[You Fear the Grave Enough to Live and Die a Slave]

[Time to Die by Raymond G. Dandrige]

Black brother, think you life so sweet
That you would live at any price?
Does mere existence balance with
The weight of your great sacrifice?
Or can it be you fear the grave
Enough to live and die a slave?
O Brother! be it better said,
When you are gone and tears are shed,
That your death was the stepping stone
Your children’s children cross’d upon.
Men have died that men might live:
Look every foeman in the eye!
If necessary, your life give
For something, ere in vain you die.

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[https://blackthen.com/poem-time-die-raymond-g-dandridge/?fbclid=IwAR3LsLQC-IEc9dqndU5CQWixBUEUsAR4O6BRzdtB9DPsXKJt9lioOtLpnvM]

[I could've died for love—]

[Life is Fine by Langston Hughes]

I went down to the river,
I set down on the bank.
I tried to think but couldn't,
So I jumped in and sank.

I came up once and hollered!
I came up twice and cried!
If that water hadn't a-been so cold
I might've sunk and died.

But it was Cold in that water! It was cold!

I took the elevator
Sixteen floors above the ground.
I thought about my baby
And thought I would jump down.

I stood there and I hollered!
I stood there and I cried!
If it hadn't a-been so high
I might've jumped and died.

But it was High up there! It was high!

So since I'm still here livin',
I guess I will live on.
I could've died for love—
But for livin' I was born

Though you may hear me holler,
And you may see me cry—
I'll be dogged, sweet baby,
If you gonna see me die.

Life is fine! Fine as wine! Life is fine!
-------------------------------------
[ Man standing near a water ditch at the bank of Los Angeles River,
north side of Griffith Park, ca.1900 -
http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/.../p15799coll65/id/10315 ]

[And Yet the World Has a Certain Need for Both]

[From "Meet Me Halfway" by Javan]

In many cases
Love that blooms quickly
Like Spring's flowers
Knows its seasons
And then fades

But love that grows slowly
Like the tree
Gets stronger and stronger
As the years go by

And yet the world
Has a certain need
For both the flower
And the tree

---------------------------------------------------
[Photo of Jacaranda mimosifolia]

[I Look Into the Crater of the Ant]

[The Vantage Point by Robert Frost]

If tired of trees I seek again mankind,
Well I know where to hie me—in the dawn,
To a slope where the cattle keep the lawn.
There amid lolling juniper reclined,
Myself unseen, I see in white defined
Far off the homes of men, and farther still
The graves of men on an opposing hill,
Living or dead, whichever are to mind.

And if by noon I have too much of these,
I have but to turn on my arm, and lo,
The sunburned hillside sets my face aglow,
My breathing shakes the bluet like a breeze,
I smell the earth, I smell the bruisèd plant,
I look into the crater of the ant.

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[Honeypot Ant (Myrmecocystus) -Probably M. mexicanus
https://www2.palomar.edu/users/warmstrong/White136.htm]

[Demon Thoughts Jumped Through]

[Once the World Was Perfect by Joy Harjo of Muscogee Creek Nation and
newly appointed 2019 U.S. Poet Laureate]

Once the world was perfect, and we were happy in that world.
Then we took it for granted.
Discontent began a small rumble in the earthly mind.
Then Doubt pushed through with its spiked head.
And once Doubt ruptured the web,
All manner of demon thoughts
Jumped through—
We destroyed the world we had been given
For inspiration, for life—
Each stone of jealousy, each stone
Of fear, greed, envy, and hatred, put out the light.
No one was without a stone in his or her hand.
There we were,
Right back where we had started.
We were bumping into each other
In the dark.
And now we had no place to live, since we didn't know
How to live with each other.
Then one of the stumbling ones took pity on another
And shared a blanket.
A spark of kindness made a light.
The light made an opening in the darkness.
Everyone worked together to make a ladder.
A Wind Clan person climbed out first into the next world,
And then the other clans, the children of those clans, their children,
And their children, all the way through time—
To now, into this morning light to you.

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[War to Peace Death to Life, pencil and tempera by Jerome Tiger
The Coming Weather, 1967 by Jerome Tiger
Celebration of Determination, watercolor by Dana Tiger
https://www.tigerartgallery.com/]

[Kul, A Spell Cast With the Entire Mouth]

[Kul by Fatimah Asghar]

Allah, you gave us a language
where yesterday and tomorrow
are the same word. Kul

A spell cast with the entire
mouth. Back of the throat
to teeth. What day am I promised?

Tomorrow means I might have her forever.
Yesterday means I say goodbye, again.
Kul means they are the same.

I know you can bend time
I'm merely asking for what
is mine. Give me my mother for no

other reason than I deserve her.
If yesterday & tomorrow are the same,
Bring back the grave. pluck the flower

of my mother's body from the soil
Kul means I'm in the crib eyelashes
wet the first time they open. Kul means

my sister is crawling away from her
on the bed as my father comes home
From work. Kul means she's dancing

at my wedding not-yet-come
kul means she's oiling my hair
before the first day of school. Kul

means I wake to her strange voice in the kitchen
Kul means she's holding my baby
in her arms, helping me pick a name

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[Black Mother c.1927–1931 by Ernst Neuschul
https://artuk.org/discover/stories/breastfeeding-in-art-ernst-neuschuls-black-mother#]

[True, A New Mistress Now I Chase]

[To Lucasta, Going to the Wars by Richard Lovelace]

Tell me not (Sweet) I am unkind,
That from the nunnery
Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind
To war and arms I fly.

True, a new mistress now I chase,
The first foe in the field;
And with a stronger faith embrace
A sword, a horse, a shield.

Yet this inconstancy is such
As you too shall adore;
I could not love thee (Dear) so much,
Lov’d I not Honour more.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Tristram and Iseult by Maurice Lalau
http://artofnarrative.blogspot.com/2011/11/maurice-lalau-romance-of-tristram-and.html]

[Didn't Come in This World to Be No Slave]

[Harriet Tubman by Eloise Greenfield]

Harriet Tubman didn’t take no stuff
Wasn’t scared of nothing neither
Didn’t come in this world to be no slave
And wasn’t going to stay one either

“Farewell!” she sang to her friends one night
She was mighty sad to leave ‘em
But she ran away that dark, hot night
Ran looking for her freedom
She ran to the woods and she ran through the woods
With the slave catchers right behind her
And she kept on going till she got to the North
Where those mean men couldn’t find her

Nineteen times she went back South
To get three hundred others
She ran for her freedom nineteen times
To save Black sisters and brothers
Harriet Tubman didn’t take no stuff
Wasn’t scared of nothing neither
Didn’t come in this world to be no slave
And didn’t stay one either

And didn’t stay one either

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Harriet Tubman as Lady Liberty by tclightsy
(of https://tclightsy.wordpress.com/]

[The Mist]

[Let Me Tell You What a Poem Brings by Juan Felipe Herrera]
for Charles Fishman

Before you go further,
let me tell you what a poem brings,
first, you must know the secret, there is no poem
to speak of, it is a way to attain a life without boundaries,
yes, it is that easy, a poem, imagine me telling you this,
instead of going day by day against the razors, well,
the judgments, all the tick-tock bronze, a leather jacket
sizing you up, the fashion mall, for example, from
the outside you think you are being entertained,
when you enter, things change, you get caught by surprise,
your mouth goes sour, you get thirsty, your legs grow cold
standing still in the middle of a storm, a poem, of course,
is always open for business too, except, as you can see,
it isn’t exactly business that pulls your spirit into
the alarming waters, there you can bathe, you can play,
you can even join in on the gossip—the mist, that is,
the mist becomes central to your existence.

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[I've taken the liberty of naming this "A Misty Dawn."
http://www.wallpaperbetter.com/nature-and-landscape-
wallpaper/beautiful-dawn-scenery-trees-lake-mist-sunrise-blurry-241870]

[Prajñāpāramitā ... I Am On My Knees Again]

[Enter the Void by Juan Felipe Herrera]

I enter the void,
it has the shape of a viola:

Israel, Jenin, West Bank, Nablus—a rubble boy
shifts his scapula as if it was his continent, underground
Gazaground, I want to say—his only bone,

the rubble boy is a girl, I think,
her hair tossed, knotted and torn under
the green shank of fibers, tubes and shells.

She digs for her rubble father, I say rubble
because it is indistinguishable from ice, fire, dust,
clay, flesh, tears, concrete, bread, lungs, pubis, god,
say rubble, say water—

the rubble girl digs for her rubble mother,
occupation—disinheritance—once again,
I had written this somewhere, in a workshop, I think,
yes, it was an afternoon of dark poets with leaves, coffee
and music in the liquor light room.

A rock, perhaps it's a rock, juts out, two rocks
embrace each other, the shapes come to me easily,
an old poetic reflex—memoria, a nation underground,
that is it, the nation under-ground,
that is why the rocks cover it.

I forget to mention the blasts, so many things flying,
light, existence, the house in tins, a mother in rags.

It is too cold to expose her tiny legs,
the fish-shaped back—you must take these notes for me.

Before you go. See this
undulate
extend
beyond
the pools of blood.

I ride the night, past the Yukon, past
South Laredo, past Odessa, past the Ukraine,
old Jaffa, Haifa and Istanbul, across clouds,
hesitant and porous, listen—

they are porous so we can glide
into them, this underbelly, this underground:
wound-mothers and sobbing fathers, they

leave, in their ribboned flesh, shores lisp
against nothingness, open—toward you,
they dissolve again into my shoes—

Hear the dust gong:
gendarme passports,

cloned maize men in C-130's, with tears
bubbling on their hands, pebbles
en route—we are all en route
to the rubblelands.

I want to chant a bliss mantra—
Prajnaparamita
can you hear me?

I want to call for the dragon-slayer omchild.
I am on my knees again.

On the West Bank count
the waves of skull debris—a Hebrew letter
for "love" refuses me,
an Arabic letter for "boundary"
acknowledges me.

Sit on an embankment,
a dust fleece, there is a tidal wave ahead of me.

It will never reach me. I live underground, under the Dead Sea,
under the benevolent rocks and forearms and
mortar shells and slender naked red green
torsos, black,
so much black.
En route:

this could be a train, listen:
it derails into a cloud.

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[Prajñāpāramitā - Goddess of Transcendent Wisdom
https://neozen888.wordpress.com/tag/prajnaparamita-sutra/]