Each fall I select pieces of my work created during the year for the following year’s calendar. These are the collages seem to belong together. These works inspire the accompanying poetry.
All of you who have acquired my calendars in past years know this is not just another calendar. It is an item that you display on your coffee table, a gift to a special friend. Each image is printed on premium quality paper using high quality archival ink. This means you’re purchasing twelve prints. The prints can be framed and hung individually or in groupings that can cover an entire wall. This is not a calendar you toss away at the end of the year.
Only a
limited quantity is produced. It is beautifully bound. Below is the calendar
contents (actual calendar is 8 ½ by 11).
The calendars cost $20 each plus $2 ($1 for each additional one) for postage and handling. They will also be offered on Ebay.
Waiting in Vain
You said, wait there for me
In the place your timeless eyes first reflected mine
Deep in the shade of this crooked old tree
As I walked along your favorite path
Your favorite song plucks the strings of my heart
I passed a plot of your favorite wild flowers
That bloom and are gone in matter of hours
Here beneath the weeping branches
Of this old willow tree
I can only be what I am
I can only be me
I know that being my lover caused you endless pain
But please don’t leave me standing here
Alone and waiting in Vain
Twenty Four
I remember when I was twenty-four
I knew so much more than I did before
I knew more then than I’d know in the future
I was grown, experienced and oh so mature
My hormones flowed in a never ending stream
I think they had something to do with those dreams
The men like jesters vied for my attention
Some made propositions far too crude to mention
Now that I’m thirty I’m not over the hill
But I can already tell you gone is the thrill
The Player
What is his strain?
What is that tune he plays?
This siren’s song of base notes strong
When into the night he preys
A hunger for that which has been chaste
Resonates down deep with his loins
To be splash out with indiscriminate taste
No thought of cost in conscience or coin
Once conquered tossed aside
Without pretense or ceremony
Jagged discord now strewn among the notes
Where there once had flowed such harmony
Up the anchor engage the gear
Time to sail on to the next eager ear
Day Dream
Sometimes when I am all alone
I go to the place my dreams come from
My place of introspection
I can stay there for hours and never grow bored
Where all past events are resorted and stored
There skills are learned new languages first spoken
The toys of long ago neither lost nor broken
Where my greatest fears I can live without harm
While my unspoken lover lays asleep in my arms
The place where I can fly
Sometimes when I am all alone
I go to the place my dreams come from
Cosmic Sleep
Sometimes I go in search of sleep
Per chance to find that dream
I happen on my special place
Where no one else has been
Some go trippin’ or ride a rocket
Then sing or talk of walking in space
But I’ve been where
Nothing else can compare
Ride a comet to stars
Black holes and quasars
Where gravity bends time
In never ending rhyme
I just wish somehow I could share it
The Swinger
Why would I want to outgrow my swing?
That lets me soar like a bird on the wing
From the day I realized I could do it myself
Didn’t need mother, my brother or anyone else.
I could shift back and forth making tiny movements
Lean back, pull hard, each time gaining improvement
Defying gravity as I rush towards the sky
At the top of each arc a long second goes by
There I am weightless with my eyes closed tight
A self made astronaut floating through a dark night
Pumping Iron
My arms are strong and my hands are calloused
I work on the building sight on those hot Jamaican days
They carry, cut, and bend iron
Iron that keeps the blocks in place when
The earth shakes or the hurricanes come.
My arms are strong and my hands are calloused
I make love to my woman on those hot Jamaican nights
They carry, cup and bend her body
My arms keep her blody in place
When the earth shakes or the hurricanes come
Mobay Sunset
My sunset is a fickle lover
I sit on the beach each late afternoon
Hoping that she will come to me
Not rush past naked
Plunge into the sea
Wink and disappear
Nor shroud herself in veils of clouds
Or in a burka supply
Just the glimpse of an eye
But on my glorious days
With warm inviting gaze
She throws back the clouds
No words spoken out loud
My arsonist sets them ablaze
Then like an alchemist from days of old
She turns my Caribbean into a sea of gold
Kumasi Market
When did the market loose its smells?
When did we no longer meet there?
Walk arm in arm in the spice filled air
Pause in the shade to talk
Ask the butcher, what’s good today?
Greet the old lady who smoked the fish
Speak to the farmer who grew the pig,
Salted the pork, aged the bacon.
When did organic, locally grown, tree ripened,
Become; state of the art?
When did the first disembodied voice
Interrupt the hollow music
To call
Breakage on isle three?
Seems about the time we began to savor
That sweet had now become a flavor.
The View From My Window
A cold wind blows this winter’s day you can hear its cry
The curtain’s chest heaves and falls again with a tired sigh
Mona’s boy on his way to school tugging and teasing
Loud empty words carrying no books, no sense, no reason
Roy with his dogs running to their favorite spots
Adding more days to his life than all the medicines he’s got
A gun shot!
From how far away I try to gauge
Love this neighborhood I say
Feeling much older than my age
The blond children’s parents so youthful so bold
Urban pioneers mining old Victorian house gold
The sun streams through my window
Dust particles float
I can live here one more day
I know that I can cope
My Ride Home
Sometimes we take the bus from school
On the days the rain clouds reign
Or when the sun’s so the hot tar melts
And the dogs find a place in the shade.
Sometimes we all walk home from school
Playing games along the way
And mangos Bobby gives me?
Where they come from I can’t say
But on special days as I leave school
My dad is waiting there for me
Then I ride home between his arms
Queen of all that I survey
She’s All That
She is a beautiful woman a sheer joy to behold
From the moment of her birth
It’s what she has been told
Her earliest memories are of those smiling faces
No matter what their gender no matter their races
The front of the line, the top of the class
The lead in the school play?
No one had to ask
Hits a fade away jumper from way outside the paint
Just to watch her walk away can make an old man faint
Plays jazz piano, scats along; you guessed it, perfect pitch
The last thing she prepared you becomes your favorite dish
Yet when that old love song begins to play
She makes a little moan
No matter who may ask her
She prefers to dance alone