P r a y e r s for Baltimore #BaltimoreRiots #poem #society #Baltimore #inequality

P r a y e r s for Baltimore

Give me a broom or a shovel
And I’ll walk with you, I don’t live in
Baltimore Maryland, but I’ve seen enough
Black teenagers shot this year, by police

I think Baltimore burns for a reason
It’s a crime Americans hardly demonstrate
Here in Montreal, we’d be on the
Streets every night, if this happened to us

We’re all slaves at one time or another
The white man did a lot of things
But racism has got to stop, in a freakin’
Melting pot, where I hear Spanish more than English

If Baltimore bleeds, I think it’s worth it
Boys in blue do it again and again
White cop shot another black teen
Say again, you mean to tell me again?

You bring in the army and line the streets with soldiers
There’ no restraint in it either way
If you don’t want rioters, clean up your act
Changing your culture, grow some equality

This American dream is a pitch of Wall Street
Fund some education, keep families together
Instead you spend on the military
Baltimore, we don’t need any more martyrs
The state of emergency is pretty clear.

L i t t l e Acts of G i v i n g

L i t t l e Acts of G i v i n g

Love won’t be taken back
It was given freely like always
Gratitude behaved good today in your heart
It will circulate in you like a diamond cutter
Night after night, those positive affirmations

Are echoing poems with forgiveness
For this world that does the unthinkable
To bodies, lives, souls, communities

ii

I used to think about the aftermath of idealism
How pragmatists forgot their youthful selves
So in the meantime, I’ve found a recipe
For staying young, in the spring-values
Of a lifetime, the heart hoards roses

And everything else is secondary
And everything that sings is that which listens
It’s an aerial visitation of summer

And every word rolls in the mouth
Like a delicate poem, like a tender bud
Love won’t end, it’s not a pie to be divided
It’s a sheltered free-flow of freedom
We’ll move higher and higher until

iii

We breathe the stars with likeness
Our simplicity will be a high-speed review
Of identity and shared identification

We’ll be thrill on the narrow streamline
Of mortal nights, and dive into a hundred
Pockets of hidden meaning, arriving always
At a new state of wonder, that’s gratitude
Some part of the heart that finally
Learned to receive by little acts of giving.

U n d e r s t u d y of B e a u t y

U n d e r s t u d y of B e a u t y

You are so beautiful it’s as if
You’ve locked up beautiful things
That you have moved me

That you might show me
It is true I’m afraid of the power within you
If you would look at me

I would show you the immensity of it
The size and majesty of it, ask any man
How wonderful it is, yellow woollen breast

Grass bent in prayer, dew leaping over
Your feet, you are so beautiful
I should have asked for your name

Out lout and answered yes
But beauty is fleeting, like youth
You wrote it down, maybe that is enough

Like rubbing against by mistake
Freshly painted doors, listening
To laughter on the other side

There’s no woman on the internet
There’s no women in my life
So proactive as a fleeting face

Etched in my memory for love’s mortal hours
Yes hours, that cannot dream of intimacy
That learns suddenly, you are already a mother.

Question & Answer

Question & Answer

We are the not famous poets
We celebrate the common person

Black, Hispanic, Chinese, gay, Trans, Disabled
Senior, teenager, semi-homeless, poor, impoverished
Please excuse this poem

A poem has no right to make a dollar today
Only to celebrate the breathless holiday
Of art, the tragedies of living

The news doesn’t talk about
The violence in impoverished lands
Where billions have no enforcement of law
They talk about the privileged

It’s a state of affairs run by the entitled
Were you born in an entitled nation?
Where you have the luxury of

Talking about God or the state or art
There are human beings out there
Who if they wrote a poem it would be

About survival, about how not to be
Drowned by immigrant traffickers
Off the coast of Italy, or how

To move to a county with some semblance
Of prosperity, those would be words
Worth hearing, but how many have no voice.