Abba Moses the Robber the Black

Because of visits a few times to an Orthodox church I began to research some Orthodox saints. While researching I came across an African saint named St. Moses the Black. This was of high interest to me since I am African-American, and I keep insisting that Christianity is an Eastern religion, something that many Westerners seem to forget and in the process take the life out of it. Also Christian monasticism had its roots in Africa. This is a poem in fourteen parts about St. Moses the Black (330-405). After being a very mean character he found God and became an ascetic and a priest. This is my poetic recreation of his life story. I embellished some events and left out a few others. Since this is a long poem, I will post it serially over the coming weeks. I feel that a blog is not the best milieu for long topics, but still I wanted to share this poem here.

I

My head rests in a pool of blood
as ruffians and thugs rush and entwine
like rats looting our little holy retreat.
This is where it begins for me.

II

St. Moses the Black was once a very,
very angry man. A Nubian aurochs,
ancient bull waiting and aching
to crash out of his pen. Toss the world
on his horns. A robber, a ruffian
voice an earthquake. Evil was his tonic,
the sewage in his soul.

III

I was a slave of an Egyptian official.
He feared, despised me.
Disgust and pleading in his voice
one day after a theft and rumor of a murder.
Moses go.
You break things.
You break lives.
You take things.
You break my life.
Moses go.
He pointed outside,
golden ring on an elegant finger.

IV

I left my master's house.
The air of freedom was good.
It coursed through my lungs
while evil coursed through my soul.
In a palm populated valley
near the Nile, bandits lived.
I joined them.
They welcomed me first with suspicion,
then fear and respect.
Stronger, more fearsome,
blacker than them all.
I became leader of the mixed bunch
of beige, brown, red, black men.
Terror was our business,
robbery our litany.
The wailing of women,
the cry of infants
as we cut down husbands and fathers
along the Nile, in the valleys,
oases, hills and mountains.
I created with pleasure many widows
and orphans, stole much timid livestock.
My boys and I laughed, ran, rode off
as village or lone hut went up in flames,
taking all the animals and goods that
we could. I lived like a king one week,
the next week a pauper.
My stolen goods all poured
into alcohol, women, gambling.

(To be continued)

Pretention

last week was a charade
she looked at her life
a series of boxes
costumes hang
from the wall

The Black Woman

The black woman is not as tough as she seems.
Take down that Amazonian or angry hoochie mama facade
and there you find a frightened, abandoned little girl huddled in the dark.
Body laced in tears. Hat topped with dying moss.
Shoes made of emeralds cause her feet to bleed as she walks
across the desolation of five centuries. Unsung and forgotten
even by her own black men, she summons strength
because she is expected to be strong in loneliness, brutality;
invincible amid ridicule. Her own people confine her
to a stereotype, exile, the false security of the herd.
No need that the greater society does too. Then she conforms, agrees
to the stereotype she does not really understand or know.
She allows herself to be among the flowers of the forgotten.
The black woman is not as tough as she seems.

Poem

You have to pluck
the words
from their source
before they wither.

****************************

I wrote a happy poem
a symphony of many harps
to cover the angry tracks
I left in the sand.

The Good Mother

Dedicated to My Mom

The good mother leaves her house
walks softly, her feet crushing the grass.
Its summer scent awaken her thoughts
to the past.

A little brother who died young.
Her childhood wish a mountain sat,
guarded, loomed behind the back
of their house.

She wished a glimpse of a sea
sparkling and fizzing...
No, the sea doesn't fizz.
She scratches out that thought.
We used to play and roll around
in grass that smelled like this.

The good mother is now a mother
just like her mother.
No mountain or sea, but she has
a pear tree.

She reaches on tip toe the pears
she can get. She uses a long pole
to knock down the rest.
She takes all needs to the house,
to her kitchen,
peels,
cuts,
sugars,
cooks preserves her mother taught.

She is the one to give honeyed love,
patience, kisses to her family.
What small women
do,
debate
she doesn't have time for
the gossip,
gloating,
envy,
pretty pettiness.

The good mother is an old woman now.
She looks back, remembers her babies.
The curious little girl wanting to help
with the timid and quiet baby brother.
The cloth washes his little back
and rounded belly
water droplets like diamonds on her precious.
He splashes, smiles, holds a treasured toy.
He pats his little manhood and starts to play,
but the good mother pushes the little hand away.
His sister giggles.

The good mother saw her children not as a burden.
There was no postpartum regrets or selfishness,
hatred of responsibility.
Her children were a gift.
The good mother understood

The flowers and beautiful arabesque gardens
that continue to flourish in my soul
were planned and planted there by the good mother.

Bird and Butterfly

Two days ago I wrote,

I am just a little bird.

I am also a butterfly.

Butterflies flutter, daintily,

happily, from blossom to blossom

picking up the golden dust and

nectar of loving, courageous,

beautiful life.

Insect flower in the wind.

Temporary Contemporary

Temporary,
temporary.
It's all about our contemporary.

In the end all this
fighting,
killing,
and competing
and trying to be
bigger than ourselves
and everyone else means
nothing because we all
end up in the same place,
beneath the grass.

Temporary,
temporary.
It's all about our contemporary.

Rusted Cups

How can we drink from life's rusted cups?

Do we poison ourselves if we do?
Put a badge of gangrene on our soul?

I loved you and life once
in a time so much better than this.
We had our favorite hill
we would sit on together.
There were sharp rocks there
quartz and others with gold specks.
The rocks cut our hands a little,
but we noticed not the blood
that came nor the gold.
We had each other before
the noise, cars, and hate came.
Our memories dance among
the stars now.

How can we drink from life's rusted cups?