Revive my Heart

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You took my once cold heart
And gently wrapped it in your warmth
I had lost faith in love
Because I had been hurt
But you became my saving grace
And I learned to once again embrace
True intimacy
When I began to touch your face
And then the tears streamed
And my soul screamed
As I released emotions from a place
I didn’t know I had within me
Then held you in my embrace
And it was then you told me
What you saw in me
And we wept together
While my spirit poured out
All the love that I had in me
And then I lovingly
Whispered three words to you
In sincerity

We Live

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We were but striplings, some without mothers, some without fathers, running wild in the night unafraid of pitch darkness with hearts of lions. Our aura glowed beautifully in the souls of us; we laughed and we wept in fierce countenance. We were young, yet many were the trials for us; our bodies skinny and undeveloped, so in the company of monsters we fought with tears and dreamt of vengeance. To keep the pain from sorrowful and depressed grandmothers, some held in their agony and kept the devastating silence. Go back in time, and look into the eyes of us. Move past the innocent smiles, and see the hurt in us. The unresolved pain of our past is the illness of us. We cry on the graves of our mothers and curse the abandonment of our fathers. If I could, I would take away the trauma from all of us. We seek heaven’s light to take away the darkness. They are scarred, and they are beautiful. They are my brothers. They are my sisters. Still, now, with the blood of hope, and with the blood of vengeance, we survive tormented summers and bitterly cold winters.

Dark Birth

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Wailing is heard in darkness behind heavy black curtains;
The sorrowful long for the light,
But the darkness constantly whispers—
Cradling in its womb like a perpetually pregnant mother.
An umbilical cord of despondency feeds its blind baby;
The child is gaunt and withered within four walls;
Its amniotic sac of agony is the purgatory of dark halls.
The melancholic stumble listlessly,
Holding on to wooden bannisters lest they fall.
The precious tears of the tormented are cried in unbridled lamentation;
The flesh is weary, but still sleep is not found.
In the hell of insomnia the afflicted are bound.
The dark mother tries to sooth her kicking child
With the singing of perfidious lullabies;
It is calculating and vicious in its lies.
There must be a delivery for the baby to survive.
Dark pupils must see the sunshine;
The mother’s milk must not be ingested—
It is the milk of unceasing agony and poison;
Her whispers of love and safety are not genuine.
She causes the once strong to fall to their knees and crawl.
The tears of her children are scattered between anguished calls;
Witness the final moments of her torment
On blood soaked sheets and blood spattered walls.
See the transfixed open eyes of those that long cried.
No reprieve was found; there was no sunshine.
There was no light to illuminate desolate nights;
Still, the darkness whispers, trying to sell her wares.
The light must be found lest they all disappear;
At 4 AM, in darkness, gaunt hands rub against walls feeling for stairs;
In front of unlit fireplaces, in worn chairs,
The despondent sit listlessly;
In darkness, they stare.









Transformation Unseen

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Blood runs from my crown; my heavy cross is stained.
Heavy head with crown I stand under torrential rain.
Distilled and then purified by fire seven times again I feel no pain.
They seek to destroy me permanently, blind me, and take my name;
They will never take my name.
When the love is gone, it’s gone, it could never be the same.
Pupae in various stages of travail we have all become butterflies of pain.
I weep with anticipation of the day that I shall reclaim.
Though I have faltered, angels with broad white wings
Surround me to cover my shame;
Mortality is often pondered and then pondered again.
Hope wanes in cold winter winds so prayers to heaven I send.
After the heart is broken something in the spirit bends;
Subconsciously I had held back pieces of me,
So to finally mend, the pieces of me, to myself I will lend.
Love sometimes comes and goes, and like a crushed burgundy rose petal,
There is staining and scarring of the soul;
We were all young once hoping to be old, 
But now aged men in cold seek warmth for old and brittle bones.
Even the dust of us will retain our essence
With love and beauty, revealing long past years of romance untold.
They had witnessed my previous form but were not privy to see me transform
Into a king with power sovereign in gorgeous starlight reborn.
An orchestra plays with the lead violinist in passionate depths of forlorn; 
With a heavy crown in rain, I reign through storms.
In white linen and fine silk with gold borders I am adorned;
In white linen and fine silk with gold borders I am adorned.

Overcast

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Rivers of pain overflow from unceasing torrential rain.
The sun is held back behind a grey veil;
We live by sheer will alone —
Wanting to return to the joyful origins of us,
But there is no more home.
There is no more warmth in the bosom of our mothers,
Or the remembrance of cigar smoke
And the rough feel of the unshaven faces of our fathers;
We have been cold for so many winters.
We have been cold for so many winters.
For a time we had found warmth in lovers,
But even passionate kisses fade away;
Now we seek passion in wanting to live another day.
Flowers are brought for the dead;
A penny for your thoughts, but 
Constant overthinking causes dread.
Wanting to feel the aura of our younger selves again,
I see a boy that looks exactly like me,
And I reach for him wanting to tell him of the pitfalls ahead.
I scream hysterically to get his attention,
But he never turns his head.
Oh the tears we have shed;
The many tears we have shed.
Insidiously desolation feeds constantly on the soul;
Aged with torment and heaviness of heart,
Even young bodies appear to be old.
For the record, many entries have been written,
But still there are many stories untold.
The depths of me I hold onto
Like a rare diamond found in its raw form,
Yet to be cut and polished
To exhibit its true beauty and brilliance;
Somewhere near there is a true stillness
Like frozen streams through beautiful valleys
Where buffaloes graze in harsh winters.
I bathe in starlight;
I bathe in starlight;
Wrapped in the blanket of the covering of the night,
In nakedness I bathe in starlight.
I am forever a child of the night,
Running barefoot on dimly lit city blocks
Past where they sell pizzas by the slice
And colorful flavors of shaved ice.
Where the winters are long,
And the sorrowful sing songs
While old ladies in black with wooden and metal rosaries
Behind long funeral processions mourn.
Where tears fall on the bodies of slain sons
From the eyes of single and depressed mothers as they bawl,
And the hopeless and homeless light fires
In open barrels to keep warm in late fall.
We weep in torrential rainfall,
Covering sorrowful faces with worn hands
And praying fervently 
That the sad children will once again be happy
And do their dance.
The sun is held back behind a grey veil.
It is overcast with a chance of perpetual hail;
Three Hail Marys are said
And then a deep inhale;
Three Hail Marys are said
And then a deep inhale.

The Progeny of Anxiety

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black

The percussion of their heartbeat
Is the rhythm of struggle of many generations.
The agony of their fathers last words
Spoken intensely for so many summers. 
They have seen the hope of dreams
Turned into the nightmares of monstrous scenes unseen;
Their fathers lie there—eyes opened, as pooled blood 
Starts to run; the last remnant left behind
Of the affliction of their lives.
Mothers in unbearable anguish comfort their sons
and gently wipe the tears from their eyes;
They say, It will be alright, but in their hearts 
They fear their utterances lie;
Prayers are abandoned, and faces
No longer look toward the sky.
Stark reality is lifelessness taken away on a gurney,
While eyes stare, with not so subtle apathy;
Black children ask, What does that mean for me?
Tired mothers and fathers try to answer
But voices drag wearily;
Targeted we may be, but we find our strength daily.
We will survive; even with tears in our eyes, we will survive.
In anxiety, we will survive;
In depression, we will survive;
With a generational history of PTSD, we will survive;
With OCD, we will survive;
With afflictions of all kinds, we will survive;
And after the dark winter we will thrive.

For George

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Lifeless he is carried; his open eyes look towards the sky.
The remnants of his tears stream, just minutes before he screamed
I can’t breathe, still the evil one pressed harder with his knee;
In his last moments he called for his mother; in distress he was, but 
Still, he could see her. Cold-blooded eyes stared with arrogance in the air;
Inside they smiled for they relish the instillation of fear.
We hang on in constant distress hoping that our salvation is near;
Strange fruit appeared on blood spattered trees for so many years;
Our brown hue our only sin— Constantly in our oppression we are set back
Then begin again; Our lives lived like a tormented novel 
Written in the bowels of hell and narrated by the devil.
Over fifty years ago, We Shall Overcome was sung,
But still now we sit anxiously with weathered hands wrung—
We survive but we have yet to thrive. Systematically we are targeted
So our solemn plight is to stay alive. They see our sorrow, 
But they ignore our cries; I swear under the heavens 
and on the pain of my grandmother’s eyes, that one day . . .
That one glorious day, we shall arise.