Poetry is when an emotion has found it's thought and the thought has found words - Robert Frost (American poet)

The spoken word of poetry paints images on the best canvas... 

the human brain. Each of us creating our own pictures to words formed by individual experiences, no two alike. Just as these masters of spoken word are unlike no one else.

Amen - James Baldwin

No, I don't feel death coming.
I feel death going:
having thrown up his hands,
for the moment.
I feel like I know him
better than I did.
Those arms held me,
for a while,
and, when we meet again,
there will be that secret knowledge
between us.


Cotton Candy on a Rainy day - Nikki Giovanni

Don't look now
I'm fading away
Into the gray of my mornings
Or the blues of every night
Is it that my nails
keep breaking
Or maybe the corn
on my second little piggy
Things keep popping out
on my face or of my life
It seems no matter how
I try I become more difficult
to hold
I am not an easy woman
to want
They have asked
the psychiatrists . . . psychologists . . .
politicians and social workers
What this decade will be
known for
There is no doubt . . . it is
loneliness


His Dilemma - Saul Williams

every morning
I rise and face
the firing squad
every morning
there is one
who holds his fire
his dilemma
is my system
of belief
they fire rounds
but I am seldom
in their circle
a quiet mind
is labeled 'sound'
and colored purple
my little boy
has not yet learned
to color within lines
his jumbled diction
has not yet learned
our contradiction
we speak of art
with flaming passion
then do work
void of compassion
and wonder why
reality is bleeding fiction.



Old Folks Laugh- Maya Angelou

They have spent their
content of simpering,
holding their lips this
and that way, winding
the lines between
their brows. Old folks
allow their bellies to jiggle like slow
tambourines.
The hollers
rise up and spill
over any way they want.
When old folks laugh, they free the world.
They turn slowly, slyly knowing
the best and the worst
of remembering.
Saliva glistens in
the corners of their mouths,
their heads wobble
on brittle necks, but
their laps
are filled with memories.
When old folks laugh, they consider the promise
of dear painless death, and generously
forgive life for happening
to them.


Personal letter No. 3 - Sonia Sanchez

nothing will keep
us young you know
not young men or
women who spin
their youth on
cool playing sounds.
we are what we
are what we never
think we are.
no more wild geo

graphies of the
flesh. echoes. that
we move in tune
to slower smells.
it is a hard thing
to admit that
sometimes after midnight
i am tired
of it all. 


Comments

  1. 'Cotton Candy on a Rainy Day'~ love it! I watched an interview of James Baldwin (PBS I think). He was really profound in what he had to say. You have to really "listen" to him to get him though; my opinion.

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