POETRY OF MY DREAMS...

Poetry of My Dreams
By Obsidian c. 2011



Burn me
Burn me
In the flames of
My fathers
Burn me
As I have burned in
The poetry of my dreams

Well, I was a 14 year old
Boy when my grandfather
Died I’s remember the fool
Of a boy wide eyed walking
Up to touch the cold grey
Lifeless flesh of my father’s
Father’s hand

His hand like stone cold
As igneous rock in a fancy
Coffin laying in repose while
A Baptist choir rose trembling
The old wooden ceiling timbers
In a Harlem church high above
No salvation just stone

Burn me
Burn me
In the flames of
My fathers
Burn me like the heathen
Kings of old
Of Africa like a Mandingo

Well, again I was a 32 year
Old Manchild with a Spanish
Wife forsaken to roam the enclosure
Of a funeral parlor in the city of
Albany, New York where
My mustached father lay
In silent repose

The husk of the shell
That he use to be resting
Flatchested a chest that use
To swell with Afro-Scottish
Pride I knew that was not
Him in that he was a proud
Mulatto quaint and quite
Ahead of his time, he said:
“burn me son, and sprinkle my ashes
In the Hudson River ‘cause on the Hudson
I was born in 1934 a little time
Before the Second World War
I hustled sailors and soldiers into
Brothels and gambling dens quit
School when I was 13 made more
Money than the goddamned teachers
made more money than all of them!”

Cancer took him out made
Him thin so we burned him
His ashes to mingle with the
Hudson River Sea

My grandfather was a Mason
He had 33 degrees donned
A greasy mechanic’s tool hunched
Under cars with names that no longer
Line the streets was a deacon in a
Chicken-eater’s church drank whiskey
And chased women while listening to
Scratchy records on 75s
Escaped the woods of Southern
Virginia to underground to the
Promise Lands of the North

And me? Well, I’m 46
and tired of the merry-go-round
A veteran of poetry scenes and of
The U.S.A. a veteran of the polemics
Of open mics
Shout Outs
Shut-the-fuck-ups and
Whatever one might call
The arts

I wore two wedding rings and
Scribbled several novels which
Couldn’t serve as toilet paper
Closed my eyes every time I
Fired a rifle in the infantry fell
Out of a helicopter before I
Even made it to Iraq forsook
My piano lessons to take up
The quill and become a poet
From the Bronx

So when the last verse
Escapes my tortured mouth
And my poetry rises to mix
With the sweeping winds

Burn me
Burn me
In the flames of
My fathers burn me like
The heathen kings of old
Of Africa like a Mandingo

And sprinkle my ashes in
The East River which commingles
With the Hudson River Jordan’s
Parting Sea let me confluence with
The council of my forefathers

Let me burn
like the poetry of my dreams