The Sky Was So Blue, So Blue
The sky was so blue, so blue.
I heard the reports that a tornado touch down on the outskirts of Brooklyn;
as natural as the words that come to mind.
Then why am I so afraid, all the time that I can’t finish this line.
Maybe it’s a block; but my grandmother said,
do not throw a lock of her hair outside for fear of the birds taking it away.
For the fear of the unknown or the fear of the song.
The older I get, well, you know the line, the better I am acquainted;
trying to disconnect myself to inner critic.
The sickening in the pit of my stomach when I feel like I'm not creating
and the sky remains.
The heaven remains like ephemeral;
the limitless fountain;
always searching for the correct word choice.
Always listening for the voice and crowded all day by book,
an open lap,
happenstance a phrase;
raze of a dictionary,
but it is the sky that remains.
When a tornado touches down, interrupting the utopia;
searching for hyperbole; I have no loyalty.
Only to the sound;
only to the round robin of etymology;
the cosmology of consciousness.
These words come up again and again in my work;
if you bother to take a look.
If you bother to look at the man behind the poems.
The screaming and screeching;
the kneeling and the preaching;
the sky remains;
the color of Langston;
the man with chain gang stripes of William Johnson;
teeth like candle lights;
the reason for the color of Larry Neal;
the bleeding of Houston Baker;
the sky remains.
If I inherited his tongue;
running the run with Bambara;
the carriage house of renaissance;
the menace to the legacy;
and they say this will not survive;
but Frederick Douglass’s letter was found in the wall;
because of bell hooks and bell whether;
the smell of bell pepper;
and you say assonance;
and I say have no M.F.A.;
have no staying power;
so compress me with the subway poet, Donald Greene;
leave me in the unknown;
my ancestors picked beans;
but there it is, the color again;
the little light;
the difference between fall gray and grayly cry;
rather a grayly cry than a daisy white
but it’s the blue; so blue; it’s the brown, too
but it’s the blue; the tornado touches down on Brooklyn;
all I could think of was the blue stone of sidewalk;
the talk like radio; but the sky remains; blue, so blue.
