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

 

Banjo

            (For Henry Tanner and The Banjo Lesson)

 

Patiently,

the old slave’s cracked and

workhard hands

guided the boy’s hands

to strum, strum, strum

the banjo

and pluck the merry

sounds

string by string by string.

Listen to the music:

bling, bling, bling,.

What the magic,

what the art,

can thaw even

the coldest white heart.

List to the banjo

pling, pling, pling—

Listen as the strings

sing, sing, sing.

Is this art,

or is this freedom?

At the sun’s

dying light

and well into the

blackdark night

they play

to stay

the real darkness.

Is this art
or is it freedom?

 

David Cooper © 2014

Midnight Sunglasses

We were cool…

Back in the day—

I mean we even wore shades

At night in smoky bars

where hammers wore skin-

tight, short mini-skirts

that went to their thighs

And to our imagination.

 

We were cool—

Back in the day—

Smokin’ weed

through cherry and strawberry flavored

cigarette papers

carburators

and bongs

Snortin’ coke

through Benjamins

and leaning in

El Dogs and Lincolns

while  the long-legged

street walkers

stopped cars

like urban sirens…

Ulysses Johnson

was a pimp on Euclid

Avenue back in the day

when the players and hustlers

came out to play.

Colt 45

Malt Liquor

and Country Club

and other bottles

of pissed and wasted

dreams....

Back in the day

when hos hoed

and the players played

and the pimps

pimped

and the simps

simped...

BC

Before crack.