A Poem For Pete Seeger:
It Is All Etched In Crayolas, January 28,2015
It is the coldest day, it is always the coldest
...
La Tumbra Sin Nombre
The Unmarked Grave
The mother of plantains and holy thoughts
...
The praying man does not let violence into his heart if his prayers are truly prayers.
He can be raised in violence.
He can have practiced violence at some point in
...
The Immigrants
1.
It is incorrect in a society to have an exile that
...
Oregon
Oregon, I remember you. The way your
trees were unregretful and made imploring love
...
Think about it...The more ugly the world treats one group of people
the more beautiful they become.
Consider how the human creature had walked the earth for all these
...
I must tell you in life there, has
been nothing better than honey in warm
milk with consistent plain, bread warm like
unto human skin - except for peace.
...
Broken-Hearted Blues
From Georgia those blues came walking, wearing worn shoes.
Broken-hearted, migrant from the orphanages,
...
What Rusts In The Rain
(For The Memory Of William S. Burroughs & Typewriters)
It is Lawrence, Kansas and the sky opens
...
If you have aged, it is not because
you have set out amongst the rocks
and cavernous dens of existence
to do so.
...
East St. Louis
Sorrow is not done for the Black man.
Here it comes, pouring down like
...
Nothing is of purpose in this world but love.
Love has the ultimate value.
...
The Day For Living Angels
It was sunlit that day and, we headed by car up to
Ohio Pyle in Pennsylvania.
...
REVOLUTION, REVOLUTION, REVOLU-
God's palms lay beneath the earth.
The earth is not suspended in this...
...
The Shroud
Reconciliation of the lost soul with the inquisitive soul and
the found.
...
A man told her said,
Read Rumi and learn to dirvish
A wise lover can make
many a man or woman
...
Romella Kitchens is a Pittsburgh-based poet who has been published in 5AM, The California Quarterly, Mainstreet Rag, The Autumn House Anthology, Chiron Review, Iodine Poetry Press, Mudfish Review and others. She has done poetry residencies and addressed many school groups concerning poetry. In 2014, she was a judge for the city wide level of Poetry Outloud.)
It Is All Etched In Crayola
A Poem For Pete Seeger:
It Is All Etched In Crayolas, January 28,2015
It is the coldest day, it is always the coldest
when I read Pete Seeger has died.
Cars pass outside, and men who have stayed
out all night at the local bars pass paying life dues
down slippery hills of ice never knowing their real
names or identities. I imagine his fingers fine on his banjo.
Yes, there, he had this face, this clear identity.
Black child laying on warm carpet, crayolas and paper
when I first saw him on television singing about freedom
and social change just like Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Peter, Paul and Mary and others...They were
all so beautiful then - these men and women of ideals.
So, I drew them on my paper, with joyously open mouths filled with song, blowing wind, amazing grace and changing times and a dragon who lived by the sea.
I felt their eyes were kinder, more like Odetta's eyes than those who did not like 'negroes'
so I etched them carefully.
And, Seeger grew each year...The body aging but not hope or the soul.
Now, the crayolas are long gone. The paper withered. But, the lustere of legacy is heavyweight, ephemeral and lasting.