"Under The Gun"

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 #2 of 30 of the "30 in 30" project.

Ifeanyi Okoro II (CopperSoul)
Houston, Tx



A spark of hope
Coming out of the wrong scope
Bullets be not a Microsoft Word insert
When paper is due
Instead street calls for exams
In hospital ambulances
And unmarked vans
War on the youth recruits death
At best you get a wounded body
But no purple hearts
With blunted dark brown lips
Crimson shade eyes realize
Cops, killers, Crips, and convicts
Bankrobbers, Bloods, ballplayers and
Babies bottoms freshly powdered
No older than the invention of gun powder
Now fall to the wayside of that position to hold powder
It's the money and the power
You'd think we're Trump instead we're apprentices to
Applications socially nettin' that "work"
Sometimes it's the sun times anger
Multiplied cliffhangers to story book broken hearts
Pages of life ripped apart by the shot
Cupid never used a silencer
The drama is like TNT when it explodes,
So to silence her mode
He mutes the mood with the magazine
Ebony entity emptying its Essence
Jet quick into jeune filles
Jealousy, longing, lust, and lies
Ex-boyfriends get the butt...of the gun,
Or hole...between eyes
Some even doubt fire when they aim
Robbin' children of years
In a red pool of fears
Parent's tears and wails
But of course, we're heroes when we
Pull triggers?
We solve equations with
Caliber precision?


When the next day comes
Could we not try to cut down ourselves?
If anything
Cock back
Shoot for the stars.


© 2009 Ifeanyi Okoro II

"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

"Still Another Day (Reprise)" - Neruda's poem

I start to think of Pablo Neruda's poem everytime it rains.



"We the mortals touch the metals,
the wind, the ocean shores,
the stones, knowing they will go on,
inert or burning,
and I was discovering,
naming all the these things:
it was my destiny to love and say goodbye."



— Pablo Neruda (Still Another Day)





So I infused my own wonders of this quizzical feeling
and came up with this...
A reprise of sorts, adding a few elements of my own.



I think of the words of the Chilean
when mists massage heated Texas panes on my domecile
It sends me to sleep with the rain
I once read this poem on a bus stop, and fell in love with it.
That's what I like about poetry.
She likes to do what she wants, when she wants to...
but only with you.

She falls into your hands.
She comes through many vehicles traveling
through


Solano Trindade
Gwendowlyn Brooks
Langston Hughes
James Baldwin
me...
and the Chilean




I would love to stick my tongue out in this precipitation
gather all of the words poured out by the angels
and swallow the divine spirit of it.
Spit out their truths,
their pain
their adventures amongst us in flesh covered souls
out in these streets to repeat her verses, like

John Lennon vs. The Christ phenomena

Jimi Hendrix and that "stuff"

Open the Doors to See My Family Stone
sitting high upon these hills I feel...
drenched in the thunder and lightning
I'm under their tears
the Orisas grant what we only ask in honesty
so I watch as Sango and Oya pull back the curtains
showering me with love and poetry
and midnight insomnia
and silent dripping
these are my candy coated dreams that won't go away
Speech! In all it's damn glory I am falling...
another day, still another, I am crawling to bed
Angry at sandmen that promised me temporary death
and torture me with impending prophetic breaths.



Why give me liberty late night
and NOT A VISION OF HER?
I long for her love, for she is worthy to be praised
Like a Lord magnified and raised
I imagine her smile and laugh at her downfall...
it is imminent to slide on the wayside
bedside
beside our backsides
I am waiting to kiss the surface of her brown terrain
that layer her spine and lumbar
I desire to smooth my hands inside of her
blend when these celestial bodies are in her grasp
and planets are aligned with my libido

I am stargazing
Needs want to make it to her
Wants then need to bid farewell soon

But comets shoot across skies
to continue to destinations of forever



why

can't

I

She waits for me to call her on stage
I am of fright whilee she is away
It is written, she is scripted
on my heart, by the Chilean artist
He was just adoring nature
giving me a gift that keeps giving
for tomorrow



© 2009 Ifeanyi Okoro II

"Still Another Day" - Poem by Pablo Neruda
(all photos used are not used in slander, defamation, nor crude and explicit forms.)

"The Experience (Are You Experienced?) "

Originally created in 2005, finished 04-27-2009, 12:05 PM. (slightly edited for reader)



The black. The space. The stars. The start. The land.
The nature. The animals. The people. The family. The nations.
The village. The regality. The salts. The secrets. The buildings.
The drums. The griots. The dances. The spirits.
The hunt. The rites. The festivals. The praises. The maturity.
The love. The look. The libation. The liberty. The protection.
The race. The trap. The trades. The traitors. The ignorant. The enslaved.
The chains. The karma. The kingdoms. The crumble.
The cries. The pains. The remains. The refusal. The struggle.
The MA'AFA. The sailing. The suicides. The murders. The profit.
The budget. The split-up. The spit-up. The shut-up. The fuck-over.
The fucked. The breeding. The pleading. The beatings. The preceding.
The preaching. The diminished. The finished. The beginning. The riots.
The heroes. The satisfied. The "House Negro". The "Field Negro". The life.
The rules. The release. The war. The hoods. The terror.
The revolts. The relocation. The lateness. The news. The holidays.
The "Cabin". The philosophies. The same-differences. The plans. The warnings.
The refusals. The voting. The education. The religious. The prestigious.
The sharecropping. The codes. The lynches. The enlistment. The eradication.
The blackface. The realization. The "Experiment". The "Airmen". The awareness.
The power. The monkey suit. The corporation. The naturalization. The payback.
The low-wage. The outrage. The demands. The groups. The organizations.
The liberations. The jeopardy. The overcoming. The resounding decision.
The blended color prism. The broken barriers. The hope. The fear.

The composition to come.

The land. The start. The stars. The space.

The Black Experience.

Are you experienced?

Ifeanyi N. Okoro II
Copyright © 2009