Broken Brown: America who’s to blame?

©2014 Manumax

Sometimes a few words, meaningless in and of themselves, and loosely scattered can say much more about a thing than all the monographs and manuscripts in the world. Racism in America is like a bunch of mirrors pointing at each other.  The more you try to see yourself, the more you see a million other selves. Your race, your bank account, your God, where you’re from, your parents, your values, your clothes, your accent, your role models all caught up in an infinite visual prism glistening on network TV. You lean to the left, and they all lean with you. You look away and who knows who looks back.

Broken Brown
Lying down
Joins his people
In the ground
Shoulders touching
Sirens sound
Marching onward
For his town!
Mothers worry
Sisters cry
Fathers suffer
Brothers die
Nations color
Outside the line
Children colored
With shades of crime
Crayons never
Tell a lie
Guilty people
Seldom cry
Drawing pictures
In their heads
Who’s to blame
You or I?
Who’s to blame,
Broken Brown.

Join the conversation

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bohemiaspeaks.com

The Anatomy of War

Does it end here?
Or begin
Bubble gum
Without a flavor
In my mouth
But I still chew
As I clean my gun
Same flavor on repeat

Planes revving
Rockets loading
Ships aligned
Seagulls waiting for their cue
Distant sirens
Executions in the dozen
Dusty roads empty
Throbbing cities silenced

This ancient place
Once so green and lively
Disconnected from its course
In history
Foreign thoughts
Values foreign to our ways
Occupation, bloodshed, wars
Dictators, mullahs, crazy clerics
Oil, gas, Jerusalem
Crimes of conviction and interest
Intertwined

Let us rest
Let us be
Let us live
There must be something
Fundamental, wrong
With this world
That so much hate and chaos
Can materialize
In this space and time
As if the universe
Churns its problems
And spits them in our mouths

So much commotion in a simple grain of sand
Blown across the world
Prompters, cameras, media lights
Particles colliding, merging, separating
In cyberspace
Sub-atomic wars every day
In cable lines and simple air
But all we see are dunes of sand
And huffed up speeches
So much commotion everywhere

In this world
Of material form
How can we be so beautiful?
When we’re condemned
To this commotion
Invisible disorder
Inside the fabric of our universe
And so we kill and rape and fuck
Bound by creative chaos
Until we die
Until we’ve been replaced
In sandy dunes
A few oases
Can never make a home

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Poem 105

Dialogues on a Boat Ride

What’s that on your hand?
Too long a story to be shared
Longer than a boat ride then?
I don’t know where to start
Where does your heart take you?
Everywhere
But now its hovering around your lips
Its floating around the crevices of your smile
Trying to understand
The stories behind that pensive look
Shrewd remarks
Laughing but shy
Humming but not carefree
Who are you stranger?
I’ve told so many lies
I feel I know you well
Have we met before?
Impossible
Why are we so different then?
I could never tell
Are you afraid of water?
It’s cold and I am tired
But yet we are so young
What’s your name again?
No need
How could we sometimes feel
So connected, just for a bit
And never have the courage
To ask for more?
Accustomed to being who we are
And with who we usually are with
I may have met my soul mate
We may have shared
So many early morning laughs
But now that’s just another story
To be told
Thought about at night
When reflecting about the day
As I’m getting old
And nearer to the bay

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Poem 104