The Word

God words

great words

wild words

true words

few words

free words

heart words

The Word

I know you Black Boy

corn-rolled, 'froed or skinhead.

I know you when I spot you

shy-eyed and fiddling with somethin'

some thing to distract you

draw you from your insides

where ghosts stir pinwheels of questions.

You wonder if we notice

catch the girl eking from you

see you as cotton candy. 

I know you, Black Boy

when Fear, 'neath dungeon stairwells

chains and strangles your spirit

binding you to turmoil.

If Empathy would hung you

then, Springtime would be words, affirming

and sunshine, a beam from your mouth.

I know you, Black Boy

in your cautious steps toward homeland

to the door of Truth cracked open

setting your questions free.

*To pray is to confess. Confess what?  That we are empty, that we are hungry.  We all use our mouths to eat and to cry out.  A vital necessity, prayer is an act of poverty.  Damnation implies privation. Those who do not pray damn themselves - that is, they remain deprived, shut up in their private property.

-Jean Sulivan

*...prayer, like death, far from being a humiliation, bears witness that we can only attain our full human stature by opening ourselves to the absolute.

-Jean Sulivan