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A
sudden thought, for you
(to Louis
Reyes Rivera)
By Paul McIntosh
here we are
alert
and alive
on the precipice of time
two color full men
who walk in the way of the world
pariahs because of who we are
the progeny of Africa
dark men exhaling magic
to make music
out of our sorrow
your poems are a shibboleth
for those of us who can still hear
the sound of that memory sea
breaking against the rocks
of Goree
on the shores of slaveship castles
where tourists now visit
holding back tears
as we walk through gates
of no return
your life is my life
is our lives
our children
our mothers our fathers
our people
many still hear the drums
but have forgotten the dance
when you
me
we become
one people
our people
the rainbow
shall we then rejoice?
can we rejoice
in the sunlight of Ponce?
Puerto Plata? Port Au Prince?
Columbia? Peru?
what of the streets
of Bushwick, Bed Sty or
Harlem?
2/07
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* * * *
Crazy Horse
By Paul McIntosh
when they stabbed you
plunging the bayonet
into your heart
for being Lakota
i knew you would die
i no longer walk in
the sacred Black Hills
or taste the dust kicked up
by ghost dancers
in Powder River country
in the fateful morning
before dew dries on my feet
i'll sneak off into the horizon
in search of sitting bull . . .
"I fight until I die
forever!"
1/04
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* * * *
Maya’s Eyes
(for Maya Angelou)
By Paul McIntosh
In your eyes
I see me
Every one of
us.
African
progeny to American
Aborigine,
Spine curved
in cotton fields
& minds lost
to American ideals.
Black eyes
caused me mixed emotion;
Black eyes
entice amorous devotion.
Brown tells
Black eyes
Obscure
things
Like
Blacklove is Black
You
Black/Brown
eyeing each
You
Black Eyes
mirror to a Black Soul.
Black eyes,
Black me cajole
Black eyes,
Blacker than Black
Is
Black
Black
eyes-
Look at me
9/76
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* * *
*
A note to Ms. Scott
By Paul McIntosh
in the village of spirit
where our ancestors
still live;
in the cosmos of memory
we embrace each other
without artifice or pretense
and though much of what we know
we have forgotten
the middle passage to Mississippi
and stolen "new world" lands
of Arawak and Taino and Lakota
could not kill us
we are the river
we are rain
we are the sky
we are earth
we are time shining out of the eyes
of our children
and old folks asleep
snoring in chairs on a screen porch
in the heat of summer
come, let us
let us... let us
light the way back
home... home...
hoooome...
4/05
* * *
* *
#2 for Louis R
By Paul McIntosh
today, there is the tease of
sunshine
making pyramid shadows on
streets
where the voices of little boys
playing can be heard
the sweep of a janitor's broom
outside the library door
and the rumble of a plastic
garbage can
mounted on squeaky wheels
announce annoyances
intruding on intermittent
silences
that are a prelude to promises
of our resurrection
i found you in the same place
where i found Garvey
and Fannie Lou and Malcolm
and my sharecropping grandfather
(whose face i never saw)
fighting, fighting
in the verses that is the
literature of my life
before i could read
i could feel
my father's pain as he
reluctantly bartered his manhood
away
so that i could live
to meet you in the pages of a
book
an anthology of warriors
whose words kill for love of
self
unfortunately, i have cried and
laughed
and cried more tears than
laughed
about us
my brothers dying for lack of
self
everyone of us
dying a thousand deaths
before we die
from blue uniform bullets issued
on the eve of a wedding day
from reaching for a wallet in
the vestibule
of a building
born with a target on our backs
we live
knowing the terror of these days
i seek scripture in shared
moments
in the kingdom of our hearts
snaggletooth soothsayers
shoeless on fetid corners
begging for loose change,
an old woman
smoking a cigar
inside the botanica
where she waited to buy candles
for an altar to Shango,
girls giggling at clowns
tripping over themselves
at a birthday party
but we move in the wind
knowing its secrets
hearing its voice in the trees
watching it skate upon the
surface of this river
be still
be still
you tell me each time we meet
that
our time
will come...
10/04
* * *
* *
a preface
to thoughts about my father
By Paul McIntosh
when they took his name
dragging him
tens of millions in shackles
across the terror of that
green sea
of darkness
and a trail of ocean bones
his people never saw him
again
and his mother was sold
on an auction block
in Charleston Harbor
inspected by dirty hands
which pried open her mouth
fondling her breasts
he was ashamed
without his name
he could not find an escape
with which to kill those who
made
her mistress in their house
built on stolen Cherokee
land
still, he searched for her
(and his name)
among our tales and woes
the oral legends
of generations born
and
coming....
2/03 |
