Poems from Floetry Friday Over the Years

"I AM!" - By Monte Massey, Esq.

First and foremost I am me
I am prosperity that engages adversity on
every battlefield and he who never leaves
the premises with nothing less than a victory.

I am music!
A sweet melody that resonates
melodically within the eye of a hurricane--
Don't worry, please let it rain.

Because I am shelter!
He who can protect you from the
harshest weather because my skin is
tough leather, but yet soft like silk.

I am a quilt!
Built precisely for you to rest your head
upon/when you for a brief moment are no
longer feeling strong and not because you are weak.
But!
Simply because you needed a rest.

I am restitution!
Paying back a debt to society that
refuses to create preemptive solution
towards issues that are drastically
afflicting our children.

I am the future, past, and present!
Symbolic to a petty peasant whose
thoughts were once reminiscent to the
foulest rubbish that could ever flow into
a gutter, but my brothers and sisters
have helped this pretty peasant to become
more effervescent so it's only destiny
that I now travel in a different direction.

Because you see, I am a vision!
A poet painting lexiconic pictures and
leaving fixtures of prisms kinetically
placed upon your wisdom so therefore you
can see through all of the lies that they
create within the walls of these prisons.
Can ya' feel me?
Good!

Because I am also love!
A manifestation of how each and every
one of you choose to define me.
But let me remind thee that loving me
temporarily is no longer satisfactory so
choose carefully when choosing to indulge
in me because...

I am addictive!
Similar to Tylenol/codeine/morphine shot
in the vein of your elite seal team in Iraqi land
Or better yet Afghanistan, I am frivolous
with my way of life so you can call me an
American
But please understand...

That my I am is genuine
A true composition of the man I am
God like I am
Made in his exact image I am, so original
I am.
Came into the world in the form of I am.
A born again I am, spreading the word of
love amongst the people who are in
desperate need just like I am.
The blood of my blood I am.
The flesh of my flesh I am.
Three days from now you can resurrect
these words into your mind and even then
in subconscious form I will appear before
you I am.
So!
In the end I am everything that I say
that I am.
The epitome of I am.
Because I am the I am of all I am.
The who, what, no matter where i am,
No need to ask how I am.
When I am performing at the best of I am,
and if you have to ask why I am the way that I am?
Then (psst!) you, must not have been listening!


"A Reflection" - By Heide Bruckner

Man, this is scary
Standing up in front
With all this anticipation.
Eyes big, wide open with grand
expectation of hearing an insight
Or some inner fight
That I have waged within my heart,
My mind, my body, my soul.

What I CAN offer is a few words.
Reflections
Of how my conception of what is
Wrong, right, violent, immutable,
irrefutable, secret
Has changed.
Is changing.

These big ideas rearranging
From one simplified puzzle of dualities
To the overlapping, overmapping, overarching
Themes of the human experience.

How mainstream thinking of prison
Has become in itself an "ism" --
A way of isolating and categorizing
And pretending that security exists
Even when inequality persists.
Violence not of the individual fist
But of a system which largely fails itself.
Fails to educate or empower or
address the root of this
Messy, gnarly, knotted overgrown shrub

Of personal, structural, community relations
That cannot be redressed
By pruning its "unsightly ends."
By thinking a sort of lock-up can
completely mend
The lack of water, poor soil, no sun
Which has caused the green from
these leaves to run
As far away as possible.

Come back, green life-giving
nourishment
Not rhgouh green pants or green
camo or other establishments
That the very balance
Can only be restored when the talents
Of all are recognized and legitimized,
Not marginalized , ostracized, or
criminalized.

By now I am less scared of reading
About the ways of reseeding
This shrub. It must grow tall and
Strong, interwoven, and supportive.

I am less scared because I am here
with you who are here
Like everyone class in Fridays past.
Because I'm in a room full of all of us
as peers,
Because of this, I have lost my fear.