i like the way you smile at me

i like the way you smile at me

(for elisa brown)

 

and i am in the november weather

stranger to strangers amid

the gauntlet of noise and traffic

yet your smile is bright

a new coin in the circulated money

a cello against the cacophony of afternoon or

a pool of clear water reflecting a circle of city sky

the epiphany of your face when the confusion grows

is a ripe planet in the universe vacancy

and lost and unclaimed

near the marquee of the theater

in a wind hinting rain in the eyes

i see you

my cells fall into unison

wild breath stirring the exclaiming palms

wilshire blvd.

all its traffic lights green ad infinitum

 

and the city is tall

hurling its height and clamor

metric agressive

accusing and regretting

gathering discarding

elemental and atomic

sometimes crying and contrite

the trees gather in fear

people race the lights that

collapse the country

in precise increments

 

then you smile

the stooping uncertainty stands erect

calloused corners harbor birds

young cats stir in the infancy of their politics 

someone gives something away

somebody is earnest as earth

 

your smile is

three grinning black faces

eager as early stars

framed in the open summer window

something that beautiful to wake to

sunlight and shadow

echos of gospel through verbiage of alabama pine

sunday cadillacs shined to a scream

red rain ditches running along our lives

smooth stones slanting further south

until your heart motors against the morning shine

 

and the city runs in all directions

buildings have hollow sad eyes

tired buses feign politeness

and the hour rotates rooms

each with a separate despair

 

but you smile

friends are gathering cooking singing

a grandmother lifts a wise eye

starts grinning

tells you to “come here, baby…sit”

a strolling someone blesses a

neighborhood with pomegranates

from a rooftop above an alley of roses

after rescuing the evening

a policeman is throwing kisses

a wind moves across the yards

billowing the white linen on the

clotheslines to sail and bloom

mariachis thumb into a ruckus and

disappear beneath their sombreros

the starling rise like a tint on

the mathematics of downtown windows

i am claimed

and i shine

 

send only smiles

send only smiles

(letter to pomona)

 

send only smiles

a small plaid happiness

plain packages with crisp numbers

lone yellow flower reaching

from morning in the frame of

fettered starling

and early eager bees

wink to let me know you are making it

your thimble of magic

fingernail full

clandestine super agent

taut as a mandela eye

a blue ant on mauve tile

inferred

 

remember me

i say

in a buoyant slang

an ocean clap

then the attendant tunnel vowels

droning up the coast

never turn our old corners

or rev your cadillac

never curse a red light

never drink and hear the brakes whince

come here saintly off the holy avenues

park the wide beautiful deville

settle high onto your shocks

 

or gallop lot to lot

handle a shapely sistuh

sharpen her ear with your tongue

refute a lie

hand up

eyes closed

and not remember me

 

say the best blue things

morning greetings

tall as beautiful brothas

earnest possibility

an 11 am brewing jazz

shrill clean skin

a noon of easy men

 

who have you seen?

quickwork dave with his  perm?

mr. moore whose hello

is a semi precious stone?

tootoo selling watches at ranch market

or my beautiful  judith,

still angry about her watch tower magazines?

tell her i love her

and always will

 

the world is endless

frescos of a turbaned malcolm

i want to show you

an iridescent dusk in nambia

pipe lines in god’s alaska

a chilean child’s ripe cheek

a rauckus ugandan band

 

have you been back to ganesha?

have you seen patrick’s sister who does yoruban dance?

how about our new karen?

 

make it simple

discriminate

a meridian

untaxable starched and white

tell me you will be there

a dutiful sentinel

i am always coming home

eye by eye

goodbye by good bye

 

i am what i am

a singer and a stranger

an expatriate lover

non-catholic roman in jeans

say you hold steady at home

say nothing will take you away

let it be a screen knocked upon

have your hello ready

let it be love and your parent’s cigarettes

a festival i can slip into

a tournament of kisses

new years in a hot crowded basement

a booth at tommys #12 seven brothas deep

and let me come

let me come

oh, let me come

and sleep

thomas hearns' right hand

thomas hearns’ right hand

 

wide in the face

flat and heavy as freight falling

fifteen feet onto the docks

a plough hitting a stone in a dark field

jerking the tractor round

blind and cattycornered

as two cadillac’s met  

coiled in a wide intersection

V-8’s still revving

pimps all a scatter  

featherclad and undone

 

it sent anyone spinning who got it

caught that flash of weight

and bore it reshaped

collapsed in the rising numbness

the bright end of war moving across

the variable interim like luminous lungs

jettisoned earth sphere in an atomic dreamscape

scattered and expanding

the new strange body blue

eyeless and crying

 

it was profanity among women

inappropriate yet beautiful

flowering exponentially red

the shrieking inhale of men

suddenly at blows with each other

the table scooting then toppling

hurrying fruit

the salt shakers tilting losing it

a rotating chair swinging hard west

into a large mirror

….and the mirror going crazy

gwendolyn brooks (1917-2000)

gwendolyn brooks (1917-2000)

second place winner at the USC Professional Writing Award Contest

 

short pay and weeks to go

tuesday is always toil

counting scars and the elements

aches that rise until the eyes brown

limited to what you can write and scream

you make a poem

 

the first flurries of snow are weeks away

there will be men laid off

all the strong white elephants off schedule

there will be absences and silences all over the city

engines will rev and snort snow

all the poems will be shards of coal

abandoned by his people

leonard will surely come addicted and asking

 

you would curse out the windows

make the cold colder

or damn each train shaking in the city’s veins

machines everywhere where men used to gather

 

but here this week

gwendolyn is joy

an oasis blue and warm as summer

you finally understand her

the brevity

the whisps of intense thought

you read then listen

are applicable to each vowel

this rancid anthology you found in an alley

she speaks and stands erect

points an ebony finger accusingly

and you are glad to be guilty

 

in her spectacles

the lenses making her eyes distant and wise

the city passes

is distilled and held a moment to catalog

even leonard’s wire silhouette

each fraction of each hurrying lonely face

carefully cottoned in space

 

you smile at a stanza in her poem

an awakening in summer

a shirtless free moment in san louis obispo

 

at a small table

on the news paper cloth

in a one bedroom apartment

on the second floor

one window facing the alley

the other framing leonard and

several gambling negros below

your tea has gotten cold

gwendolyn’s sermon has blessed you

the room makes fragrant bread all around you

 

winter echoes in the streets three empty countries away

yet gwendolyn speaks in the small place between

your belly and heart

calls you to work in the sandstone mornings

places butterfly sonnets at each adolescent lisp

 

you would find her if you could

somewhere in the city

in some far up window watching you go

claiming you

hoping you make it to the trains on time

up there letting the pies brown

you know she has something to give you

maybe the meaning of life

a poem written machine sharp

or directions to a field of late lilies

 

instructions to poets

instructions to poets

 

 

what is in your house

the small wars

the kisses

worlds of windows

wade the nile there

wander your yard

find a desert  

a sky in your hand

 

resplendent in the tiny afternoon miracles

people hello

graze  

are simple

they stroll

they rise from cadillacs like malcolm

sincere looking for betty

the place you are is beautiful

someone is happy

someone returns a favor

someone claims you in front of the world

 

poet the people you know

they who come calling your name

the bible toters

little willie down the street

rapping you his new lyric

shana who shares her cigarettes

or your father

visiting and whistling

between fixing the radiator

 

there are lions making their way

down the bright saturday street

their perms curled and highlighted

one of them may be you

they parade in working clothes

who makes the morning fabulous?

 

there is a penny in your  pocket

you must never lose it

it is a one cent joy

build the day on it

then give it to someone else like a buddha

 

then comes someone watching you

staying near you

listening to your dreams

as for love....

go no further than who you can touch

 

one poem "city in all directions"

city in all directions

 

 

i shout across the avenue

he is my friend pat

he laughs back

1400 metallic blue cadillacs sprint between us

we chance it

the cadillac's sparkle scream and stop

some man flips me off

but i am going to greet my friend

we work the corner and watch the city rise again

another friend comes out of a store

it is lil’ stone doing his sly walk

there are three of us now

three of us like a sudden oasis littered with mangoes

lil stone is apples

pat is easy like late snow

and i

a nomad finally at home

 

from here amid the shops and apartment houses

i can hear the shore

i stretch my hand against the skyline

a few buildings disappear

lil stone laughs

the ocean flows in through the space i have created

everything is magic today

look, i have brought the ocean home to you

 

for miles concrete and color

and white light hovering healing me

asphalt lines all the beautiful faces

flowers make small longings in the landscaping

the windows invite me to look into my own eyes

i am coming home today to a beautiful place

i leave no doors closed

i have given everything away to children

 

someone is watching us three

i am sure of it

people waving and singing

a child passes 

pat starts to rhyme about him

lil stone provides the beat and i am dancing

i am sure of it

the city is too bright

the streets far too free and open

it must be saturday and

we must be in the eye of god

 

one poem "african gothic"

african gothic

 

 

back in gabon

in all the familiar faces

the coasts and tourists

the green and black forest

you are missing

studying engineering in berlin

maybe a stewardess with air france

some say a budding dancehall diva in norway

a year since you were home

you hid then

people coming on foot to hear electric tales of europe

an ex boyfriend who hoped to marry you

whizzes you through the streets of libreville

he smiles all day looking at you

but you need heroin

you accuse him of wanting too much

curse him for being so naïve and native

you say you are sick and need to go home

he asks if he makes you sick

you tell him africans make you sick

 

in munich

one man came to you

he said he wanted a black girl

to lay in his house among the expensive things

there was ivory in the tall rooms

and bantu fertility statues

he was learning fong phonetically

you taught him to say pussy

his blonde hair was long

every night his gaunt body pressed into yours

he made you love with his german women friends

one night while drinking

he played with your tit and asked for your arm

he said this would make your orgasm deeper

he said trust him

 

bastille day in paris

two men

took you to a small apartment

you pleased them both

the tall one asked you about hitler

he asked if africans bathed

he called you a fucking gorilla

you lacked the language to defend yourself

they called you bitch in four languages

spat tobacco on you

one had a rope

the other closed the windows

one’s penis was erect

-it hurt they way they took you

you lost their conversation in the horror

blood on the floor and wall

and in their pubic hair

 

a train station

replete with africans

they were deporting them en masse

everyone complaining about their belongings

about french nazism

children were watching the blacks

their mothers pointed and explained that

they were criminals come to steal

you heard them say “immoral and lazy”

then this woman’s eyes came to you

all the africans at attention in the lineup

this woman and her daughter examining their blue tar skins

she knelt down to be sure

pointed at you

the child readied for the information

“that one is a whore

like the one that robbed and stabbed alex

she corrupts the promising young men

she kills the mother country”

she said

“look dear and remember her all your life”

the little girl catalogued your face

placed it in a nightmare populated with violent blacks

all the monsters moved toward the clerk

the woman began to leave

the dangling little girl looking back at you

remembering