Charleston SC poetry
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the last word
one day, someone will write the last poem about injustice and it will become our new national anthem. only history books will hold the memory of hatred and museums will be built for the artifacts of our awakening. one day, someone will have the last conversation about politics because we realized there were problems that […]
beautiful.
the word “black,” by definition, means “the absence of light.” but I am much more than a shadow. yes, sometimes blackness is the darkness that haunts unenlightened minds and sometimes people talk about me as if I am a cold, night sky without the spark of a bonfire. but, being black, by definition, is luminary […]
brotherhood / after you left the hospital …
(from the tiny poems series) let’s have a flashback, to when our lives seemed carefree, when our world was simply a walk or a bike ride toward each weekend like unwritten stanzas in an endless poem, when there was nothing to write about except liquid summers and dried-up mornings, when my beard had no traces […]
the pulse (part 2)
(spoken word poem. part two of the pulse) Charleston, where church steeples and cranes look over us and multi-colored houses house live-in servants. where fast-rising hotels rise above slow-moving clouds that cast floods on the corner of America Street. where parades of one color get one day to celebrate then hide in the shadows of […]
Eight tiny poems about Charleston
A.C.’s when the lights flash at 2a.m., every person in dimmed shadow becomes enlightened even though they are scrambling for another conversation with darkness and drama. John L. Dart Library the man at the pulpit says “I have faith that one day we will see her in the morning.” And I […]
… and we are the flawless
God took a selfie before the Big Bang and noticed the sadness in his eyes. Loneliness covered his face in darkness; depression awakened the need for light. Heaven was a tiny house with just enough room for God to meditate and dream of a universe devoid of vanity. Soon, space expanded from a single snapshot […]
Poem – “surround sound (she reads me like music)”
if our love is a record player then our bodies are the speakers. my voice is wired into you and this poem will shine a light on the revolution of our union as we find the grooves within each other. side 1, track 1: the needle drops to expose the clarity that lies within the […]
The Charleston Mayoral Inauguration Poem – “Reimagining History”
It’s a beautiful time to be in Charleston. As we transition into a new year, we celebrate a new mayor, John Tecklenburg. John and his wife, Sandy, reached out to Marjory Wentworth and I last year after we performed a free benefit concert for the families of the Emanuel AME victims. At that event, the […]
Poem: “Mahogany”
Who decided to call us “black and white”? When I look at my skin, I don’t see black, I see brown. Brown. Like the color of sand, a brilliant tan that needs no sun. Brown, like the mahogany tree bark, grounded in the summer, whose green leaves make the transition into fall, coffee-stained by the […]
New poem – “greater than (or) equal to”
I was born the year our country celebrated its 200th birthday. Less than a decade from Martin Luther King Jr.’s assasination, 113 years after the emancipation proclimation. Here’s a bicentennial baby obsessed with numbers, released from his mother’s womb into a wounded society. He opened his eyes to a binary world where 0’s and 1’s […]
