Old paradox, new verse A heavy mist rises out of the valley like gun smoke, rifling the air, setting off a time piece of timelessness. The sound of dew dripping from leaves, but no dew felt. This unmetered rural wetness that meets me most mornings ever since I’ve transported to this mystic realm. This meditation, this poetry. A thousand unspoken words inhabit these fat, yellow‐green leaves; these long limbs. These crooked Einstein branches. The figure in the cane whose greetings each morning without language haunt me. The sunless days and moonless nights are the old paradox of my new verse.
Anything can inspire me Anything can inspire me to verse: a dog sleeping soundly on a makeshift veranda thick croton flowers lining a sloping path leading to an outside wash area lanky trees spiralling to the heavens like the hope of a family praying, Love is enough is stronger than death richer than wealth But what gives the greatest inspiration is the smell of seasoned meat sizzling in a pot drifting across the valley lifting sweet scents to the open air
IN THE TRENCHES From the trenches he heard the blast of bombs booming in the near distance, saw the heavy clump of black smoke twisting like a tornado; and thought of life back home: a wife and kids full of love and concern. It was once the picture of the perfect life‐ the dog bathed on Sunday mornings, the pop‐corned ice cream visits to the park by evening. But now, as he huddled there under the raised mount of protection, he looks around at the new family: hard‐faced men dressed in heavily‐clad war drab, holding cold, hard metal, firing; ready to die yet hoping, remembering the family they left back home.
Cold Front A sudden surge of wind supported the forecast a cold front pending descending from the north in this the year's final month moist wind traveling from the tip of the Caucus mountains raging down on our little island paradise like slavery Snapping winds like the curl of cruel whips lashing our ancestors' backs oppress us now‐Romans to Christ And then, rain rain rain! Like the rising waters of the Middle Passage drowning us now in a sudden surge of frigidity like the greed of imperialism's rage.
MY MOTHER’S SALT 1. My mother cooked with salt, flavoring our lives with the spice of her choice . . . A white grain from the sea that added new worlds of taste to children made of mixed spices. 2. My father loved his pepper heating up her pot with its red flames, that little masculine bulb men use to show bravado about nothing. 3. We ate of Mother’s salt all of our lives till we grew old enough to insist she travel to the sea of her spice, away from the red heat of our father’s pepper. 4. Today, fifteen years on my mother has stopped cooking with that spice as white as my father’s skin. And we have grown accustomed to his hot spice, hardly remembering her love for little white grains drawn from the sea.
The Body Politic
We are the body politic, the ones who walk the city's streets in search of salvation and home.
We crowd the buses to heaven hoping that some illiterate preacher will teach us the meaning of life;
thinking that somehow meaning will unfold from nonsense like truth from lies.
That something will emerge from nothing like genesis.
That new beginnings will commence from old ceaseless ends.
And so, we rush by each other on the streets, daily going to and from places of work and the ones we call home,
unaware that salvation is our own dependence on each other.
Nicholas Alexander
Names of Plants I do not know the name of most of these plants and flowers growing here; but I know the croton sitting broad atop time-rusted branches lining the yard like a border. I know the Leaf of Life hidden in the corners at the top of the steps leading into the yard, flat thin leaves ironically swollen with unction. I’ve also heard of Search Me Heart but have never seen the literal symbol of its healing property. ………………………………But I have felt The heart-thump of its rebuttal. The deliverance of its diagnosis. The unknown remedy in its elixir. The time-freezing warmth of its guzzle. Another world within our reach.