Can You Dig It?

(A Golden Shovel)

We real cool. – Gwendolyn Brooks

 

..

There’s just something about the way we
groove, move and mold our words in real
time; rhythm and rhyme our own cool

-ing hearts. Something ’bout the way we
fight, give the world a one-two punch, left
-right, send our souls off to flight school

with a phrase. The still, small ways we
unearth, rebirth old caged bones lurk
-ing in closets; stay up unreasonably late

stirred by coffee and ink. Some days we
may think it’s not worth it, muse on strike
and shrike-stolen syllables gone straight

when we commanded them crooked. We
scribble anyway, scramble to scribe-sing
the thing that might free us, from sin

and singularity and singed scars. We
fill jars with fireflies and lies and thin
parchment promises, a place to be-gin

to be something more, stored. Then we
loose it all to our own salt sea, the jazz
jamboree of a falling moon. We jejune

our way through, stay new, known. We
cross our sword-pens and hope to die
and then we reach the end, too soon.

 

..
Prompted by Poetic Asides April PAD Challenge, day 19.
You can read Gwendolyn Brooks’ full poem here.

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