National African American Read-In

National African American Read-In

Lemon Teardrops

 

 

 

The lemon trees

of Sorrento

cry real tears

at night

as the sea washes

the bay.

The lemon trees

of Sorrento

cry for you

and cry

for me.

They weep

for us—

my sweet Suzette.

‘The child is father to the man.'

Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1844 - 1889

‘The child is father to the man.'
How can he be? The words are wild.
Suck any sense from that who can:
‘The child is father to the man.'
No; what the poet did write ran,
‘The man is father to the child.'
‘The child is father to the man!'
How can he be? The words are wild!

Hopkins was a wonderfully inventive poet from whom all can learn.

One More Autumn

(For Suzette)

 

We have the gift

of one more autumn—

together.

One more time to hold

hands and make plans.

The September sky

is blue like

your eyes.

The leaves are

 gold

like your hair.

Do I dare

to compare

you to an

autumn

day?

Alas,

autumn but

foreshadows

the coming of winter,

snow & ice

and silence.

Acorn Award Speech

                                      Acorn Speech

Thank you. I wish to thank the Trustees of the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education for making this event possible. Also, I wish to thank Dr. Michael McCall for KCTCS’s participation in this program.  It is an honor to address such an august body. However, I really owe this award and other awards that I have received to students such as Mr. Robert Sutton who is sitting at my table; I owe it to former students such as Karen Kaye who could not be here today because she is teaching at Indiana University Southeast in New Albany, and to the many students that I have taught in my twenty-eight years of teaching at Jefferson. Our people are the true wealth of our uncommon commonwealth. Also, I owe this award to my mother who was my first teacher and my father who bought me books and encouraged me from first grade through graduate school. And last but not least, I owe this award to my excellent colleagues such as Dr. Anne Kearney who nominated me and team taught with me, and to Dr. Tony Newberry would asked me to take over teaching the African American History class when he left to become the academic dean of Southeast Community College.

Body: Standing here today and receiving this award is a dream come true. Yet I would be remiss if I did not say that this dream and so many other dreams that have come true for me have all been made possible by my receiving a good education. This is a journey that begun many years ago on the front porch of a shotgun house in Louisville’s Clifton neighborhood. I was about six years old and my mother pulled switch from a large maple tree in the front yard and handed me a book. She said: “Now David Lee, you are going to learn to read.” Her no nonsense approach must have worked for I have been reading ever since. While I did not have affluence, I had something that was more valuable: I had two hard working and loving parents who were determined that my life would be better than theirs and that I would have the education that was denied them in the Jim Crow South. Moreover they inculcated in me a love both of books and a love of learning. When my father got paid on Fridays, he would stop at the old W.K. Stewart Bookstore on Fourth Street in downtown Louisville and either buys me a book or a map. As an only child crippled by asthma, I spent countless happy hours reading books, playing with maps and building model ships and airplanes. It is strange but I never knew we were poor until I went to college and met genuinely rich kids. For me, personally, education has been the key that has opened so many doors and taken me to places beyond my wildest dreams. My dreams are not over and I hope to cross another item off my bucket list next summer by going to Paris. I am reminded of the words of one of my favorite poets Langston Hughes: “Hold fast to dreams, for life without dreams is like a broken winged bird that cannot fly.”

As a teacher I am proud of the many talented and dedicated people that I work with daily. Our goal as  community college teachers is to help students to make their dreams come true. Our goal is to help them to achieve their career goals. Some will become nurses, some will become X-ray technicians, some will transfer to four year institutions, and a few will even come back and teach for with us. Yet even as I speak our state needs more college educated people and more people with technical training. There are no throw away people. It is less expensive to educate a man than it is to incarcerate him. We need for all of our citizens to reach their potential. We need jobs with dignity that pay a living wage.

 

  Far too many of our young people in both urban ghettos and rural ghettos have their talents wasted. Far too many our young people are like the the lines in Thomas Gray’s “Elegy in a Country Churchyard: “ Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.” It is our goal to ensure that everyone in this great Commonwealth has the opportunity of become a productive, gainfully employed, taxpaying citizen. This is our hope, this is our mission.

Thank you ladies and gentlemen.

call and response demonstration

King of the World

(For Tom)

 

 

Ensconced on the top tier

His majesty reclines

On fur covered haunches.

His amber eyes blaze

in the soft light—

Fed and brushed

His reign

is resplendent

in feline glory—

Master of the world

servant of none.

Moonlight in September

Loving you has not been easy

you have turned to quicksilver

in my grasping hands.

 

You, wanton woman of my imagination,

have sung siren songs

and lured me to the sensual shoals

of your soft, pliant thighs.

 

You have driven me mad

with unfulfilled desires

as I crash into your emotional reefs.

Though I touch you mud-warm body

I cannot touch your frozen heart.

 

When I hold you tight,

you turn to sand,

or protean-like

you shape-shift to Medusa at midnight

 Aphrodite at dawn

 

You smiling enigma

addicting me

with your opiate of love and lust.

 

Long, long ago

you beckoned me

to your jagged shores.

Loving you has not been easy,

but I cannot let you go—

with you I find sweet agony and painful bliss—

Golden-haired Druid

Hazel-eyed witch of  Endor,

You enchant me

For I am smitten

Once,

Twice,

Thrice—

Forever?

© David Cooper

 

American Gothic

Standing here watching the setting sun go down behind the Wal-Mart parking lot. Where else can I get spirituality and cheap goods made in China by children in sweatshops? I mean free enterprise is not so damn free, now is it? I sho' do love living in the land of poverty where the minds are bereft of history. Standing here waiting for the evening sun to go down, go down behind the Wal-Mart parking lot where the crack hos and meth hos turn their tricks out, then light their pipes and blow their brains out looking for that American dream that flimflam scheme. These meth and crack heads are zombies—the living dead. Bambi is twenty-five without a tooth in her head. That's why I'm standing here watching the sun go down behind the Wal-Mart parking lot, watching Bambi go down for a nickel and a dime.

David Cooper

North Star II

Chicago. New York. St. Louis.

And all destinations

North—

Lawrence poured the tens of

Thousands in red,

Green, and yellow paints

Mixed and matched

Like their patched coats

And runover shoes

And cardboard suitcases.

They boarded:

The Illinois Central, Baltimore and Ohio, and Chesapeake

Bound for that Promised Land.

Lawrence painted

Their sorrow songs

And their gut bucket blues

His brush jazzed their gin.

He painted their bleary eyes

And tired feet

Marching

Riding

Walking

Hoboing

To Freedomland.

copyright David Cooper 2014

 

The Inspiration for "Homer" and Pindar

Sunset on the Ionian Sea

A Silly Poem

Mr. Pringles Cheddarcheese

                                                dances light

                                                And knocks his knees.

                                                Mr. Pringles Cheddarcheese,

                                                I have to sneeze—

                                                Pass the Kleenex

                                                If you please

                                                And say “goodnight”

                                                To Louis and Louise.

"Weird Al" Yankovic - Word Crimes

Susana Baca - De Los Amores

Georgia on My Mind

The gray day

                                    And the red clay

                                    Of Georgia’s dust tracks

                                    Of mind and memory

                                    Haunt

                                    me at 3 a.m.

                                    Ghosts walk

                                    til dawn

                                    drawn by the

                                    darkness and

                                    rain.

 

                                    Fallen path of lost

                                    Love and lust:

                                    Mary the tall girl

with liquid eyes;

                                    Belinda the tiny

                                    Redbone*

                                    With a sandy afro;

                                    And Brenda

                                    With smooth ebony skin—

                                    Of years and yore—

                                    All gone

                                    Like the red clay

                                    Washed over the road…gone.

 

 

 

*Redbone: a high yellow girl; a mulatto or quadroon.

 

                                    © David L. Cooper

Bars Flight

 

                                                            A Caged bird

                                                            cannot fly.

                                                            Like Dunbar,

                                                            I spread my wings

                                                            & try,

                                                            but a caged bird

                                                            Cannot fly.

                                                            I long to soar

                                                            & touch the sky

                                                            but a caged bird

                                                            cannot fly.

                                                            Bound by race

                                                            And region,

                                                            Pain and poverty….

                                                            yet I try,

                                                            but neither

                                                            a caged bird

                                                            nor I can fly.

The sun setting on the Ionian Sea.

Lee Pennington mentioned you in a comment. Lee wrote: "Jesse Stuart once said in a poem, "Another time like this will not come this way." It was a very special event for me to share the stage with such beautiful word masters. I had read with David Cooper before; it was my first time reading with Jill Baker and Ron Whitehead. Don't let anybody kid you. I'm the lucky one! I'm the one blessed. Thank all of your for sharing this magic moment."

Three Poems About Scotland

            1

A smoked yank

A long, long way from home

Ayonder he did roam

a-riding trams and mare o’shank

            2

 

Of glens and bens

I spied on crags

Glazed by black-faced sheep

--Oh of Loch Drunkie

Of glens and bens

 

            3

There in the Trossacks

A man finds God

Amid the lochs and flocks

My, my how odd!

 

 

Three Scotches and Macbeth

“The people of London have no face”

--Scottish Tour Guide in Edinburgh

                                1

Scotland             

Snow-capped bens,

Green, grassy glens

Cold, clear lochs

Plaids and argyle socks

Here in the land of the Scots.

 

                2

 

White gulls glide

over the glassy river

named Ness

in a park near Inverness.

 

                3

 

Rainbows arc the sky

As kirk bells

Toll and thunder rolls

In Inverness.     

©David Cooper 1995