February 13, 2013
Wednesday Poem
GraceEyes open in the womb. The struggle arrives to turn darkness into light. Dangling on the wings of
the Phoenix. The creative process begins to turn ugly. Vandalizing and robbing graves of
child prodigies turning into serious discussions of Mass Murder and the therapeutic value of
saturday morning shopping sprees. The betrayal of geniuses burning at the stake. The spider
descends. The violence is always there. The web embraces us all. More insidious than
drugs. More pleasurable than sex. Slightly entangled. Slightly confused. That possible
criminal element awakens you to the terror and lonliness of running into the silent pain of
someone else looking to you for answers. Glamorous and well financed pools of blood
profiling on neighborhood corners while smiling at and tempting the boldest gangsta rap.
The wealth we squandered on poor excuses and starving lines of poetry inspired by the
tenderness of your smile healed me, cleansed me of my indifference to the Holy Scriptures
should have told us something about being chidren of God in all this Madness, against all
these odds of too intense and too delicate to be real lovers in real times. The wind, the water,
the waves so natural in our hands. Falling on notes and images forever caressing the Full
Moon and laughter too strong to be forgotten on opening nights and wanting to be a big hit.
Run... Run... Run... to the birth, to the growth, to the experience of harmony so wise and
peaceful desires to go back to the beginning and try to be good to yourself and others... are
searching too!
.
by Umar Bin Hassan
Poetry International, 2006
Video
Posted by Jim Culleny at 06:39 AM | Permalink
Comments
The poem didn't hit me until I watched the video. That's because I watched another video, last night. It was "The House I Live In." A few weeks ago I watched a six episode video, "The Corner." Both are about race, class, drugs devastating communities and peoples, politics, power, and greed.
Then I understood when Hassan said, "Glamorous and well financed pools of blood profiling on neighborhood corners while smiling at and tempting the boldest gangsta rap."
The second half, for me, is a repudiation of despair. As long as we are alive, and we have each other, we can restart the journey where we began and, again, open our eyes in the womb.
Wow!
Posted by: Norman Costa | Feb 14, 2013 10:14:55 AM
Norman—
I had the same reaction.
I read the poem, it drew me in, but it was when I watched the video that the whole thing clicked and I decided to post it.
Posted by: Jim | Feb 14, 2013 6:52:05 PM
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