"Under Arrest"

I am honored to participate in a flourishing exercise of "30 in 30". This is a challenge, not a contest, presented to the few willing to take it upon their duties to create thirty poems in thirty days in anyway way, shape, or form, no strenuous and strict rules, starting December 15th, 2009, through January 13th, 2010. (Twitter hashtag #30in30)


Here is #1 of 30 of the "30 in 30" project.

Ifeanyi Okoro II (CopperSoul)
Houston, Tx



Smiling while black
The sun charges me for
Many stars shine without
Luster
Luxurious love for my
Rays pour out on the shoulders of
Smooth Sahara sand-colored souls
Man, we kiss each other and pass lineage
Through lips and struggling
Stressed like history
Through strainers
I maintain my brown
Down the Mason-Dixon
Up the Nile
Around downtown Houston
Ground Zero in Zimbabwe
Hey, sepia sensuality
Sends me there
I'm counting spirits on her digits
Play with her toes and nose
My baby becomes quick of knowledge
As the world slows
I'm rolling deep
Without the 'Lac and white walls
But deep in the red clay
My chart's a splay of things
So Aquariusly queer to veneer
I'm not seeing the future clear
Without a little mud covered aura
To show me my way home
Turn right
Go East
Keep walking
Shh...
The ancestors from below the waves are talking
Sending instant messages in maelstroms and
Hurricanes
Communicating with copper casings
We bullets with intelligence
Target redemption
Realign to hit our points of reference
Our destiny's real destination
Wrecking the frame of shame and
Picturing shattered distress calls
Being pieced again.
Straight from Mama's Gun
Motherland daughters and suns
Charging all of us
For
Smiling while black
Concealing contraband history
In our backpack and satchels
As we grapple with the long arm of the law
That was the unluckiest of the draw
I sketch
My life to be my wife
And we artistically die together
When we are satisfied with the ruling of
Guilty on all charges
No parole on freedoms?
I smile harder!
No probation on free will?
I laugh and show strength!
Hell, I'll lock myself up up in my culture's possession
I'll swallow the key
For there shall be no more of taken from me.





© 2009 Ifeanyi Okoro II

"Walking The Path"

Originally, this was a #30in30 piece, but I suddenly realized that this is a draft of something bigger.



We step down
A step
Which many take in vain
Painfully skipping histories and
Pages with each footprint
left on unstable sand
Catch them slippin' on demand for
They skip
Skip Skip
Skip on and run
Ruuuuuuuuun past their own legacies
making mockery on top speed
Running on empty
Full of shit
Dismissing their African traditions
my home is not a plate
My continent isn't mispronounced or separated by vowels mistakenly
This here is a clue to all those
keyless
clueless
less of a man or woman to
Skip skip Skip skip skip
down memory lane and
Fall and bust their asses
Cause how can you lace the truth
when you're trippin' amongst the masses
My great grandmother smothered brothers like
me, with baseball cards and Sunday dinners
near Dallas Cowboys games
My grandfather built bridges for me
with constructions and hearty laughs
haircuts from Gipson and go-carts on the back way path
My cousin did me a solid and we collaborated
on rap rock, Heavy D, Beastie Boys, and Run DMC
So we run from we...
My mother let it be known
that even until i was homegrown or foreign soil spoiled
my name will be said in all languages among the most high
to respect the women and don't tread on them on the low
and love with all my heart, and believe in the one
that casts shadows upon those who tarried, trampled
dragged, marched, stepped and never
Skipped in the unstable soil
now paved over by granite tough ancestry
Let my legacy have a leg up on me
Mentally
We no longer
skip skip skip
when we stand upon the shoulders of thee.


© 2009 Ifeanyi Okoro II