Poems for CD

Real Love, song, poem, Dreamtime

Dreamtime

Enough enough enough
of rain and pain sand and shore
enough bloody rivers flowing to sea
enough of you and me
moving breathing but going nowhere
enough living
yet not loving
standing still in the light
yet darkness all around
enough enough of ignorance
beating down wisdom of ages
sun in wind
stars at window
fear of the mothership enough
mothership the mind of men and women who think as one
move beyond space to better place
sun and time a dance moving the world
enough
talk to me right
no control no boss
no whip no pain
no demands that never work
I am me and you are you
we are one in the mothership of life
enough
your hair and mine
things don't matter
they are things
beyond time and space enough
to go beyond the moment called life
to a place called love
we spend the day and the life
trying not to go there
because we are already there
cannot escape love
even in death I will love you
cherish praise you
think of you honor you
squeeze you in my dreams
enough
will you be there when they crucify my Lord
will you stand or run in your fear and trembling
enough
run into the black hole and disappear
no movement like death in the morning
all is still and you walk because life is love
and love is life enough
to be alive yet not living
even speaking
because of yesterday morning pain
we hold even when today and tomorrow have come and gone
yet we hold pain
because it is better than loving
a kind of masturbation
to avoid the joy of sex in the morning
because we fear to speak the words I love you
silence becomes eternal
yet life is to be lived
not promised
not a thought
but lived in all its glory
for the pitiful moment we walk upon the sand and shore
knowing
the sand will slip into the tide
disappear somewhere
beyond sunset
enough
6/19/04
revised 2/14/10


Song, Do Not Be Afraid
We're In Love, But You Don't Know Me

You don't know me
you had a chance to know me
before we made love
you had a chance to know my mind
understand my fears
learn about issues
help me heal some things
but you wanted to make love
so you don't know me
we made love
but you don't know me
don't have a clue
think I'm a good d
or some good tight p
but you don't know me
and never will now
because you wanted to make love
you wanted to get a nut
we didn't even talk much
a little bit leading up to sex
I went along
I was horny too
but you don't know me
and I don't know you
now we never will
we blew it forever
because we made love
too fast too quick too soon
now you think you own me
I can't breathe
can't talk on the phone to friends
because we made love
because I gave you some d
you gave me some p
now I'm no longer human
I'm your love slave you my slave
we're in love
but you don't know me
we gonna get married
but you don't know me
we're gonna have children
but you don't know me
you're gonna beat my ass
but you don't know me
you're going to jail
but you don't know me
we're getting a divorce
but you don't know me
now we're friends
"Just Friends" Charlie Parker tune
But you don't know me
and never will.


Song, the Best Thing That Happened to Me
What is Love?

What is love

only kisses hugswhat is love

only meetings of the minds

what about times when minds do not meet


is love not present in the air in the blood of loving souls

too ignorant to know the test of love


the many ways it strives to be and not be

yet is always

and forever

not always tender

sometimes rough and sharp

like a razor cutting to the heart

love is pain

we take to grow

be strong again

tears in the night
alone again
we find ourselves
wondering
if love was even real
yet it was
if we see
if we look
beyond romantic notions of everything is cool always with love
but we know the blues of love
when we miss the wrords from lips so tender in truth
but we miss them
in haste
to be the authority on love
yet love
has beeen around since eternity and will stay
when lovers have gone away
it will stay
in spite of all the tears
the fights
the verbal bouts
even the put outs
and come backs
and gimme my keys
and why don't you call
and don't you still care
and why did you go
and do you reallly lover her or really love him
after all the time we shared
how could you do this to me
after all I did for you in the night
what is love
sometimes we must enjoy the hurt the pain
to grow
be wise again
this time
with God
in the center of things
but try
for love is precious
time is short
life must be lived with joy
somehow
through it all
let joy arise
take control of love.
--Marvin X
from Land of My Daughters, poems, 2005,
Black Bird Press, Berkeley


Early Morning Love Song

Love is for the Beloved


Love is for the beloved
Selfless totally
Agent of joy
At one’s pleasure
Desire
Transcending self
Love is all there is
Like a good deal at the Flea Market
You can’t pass.
Gotta squeeze ya real tight.
Reasons.
self to divine self
Get real with love
Up from animal
monkey mind
Illusions
Listen to the whirlwind of Garvey
Motherplane is here for you
Better ax somebody,
Houston TX
Denial of self
Sweet submission
What is beyond giving all
We feed you for Allah’s pleasure only
We desire from you neither reward nor thanks.
Al Qur’an.

Madness & Poets
(For Marvin X)

All poets are mad Baba.
It’s in the saying of unsayables
the seeing the unseen
mad from murals of mundaneness
masquerading as meaning
we tag truth in acid
with lethal pens we
carve epiphany on the
heaving breast of humanity
hear me: I am
Godz voice,
you see?
Mad.

Crazed with grief
lack of sleep
poems keep knocking
screaming
howling accusations
insisting on justice
or blood
and the terrible knowledge
they may be the same.
Knowing its ill to be well
in insanity
we are religiously mad
listening to the jokes Godz tell
about the planz men make
we invoke open eyes
amongst the blind
literate itinerants
healing wounds
stapled with the gutz of prophetz
whose spines have been
broken open so poems
can be stitched to their
cleaved carcasses.

Poets grow in
the recesses of society's
bowels deep in the
world's shit we
spin beauty in the beast
to soothe the savage
someone should dance now
like poets spin
daring poems to be dervishes.

The trajectory of a poem
spit with accuracy
resembles lyrical alchemy
turning impossible into
the color blue.

I am a poet
long past caring about
disposed scholars who
lie in standard English
we break tense like fences
that separate us from them:
flow oceanic
if you ain’t up on it
long tongue ju ju poets
say soothes
somber inelegant truths
salvaged from graveyards
laureates go hard,
sharp spiters are split
at the larynx hurling
neologisms like clever hexes-
some like sharks
eat the open mic
& spit back
silk stitched caresses.

In words we are invested
& you said
the devil is in the language
so sometimes it be ebonics
we stay hooked on phonics
& known to slam in spanglish
poets float but don’t drift
past tipping points
blaze in smokin joints
bent on makin points
angels dance on pointed tongues
bleeding metaphors
& poetry ain’t the whore
its poets who crush lyric
on temple floors
its poets who commit
commissioned sins
in the name of the mortgage.

Loosely intercoursing textually
he said:
the poems have left
the building
stop texting me,
but I can’t
because words are
like sex to me
I’m mesmerized
by poetry’s ejaculation
I trick without hesitation
love it passionately
ain’t no reservations
even when it dogs me
I’m stuck in the relationship
It’s good
I don’t trip
without poetry’s caress
my wig would slip
I’d blow up not a little
but a lot of shit
poetry is my drug of choice
& my weapon
I keep a full clip
I’m poetry’s bitch
& I’m good with this.

Baba all poets are mad.
On this we can agree
Grand Baba Amiri & you
& like fruit & trees
I guess I be mad too.

Prayer is better than sleep.

Old Warriors

Old warriors
go home to sun
each day news
no shocking
wipe eyes
the daily round
lonely at top
who can we visit
call
drink at bar
rap on corner
smoke a joint
even women friends
join sun
no escape
only the line
to the sun.
--Marvin X
10-20-09