For Artists

Sometimes an artist can be distracted by life things to the point that they may temporarily lose sight of the fact that they have a power that others who are not being "artists" do not have. And through this power of creativity they have a more than positive effect of surrounding and infusing any viewer with the aesthetic wavelength which dissolves negativity--in essence imbuing them with life. I think it's important for artists to realize this, and when necessary, remind themselves of who they REALLY are and the effects they create on others. Without artists of any kind cultures would deaden into a gray gloom, craving the spark of life that artists give. More than ever we need to be actively pumping up production and getting our art out there any way we can to bring about the reality of a new renaissance. If you are not doing this or allowing distractions to your doing this, put your foot down and start doing your art little by little until it's a lot, then blitz it. Your ideas and dreams WILL change things for the better!

A Poet Chooses

From throngs of words a poet
chooses ones which wiggle images 
into whatever rhythms emit
emotions' vibrations,
opening windows in invitation
to peek upon a brighter shore
with more harmonious sensations.

Hush of Tranquility

Caught beneath thunderbursts
pummeling relentless stormbashes
thrusting insistent rages
allowing no lull of peace
when enters a hand
a smile
hope of harmony
offering lifting of wings to
ascend more easily above torment into
a hush of tranquility.

Some Days

Some days seem to swim in grim
until - in the interim - a whim of luck
erupts chance for a grin,
erasing continuance of
"being a victim."

Katydid or Didn't

Whether katydid or didn't leap to
another leaf makes no matter;
I let it be and turn to
catch a cricket in a sticky thicket -
a near impossible feat with his
quick-as-a-wink leaps - then,
rather than admit defeat, bump up
to a future triumph, soaring as soul
with butterflies and honeybees.

Poet

“Choose a viewpoint,” said the Master,
and the poet said, ‘I choose my own!
I’ll ride the night on a cat’s whisker
and bellow a golden poem;
It will shoot like a comet into fast time,
find a new rhythm with no rhyme;
It will spellbind even you, good sir,
(and your lovely unwittingly witty sister);
It will weep rainbows and raise rages like
no other poem of any age has;
And when it’s completed, you will have
sipped from a great poet’s sass and
cocky creative inebriance;
This should explain in small riddle how
this universe became a mudpuddle,
but no worry if it doesn’t;
Even the best of bees have buzzed
and buzzn’t.”

Bo John (revised)

In the Spring of about 1952 sister Jeannie and I went on a yellow school bus with a young group from Pulaski Heights Methodist Church to the run-down Black neighborhood of College Station in Little Rock where we set up for a rummage sale just after dawn. Right next to the empty dirt lot where we set up the tables was a shack of a grocery store with weathered grey wood siding and old tin Coca-Cola, Dr. Pepper, Royal Crown Cola, Orange Crush and you-name-it signs tacked on the outside wall. Then down the long rickety stairs from the porch of the store came a happy drunk Black man playing a great blues tune on a harmonica. It sounded like it came straight from the French Quarter in New Orleans. This image stayed with me over the years until in 1958 I started writing what that black man inspired, pulled it out of the "archives of the forgotten" and finally finished it in March 2013 and want to share it with you.

Bo John

Bo John first was a black babe when his pappy said to him,
“Son, I want you get way from that cradle. You’re a man now, Bo John!”
So Bo got way from his cradle and took to takin’ his stand
and he sweat like that black demon that made him so quick a man;
He sweat black sweat in the hayfield and he hoed till his guts was run,
but he knowed he had to hold his soul ‘cause he’s a man now,
Bo John.

On a dark day rainin’ grizzlies, a rainbow arched to the sky;
John jumped up like he’d struck magic and said, “I, John, wants a better life!”
So he stuffed some biscuits in a sock, swung his banjo on his side,
shoved his mouth harp in a pocket and let his smile grow sunshine wide;
He hit the road to New Orleans, music bouncin’ through his soul,
his boots barely pushin’ a mark in the muddy country road.
He pulled out his mouth harp, makin’ Dixie with every breath while
hums of jungle-drum rhythms beat deep in his joy-swelled chest;

New Orleans took him in with arms wide like this is home at last;
That’s when his eye caught Lila sittin’ in her crisp red gingham dress.
His blood fired to high noon, a new music risin’ his life;
Pretty as chicory coffee, soft as a snatcha cotton,
he knew Lila would be his wife.
He made any downs go up when Little Lila he wed,
washed the countryside with his Dixie playin’,
fillin’ full the souls of the empty half dead.

Bo made his pappy proud of what all he did. He said,
“Son, keep on pourin’ them Dixie musics over all the folks that is,
makin’ ‘em happy with them good sounds
like your mammy makes us happy with her good grits;
Yessir, jes’ keep ‘em dancin’ ‘till they knows it’s a new way of walkin’
and don’t want to slow up to sit.”

So Bo went on doin’ what his wise pappy said,
kept pullin’ people up by their soulstraps and
dancin’ way past when the sun had sunk deep in its bed;
Now when the rooster crows the dawn up,
it don’t take much tunin’ your spirit in to listen to Bo John’s
Dixie siftin’ its way through the cool fresh mornin’ mist.