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Edella    Tiger, Tiger burning bright, Sat b'twixt a ghoulish plight. Will it scupper? Will it sow? Will it flash amidst the snow? Born a'time a'lost in …
Born in Philadelphia. First generation Jamaican-American, queer, Black, female writer. Currently attending school in Western MA. Fooling around, really.
SB Stokes
Oakland, California    SB STOKES writes, draws, designs, produces, and edits in the hills behind the lake in Oakland, California. His first book of poetry, A History of …

Poems

ryn  Sep 2014
Light Train (II)
ryn Sep 2014
Light train chugging, working to outrun
Over exerting, pulling along your freight
Sand is running out under the diminishing sun
Fastidiously you tug on your enormous weight

Segmented equal in seven hulking proportions
Weaving between sleeping rocky giants
Assertion in your drive gifted from the high heavens
Borne of light your cargo load of tenants

Silver blurred rays glinting back as reply
As you power your way through
Defying seconds, before the last rays should die
Against odds, delivering what is due

Questing to alleviate my inflicted darkness
Spear of brilliance slicing through my mind
Illuminating the farthest and tiniest of crevices
Nook and crannies that willed me blind

Careful manoeuvring to keep your balance
Through scenic views fraught with treachery
Furiously working to keep your cadence
Hopeful of unloading the load you carry

What lies dormant in that cargo of yours?
What sleeps easy within those boxcars?
What stokes the fire to diligently run your course?
What promises you bear, travelling near and far?

Bales of hope and crates of strength
Supplies of kindness and self-worth
Reside within your immense length
Intact and lay quiet within your formidable girth

Reliant on the light that fuels and feeds
Your axles seem tireless guiding forth those wheels
Thundering over land with the power of a thousand steeds
Armed to your teeth with alloys and steels

Expelling grit and dirt as you pummelled across
Grey-white fumes, shoot up to the sky
Flag flogged by wind, billow and toss
Blaring your whistle as you race on by

Propelling forward, horizon up ahead
There it is...in all its tenebrous glory
Darkened locomotive seething mad with dread
Brace for the clash and the loads the two carry
See "Doom Train"
See "Collision Course"
If you ever wonder why
poetry is flames,
you will hear my name
whispered in your room,
cocoon-cocoon-****.

I am the embers
inside the hearth of the storm,
I leave behind remembrance
to keep you safe and warm,
I live in lingual form,
cocoon-cocoon-cooon.

What stokes the flames,
when the heart is fading
when life is braiding you
into a mess
the stress
confess
sorrow is hard to impress
ravaging you, leaving you
less
yet the flames burn on
poetically strong
indomitable words
right or wrong,
they are the song
of the chirping heart
from end to start
a noble art
and my name is there
please, don't stare,
cocoon-cocoon-****.

I leap from the pages,
from the fires of the ages,
I have no name
but my poetic, rages
I leave behind my...

Cocoon-cocoon-****.

I fly away,
belatedly soon,
but I leave behind
a cocoon,
for the butterfly sheds tears
racked up over the years
rising from the waves
of paupers and slaves
for the butterfly craves
the cow.
I had a lot of fun writing this one.
I can only hope of the same for your reading experience.
It's a fun one to think about!

About the last line:
"The butterfly craves the cow," is my expression of the human experience. An experience that is constantly redefining itself much as a flashlight in the dark can discover the world and yet only have fill of a moment that is constantly passing; not empty as it is constantly filling; a strange fluidity of experience in which we search for more.
An experience in which, even when we do attain humility and contentment in our lives (steadying the flashlight), it becomes our mission to maintain our state of peace.

Butterfly craving the cow, is to crave the source.

It is to crave the truth. It's what we call "real". Something that lacks deception. Something we can weigh and is open to understanding.
We develop the idea, as we grow up and imitate our society, that if something is secret, it cannot be real. Yet today, we are shedding this idea in favor of fear. That led me to the church in my own life. Christians are comfortable with the idea of there being truths unattainable in our transient moment. Truths that are permanent in a life that we cannot do more than hope and prepare for.

Whether or not this is possible, we have to come to terms with the human hunger for fire and why religion, and especially the Abrahamic religions, are so good at satisfying this hunger and changing people from their core. We have to seriously consider the idea of God and understand that if we continue to think of him as an idea, our transience will surpass such flimsy conceptions.

Enjoy!

DEW