
A new bathroom
Every morning
My granddad
A construction worker
with massive forearms
Building up a city
Tearing down his
pension
Unfurls his bones
At 6 am to read the
bible in his pickup truck
I’ve never seen him
go to church
But make a chapel out
of the garage
He was never fully
awake
Until my grandma
handed him his thermos
Of coffee
The richest man can
never purchase
Yesterday
But could purchase
A lot of coffee
I am a poor man
living in the same neighborhood
My grandparents could
never afford to leave
Every morning I read
Headlines
18 shot in a weekend
300 dead in a summer
50 schools shut down
Public funding cut
Trying to turn poems
into eulogies
I find in the
newspaper
Everyday I teach
Students their words
into new front page stories
The richest man can
never purchase
Yesterday
But could purchase
A news station
My grandmother is a
woman carrying a house on her back
Shelter more people
walking in without wiping their feet
On the mat
My grandfather a
clock
Ran out of time
Before he was ever
late
My gandmother’s
favorite past time
Is dreaming of my
grandpa’s past
Everyday I sit in a
classroom
Pointing to the
granddaddy armchair pointing in the sky
Telling my students
This city
Is yours
This is your house
With all its
late-night
Back alley bathroom
visits
Under all this
construction
You are builders
Hold your dreams
At the lovers hand
Hand the next person
you see
A thermos of coffee
Wake them up
Wake them up
No headline defines
you
No amount of money
can take your yesterday
So pickup truck
Where you left off
And keep going
No hands control your
time except yours
It is never too late
to wake up
For your wheel of
fortune
No matter who
controls the station
Wake up
Wake up
It is never too late
like my gandma taught
me
Never too late
To love yourself
enough
to purchase a new
beginning
_________
TPB's notes: n/a - a poet and activistvery active on social media.
NICK MAKOHA
Beatitude
When a rebel leader promises you the world seen in commercials,
he will hold a shotgun to the radio announcer’s mouth
and use a quilt of bristling static to muffle the tears.
When the bodies disappear, discarded like the skins of mangos,
he will weep with you in those hours of reckoning and judgment
into the hollow night, when the crowds disperse.
When by paraffin light his whiskey breath tells you
your mother’s wailings in your father’s bed are a song
for our nation, as he sits with you on the veranda to witness the sunrise,
say nothing. Slaughter your herd. Feed the soldiers
who looted your mills and factories. Let them dance
in your garden while an old man watches.
Then when they sleep and your blood turns to kerosene,
find your mother gathering water at the well to stave off
the burning. Shave her head with a razor from the kiosk.
When the fury has gathered, take her hand and run
past the fields and odor of blood and bones. Past the checkpoint,
past the swamp, toward the smoky disk flaring in the horizon.
Run till your knuckles become as white as handkerchiefs.
Run into the night’s fluorescent silence. Run till your lungs
become a furnace of flames. Run past the border.
Run till you no longer see yourself in other men’s eyes.
Run past sleep, past darkness.
Stop when you find a country where they do not know your name.
__________
TPB's note's: n/a - More original of the three.
LADAN OSMAN
Situations Wanted
I am looking for a man who will let me
make myself small then crawl
into his pocket as he watches TV.
He must know how to love his shadow,
how to say “I love you” to even the periphery
of his body.
Let us be like wrists rubbing against each other.
I will pay you with good intentions.
I will be your friend, in the way mirrors befriend,
then grow water. But my face is a black mug;
you can drink its water and not know its bottom
until a bug bumps your lip.
If you are willing
let me show you how fingers know each other.
Even birds try to build their homes again and again.
_________
TPB's notes: n/a -Heavy lifting off Sylvia Plath here.
No comments:
Post a Comment