POETRY: BY NIKKI GIOVANNI

poetry is motion graceful 
as a fawn 
gentle as a teardrop 
strong like the eye 
finding peace in a crowded room 
we poets tend to think 
our words are golden 
though emotion speaks too 
loudly to be defined 
by silence 
sometimes after midnight or just before 
the dawn 
we sit typewriter in hand 
pulling loneliness around us 
forgetting our lovers or children 
who are sleeping 
ignoring the weary wariness 
of our own logic 
to compsoe a poem 
no one understands it 
it never says "love me" for poets are 
beyond love 
it never says "accept me" for poems seke not 
acceptance but controversy 
it only says "i am" and therefore 
i concede that you are too

a poem is pure energy
horizontally contained
between the mind
of the poet and the ear of the reader
if it does not sing discard the ear
for poetry is song
if it does not delight discard
the heart for poetry is joy
if it does not inform then close
off the brain for it is dead
if it cannot heed the insistent message
that life is precious

which is all we poets
wrapped in our loneliness
are trying to say


^^ written by Nikki Giovanni 

CREATION

If you chalked the road

in dribbles of water and light,

and something could emerge—

(something fluent),

then something fluid could spring

in such a way, that after it fell,

like a dusk after rain

(that wet scent of earth),

you’d find that the dust

on the road was splattered

with apple red spots.

FOCUS

Don’t be afraid of an unbalanced life.
Some are meant to weigh in one direction,
and spreading talent where it’s worth
defeats a steady scale.

HOPE

Someone's drink had scribbled cup rings on the table—

cigarettes butts were stuffed into the cracked wood like chewing gum.

It occurred to her that with small hope for success,

she should not have sat where the last person failed.