“The end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” TS Elliot

Sometimes when we’re together I don’t feel like a family of one. One of us starts a phrase for momentum, and the other will pick up pitch, tone and rhythm to meet somewhere in a chord. Themes in our rotation lead us to rendezvous’, sometimes in the house of Riely other times in hou...

Read and leave comments (0)

Esoteric

She stands bare footed 

On a marble bathroom floor

The temperature outside has not

Risen to the predicted low for today

These days she keeps mostly to herself

No one else will bear it with her

Cold solitary dawns

When she thinks of love

She’s confronted with the clumsiness 

Of language

Saying too much

And not enough

So she lives inside her libid...

Read and leave comments (2)

We wear our sagas like garments

Until they stain pages with stories longer

Than mere memory 

Deeper than day-to-day

Ghosts hitch rides on our bodies

Move inside soul 

Changing us 

Causing pain that moves 

But won’t disappear

You and I swim in ambiguity of fortune

Toward distant shores

Fully dressed and carrying the weight of

Everything that clings to us

These...

Read and leave comments (1)

With questions

Answers are already made

Improvised

We only know what we’ve written

What we’re writing is mystery

Our grasp holds only remnants

Of something

What we review is this:

We are

Racially human 

Culturally poets

Promulgating an aesthetic

Of opposition and reflection

On dark spaces

Brillent corners

Truth hides and we like detectives

Uncover di...

Read and leave comments (0)

Relativity

Sometimes when we’re together

I don’t feel like a family of one

One of us utters a reflective phrase and the other

Picks up pitch and tune and rhythm

To meet somewhere in a chord with memory

And philosophical empathy

Themes in our rotation lead to rendezvous’ of Soul

Sometimes in the house of Riley

Other times in houses without walls:

Houses not made b...

Read and leave comments (0)

Talking About You

“If you don’t know what you’re doing by now

You’ve wasted three generations of practice”

Said a poet to a doubter

Your name might have been Riley

There’re three generations of Riley(s) in your family

And it was your grandfather’s name

His daughters loved him; his son and grandson

Found the name too many layers of clothing to wear

A careless visitor...

Read and leave comments (0)

While Dew is on Roses

I over react to small things too petty to ponder 

I’m super sensitive about how people respond to me

I have an inflated idea of my importance

And I need that to get through nights and days

Full of reminders of how broke down this old wagon is

Walking gives me more time to think about it than I want

Most days; especially walking alone

There are so many ...

Read and leave comments (0)

Duck Back Solo

I’m developing a duck back

I can’t carry water weight anymore

I let it roll off back to

From whence it came

I can hardy bear my own wetness

Other people’s fluid makes me dizzy

You however inspired me to write again

You have such power with me

I love everything I know about you

And want everything I can’t have

I don’t like everything but that’s l...

Read and leave comments (0)

I Know My Place

I know my place too well

And I refuse to stay there

This place wasn’t made for me

It wasn’t made by me

It is a gilded cage

Designed to help me forget

Freedom

To help me deny truth

I’m quintessential artist

Channeling spirituality and culture

Like an appointed institution;

A craftsman coloring within lines

Just to learn where they are

B...

Read and leave comments (0)

I will get out of here alive

Though appearances seem otherwise

And Myth(s) sell damaged goods

Of little Gods with small minds

And nothing interesting to do

I imagine living in all the metaphysics

I didn’t have enough time for

Wrapped in gasms of fruition

Your love (for me) follows me there

Because there is a better place for it

There two

Than here

Here is w...

Read and leave comments (0)

My Neighbor Across the Road

The road between us is one less traveled, with grass growing between cracks in the asphalt and deep neglected water ruts. It is a road with an incline reaching higher and beyond to some place through darkness tunneling toward light. Whatever we believe is divine is at a fictitious cul-de-sac of a never-ending avenue in a space that is neither rural nor urban, suburba...

Read and leave comments (1)

Is Always Be

Imamu Amiri Baraka taught, “Is always be,” I’ve interpreted it many ways because I’ve had time to contemplate what it means and why it resonates. “The changing same,” sometimes depresses me but mostly there’s assurance that I’m not the first to face struggles for freedom and self-determination in worlds fenced off from each other with barbed wire. Change like the Mississippi River ...

Read and leave comments (0)

Photo credit: Jayanthi Kyle, painting by Emel Sherzad

Asphalt Sky (rewritten and edited Dec. 10th 2016)

The dominant color is black; white and yellow are infused in the middle and complicate the complexion of a sky hiding shadows. Space is still the place, but now it's covered with asphalt because it's been conquered as territory, as real estate, like some place that can be owned.

Another...

Read and leave comments (0)

About the Skein I’m In

“It all depends on the skin you’re living in.”

Sekou Sundiata

A Family of One

Sometimes when we’re together I don’t feel like a family of one. One of us starts a repetitive phrase for momentum, and the other will pick up pitch, tune and rhythm to meet the other somewhere in a chord. Themes in our rotations lead us to rendezvous’, sometimes in the house of Reily o...

Read and leave comments (0)

More Than Skin Deep

Dropping things

Losing things

Forgetting things

Like normal except

Now I have something else to acknowledge   

For failing and not being able to figure

Out how to set things right again

As if they were

Ever 

Right, I mean

Or if “spellcheck” knows what language

I think in

Live in

Write in

How does someone decide

To fight for someth...

Read and leave comments (0)