| Vision - Revision 5+5+5 Featured Poems (February 2008 Signature Solo Exhibit) |
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Departure From Rented Rooms by Karla Clark False Hihani trail branches into brine. When the tide falls away what remains Is beach stripped to the bone. Even now there are days I believe I will wake and find what I love Is really mine; that I possess These clay green walls, Kohala mountain rising through its constant changing light .In full moon dawn, sea turtles reach their flippers into air: their bodies back-lit ovals held in amber where new sunlight takes the waves; a moment hesitation; as though flying: in the pause before they break. ◄ ♥ ►     |
The Rhythm by Alison Chokwadi Fletcher The rhythm The rhythm The thickness of our lips The laughter on our faces The anger in our fists The heights of our cheekbones The tangle in our hair The coco colored skin We so proudly wear The syncopated steps From one plantation to another Leaving babies without mothers And fathers without sons The contributions The inventions The triumphs of Sojourner Truth, abolitionist-orator Bessie Smith, Empress of the Blues Billie Holiday, The Queen of Jazz Madame C. J. Walker, businesswoman-millonairess Zora Neale Hurston, writer-anthropologist Phyllis Wheatley, first African American poet to be published Harriet Tubman, conductor of The Underground Railroad Selma Hortense Burke, sculptor, flip a dime, see her work Katherine Duham, cancer-anthorpoogist Scott Joplin, King of Ragtime Cordon Parks, photographer and film director Garrett Morgan, businessman-inventoer Jesse Owens, U.S. Olympic champion Nat Turner, freedom fighter Thurgood Marshall, supreme court justice Frederick Douglas, civil rights leader Carter G. Woodson, founder of Black History Month and Charles Drew, physician Just to name a few The reverence for God The prayers we talk And yes, oh yes The Black man's walk The surnames, the customs, the languages lost When we were brought over When we were shipped Across the Atlantic The millions who couldn't or didn't make it The ocean their grave The memory of these ancestors who help us everyday The rhythm The rhythm The rhythm in our voices Is the drum We've never forgotten Is the sun The sweat The cut up hands From picking too much cotton Is the struggle We've been through Is the dance We never stopped Is the wisdom We didn't drop Is the sound of a people who's story must be told the rhythm the rhythm in our voices the rhythm the rhythm in our voices ◄ ♥ ► |
My Muse by Lenore Weiss She loved the water and they called me fish, not knowing it was her they really talked about, drifting with fingers webbed until the lifeguards whistled her back. I still have a few pictures of myself as a young girl, my hair already streak to mark the place she had come into a frothing foam. For years it seemed she had made me old before my time, Any anchor I threw down she yanked up twirled it over her head pounded the waves with her flippers. She always needed to make a big splash. I'd rebuke her. Tell her I was going away. I was never coming back. I was better off without her really. The she'd grow quiet. Sometimes she wouldn't talk to me for months. I wouldn't know what to do. I's sit hunched in a corner like this. But the truth is, she pressed her thumb to my heart and let me speak my fear. Of course, she had ulterior motives. She wanted me to get everything out of the way early, even death, so she'd have my undivided attention, so she'd know I'd always be there for her when she rose from the ocean, her mouth encrusted with salt. ◄ ♥ ►   |
