Friday, June 29, 2012

Earth, Wind, & Rain

The wind shakes the seed to the ground

Time and stillness

Brings layers of earth

Brings foundation for roots

 

Sun and rain

Nourish the sapling

Teaches it to grow

Thick and strong

Tall and mighty

 

The tree makes leaves and flowers

 

The leaves collect sunlight and rain

Feeding the mighty trunk

Giving enough strength so that

the delicate bud can bloom

 

Time comes again

Never having gone

The leaves fall to the ground

Feeding the deep

Far reaching roots that hugs the earth

More intimate than any human embrace

 

Flowers mature and birth seeds

 

The wind shakes the seed to the ground

Time and stillness

Brings layers of earth

Brings foundation for roots

 

©Christopher F. Brown 2012

Sunday, June 24, 2012

Pea Coats in June

It always has been different in the bay area. I was born in a place called Sobrante Park. This was considered the ghetto of the ghetto. There was only one way into the area and one way out. I look back and realize the house where I lived was the final point of return, any further and you had to be a native to navigate. The local public transit bus stopped at my house, latter it just stopped altogether. The police were never present but we handled everything on our own, in truth, we did not need them.

 

I remember us living in that house at the end of a turning block, so we had a huge front yard filled with grass that I was allergic to but played in nonetheless. I would run from the garage to front door with my great dane chasing me, pining me, and licking my face when I was caught. We had this huge evergreen tree that cast a great shadow on the entire front lawn. I would climb to a place where a few large branches met with the trunk and formed a place that looked like a throne. There I imagined myself king of East Oakland and Pharaoh of all the land.

 

It’s funny how some things remain the same. In those earlier years, I don’t remember watching that much television, not till I was a few years older. I remember watching my first hailstorm from the front door. I was already fascinated and knew that water falling from the sky was magic. Seeing the water falling from the sky, then for it to turn into ice, was resonance of the magic around me. The red porch held court to my first thunder and lightning show. It made my giant beastly hound, the great dane I named clip_image002Sir Night because of his pitch black coat save the white stripe on his belly, run around and whimper as if it was yellow.

 

            The fourth of July topped them all. After night had fallen and darkness had well settled in, the entire neighborhood gathered where the way in became the way out. Some years we all gathered in the alleyway, another place only natives knew and the only place I was not freely allowed to roam. All of the kids my age ran around waving our sparklers pretending them to be the mystical incarnations we truly wanted. The adults conversed over where and from whom they got their special brand of fireworks. They all boasted that theirs was the best, proof came when fire met fuse. I remember the sky being lit up as if it where new day dawning with a rainbow of suns. Screeching, pops, bangs, and deep rumbling booms gave credit to some of the claims while the neighborhood dogs barked in chorus. Miniature rockets that had fizzled out and were left in their starting positions and diminutive missiles that climbed higher than the tallest tree, higher than the highest home, only to explode with less jubilation than the word implied, gave testament to others.  

 

            I came to know the seasons by the things that my mother and what other adults told me would happen when they came around. When the leaves on the trees started to turn from green to yellow, orange to red, then to a dry brittle brown, it meant it was fall. When it became so cold in the morning that all the left over rain puddles that I happily splashed in yesterday froze over, it meant it was winter. Spring was, and without medication still is, the time when my eye and nose ran uncontrollably, or swelled shut, or both at the same time. My head would fill with so much mucus that my ears would hurts and I could barely hear. When I was old enough to take the medications Spring became the time when the flowers boomed. I picked the dandelions and blew, scattering the cotton ball looking bulb to the wind and made a wish. As the lighter than air parachute like seeds floated in the winds, they carried your wish. If they fell, your wish would not come true. If by chance they climbed the breezes and did not come down, your wish was on its way. Me being me I chased after the ones that looked like they were going to fall and blew them more, giving them the push they needed to catch the wind.  

 

Summer was, and still is, the best. The temperature would get so hot that my older cousin would crack an egg onto the sidewalk and we would watch it cook. Summer meant I could walk about with no shoes and no one would say,

 

“You’ll catch a cold.”

 

Later on summer meant the end of school and I could freely frolic threw sprinklers turned on high and stand in the path of open fire hydrants. My grandmother said that I was born in the middle of an Indian Summer so it was no surprise why I loved the heat and would not tolerate any cold.

 

I wonder what she would say if she could see the seasons today, the world as it is now. I'm sure she would have a lot to say about how, sometimes, really more than some now; you still have to wear sweaters and Pea coats in June.

 

 

 

©Christopher F. Brown 2012

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Locutus

 

They remain single

Waiting on The one

 

I remain single

Tired of Them all

 

Cookie cutter

Stereotypes

Across the board

Spanning both sides of the spectrum

I can introduce you to many in the middle

 

I'm sure

In my difference amongst the unique

I still am rather strange

But

Still the same

 

No

I have never met you

Before

 

I don't need a TI-183

To calculate your place on the graph

I've been there

I know there.

 

Just because

You Realize

You are a different point

Inhabit a different plane

You think you are special

Not seeing

You are just a far off dot

That makes up

The same

Flat

Line

 

One of many

That describes your two dimensional existence

 

You are unique in that

You are not

The one

And can not see

You are

One of many

 

Your designation might as well be

3 of 10

7 of 9

 

You think its

1 in a million

The reality is

The harder you try

The more you bang your head

You prove yourself to be

Just the same as any

 

1 of the billions

 

In truth

There is no

One

 

Only the

One

Is

The Someone

We choose to make

It

Work with

 

Go ahead and wait for prince charming

Make a bet on the day he never comes

Search for

Your prince

Hunt down

Your unicorn

Your one

 

Taking the time to discover

Self

Is only coded talk for lonely.

 

You must have a husband/wife

By the age of

You must have a kid and plan one to come

by the age of

You must have two cars

by the age of

You must have a home in the suburbs that looks like all the rest

By the age of

You must have a high paying career that will pay you better when you retire

By the age of

 

This the plan for your life

According to

This should be the plan for everyone’s life

So says

 

Anything else

Any form of deviation or resistance to said plan

 

Is futile.

 

©Christopher F. Brown 2012

Tuesday, June 5, 2012

I knew you, before

Im glad I knew you before

before the way you are now

 

Ill proudly say to them

when they ask me

 

they weren't

he wasn't

she wasn't

always like this,

I know

 

 I knew them

 

Before

 

©Christopher F. Brown 2012

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