#4 Poetry

I am a poet. I have written poetry for 20 years and I perform poetry whenever possible. I have hosted slams, won slams, participated in readings and all of that shit. I love both the written and the spoken word. I have archives and archives of things that I've written. I've written so many poems that sometimes I read them and don't remember when I wrote them. I'm good to. The thing about poetry is that it's better when it's shared. I intend to use this blog to share my poetry as well as my thoughts. So the following are a few pieces that I thought might be interesting for the interested. Enjoy.

CHANGE
J. Bailey
copyright 2005 (If anyone knows how to place a copyright symbol in text here please let me know)

I don’t wanna write the same poem anymore
I wanna look for new words too go with a new state of mind
I wanna dream lines that don’t even rhyme
Spend time with pen in hand feelin’ glad I was born
But sometimes I mourn the day I took on human form
Strange spirit won’t conform to the norm
Facing storms I forget the sky is blue
So many gray days piled in my past I don’t know what to do
&
the same poem puts itself down on the paper

I can’t seem to help it—
Even though I prefer different words
I can only write what I feel
life more surreal than Dali
outside objectively looking at me through
another’s eyes I’d see a study in confused insanity
when all I want is to be free from this funky rut I’m in

so I write

but the same poem keeps coming out

I wrote that piece because I was feeling stuck in my writing. I kept hearing the same types of poems at readings and I found myself revisiting subjects in my own work and just saying the same thing over and over. I figured that I might as well capture that feeling.

Freestyle?
J.Bailey
copyright 2005

I hardly ever freestyle cuz my style ain't free
it costs to live every second that I live as me
the roots of my family tree are anchored in the dirt produced by lynched corpses not simple geneology
blood spilled
mother's cried
and little boys straightened their backs and dried their eyes b/c daddy's not coming home

So how could my style be free?
Great gran-mamma was a Cherokee and her grandfather's feet
had to bleed on the trail to Oklahoma from Tennessee
even after that great Red nation cooperated with the Government and didn't flee
they were hounded and killed
How can my style be free?

It's been payed for in blood a thousend times
and even if I write a thousend rhymes
none of them will be free
they are the cream rising to the top of struggle
and
their cost can never be calculated

That piece is an historical reflection. Like many Black people and Americans in general my ancestry is a hodge-podge of different peoples. The African is obvious, but I also have Cherokee, Scot, Jew and other different peoples that are represented in my family tree. Personally, I consider myself Black but that doesn't stop me from acknowledging the other parts of my ancestry. This poem was a reflection of that.

Freeflow #1
J.Bailey
copyright 2005

I used to let poems just hit melike thunderbolts from God
stricken and electrified by words that resonate in my soul
Possessed by verses I couldn't control I would flow-
life blood spilled on paper carried by a heart that felt heavy in my chest
with no rest or relief I would pour myself onto pages
searching for cryptic answers in the shapes of letters formed into words
and written in the hopes that
someone, somewhere, sometime
would see and understand
and give them meaning
so
I would know
that
poetic insanity
is a blessing

This piece is just what the title implies. I just let the muse free to flow and that's what came out. I like it b/c it captures the dynamism of poetry.