Coffee/Son of the Sun/Ephemeral
by FELTON PIERRE
in Spring 2019
Aziza Gibson-Hunter, "Shango's Invocation," 2013-14
Coffee
I sit in
a café,
sip black coffee
& bitterly gaze
into the rising steam
fogs & swirls
into a sudden vision
of the people (black &
white) cracked
who merely shuffle
through once thriving
cities now ruins
rained down upon
by drones
explode the present-
presently the cities
are decaying,
the people (seemingly unaware)
simply sludge forward
past the marble court-
houses on whose steps
sleep the homeless (evicted from
the land of justice) will soon crumble.
the banks in front
of whose crystal doors (guarded
by Cerberus, the downtrodden sleep)
will soon shatter, come crashing down
fallen from the roar of
(once silent) prisoners for
the jails will soon cave in &
out will rush the newlyfreed
masses will join the other
disenfranchised: all yellowbrownblack
folk under the yolk of slavery (corporate & colonial)
will rush the (once gold-paved) streets
will be mined for blood. riots will erupt
rip-tide roar across the nation
will be engulfed by a conflagration
from whose ashes will rise
the People’s Phoenix
will light the sky
is our real future presently
realities can still grow
from dreams forged by ancestral memories
of black stems that shoot
forth through white soil
rise into modern-day
urban chiefs
I pray reach the masses
who once marched
(out there)
love still resides
in the People
can still reside in Canaan
still the land waits
for truth-
less government (it’s through)
with the People
brown, daughters of Angela
& Maya, sister to the brothers:
Martin & Malcolm who reside still in their black son
will never be never x’d out
for their message still spreads
through our heads & stretches
the skins of drums
beat black the oceans
filled with flailing
arms legs tongues
& chests
black-bruised still beat
the hoods (to survive)
heed cats with gills, herons
who seem skittish yet
still take flight
into a dark night
to become dawn
will shine on the rising
steel blades of Dessalines'
(revolution slashes
through the city jungles)
children who will no longer be
prison-bar nursed.
Son of the Sun
Son of the one
who labored under
strong sun, the one
who is one
with the People
speak new suns
into existence
even unto the time
when the sun turns red
light reveals
broken black chains.
Ephemeral
They go through my head
in a flash of color,
a summer’s bolt of lightning:
cornfields and cities,
tornadoes and floods.
Folk in a hurry, those taking their time.
Those who know their destination
and folk who simply don’t have a clue
that we all come from the same
soup cooked by the ephemerals
long ago, that their spark is crucial,
a part of the creative process
and yet each spark does not create
a conflagration, merely the promise
of self-evolution.
The ephemerals hold no allegiance,
have but one purpose: to exist
in their own terms impart
a language that reveals
the ephemerals, once their flash is gone,
human memory must take over
to make something of what occurred.
Although the ephemerals grant repeat
performances and one dance can bewitch
(one showing can fill) several lifetimes,
sometimes their numbers can overwhelm
or can impart so much
in their brief moment of existence
that memory becomes hopelessly
bogged down in minutia, subtlety lost.
Finer gray shadings lose their beauty
in memory’s harsh spotlight
as it scours for details.
Memory gluttonously seeks order
and will impart its’ own
(if not sated) the flash diminishes,
delicate are the ephemerals.
I have witnessed them, still
attempt to transcribe their dance
and master their choreography.
Felton Pierre is a writer and organizer of Haitian descent, born and raised in Miami, and currently living in Washington, D.C.