Sentenced

 

“All rise for the presiding Judge…”

 

“You know not what you do.

You take the thoughts of the few

And disturb the many,

What is your obsession?

I think there are plenty

of other professions you could choose,

but you couldn’t resist

and for that you leave me no choice.

 

“I hereby sentence you to life imprisonment without parole.”

 

Then he clapped the gavel,

His hand recoiling as if he fired a pistol

With his words displacing flesh like .44 caliber silver missiles

Attempting to destroy the snarling truth inside,

before it jaws grab hold of the innocent

and inject the infectious power catalytic

to sparking ill advised advances of the cerebellum.

 

The bailiff had to throw me down the dungeon steps,

The resonating clunk of the ball and chain becoming the only sign of reality left,

For I had already drawn my last breath,

Ready to exhale the last certainties I could muster

Before my mental faded to black

and my physical dissipated with the darkness.

 

I struck that stone floor,

heat non-existent as if it were a figment of the imagination,

kind of like my brazened demeanor.

I laid there, crystallizing into an artifact,

frozen in time

until a voice bellowed,

 

“Raise up boy, use your skill!

Your blood has been infused with the ether of poets,

Lyrical philosophers that use the sounds of 26

to empower the minds of billions.

Soldiers in a war against ignorance,

we are the militant,

so hear this,

for we are fearless!

Held captive in a cell,

but we are still like the Catholic priests

that reach the masses,

stimulate the mind and give your soul hot flashes.

 

And with that I looked up and saw the ghosts of

Emerson and Tennyson and Stevenson,

and I realized the chill in the air was all due to Frost.

A Black Cat hissed in the skeleton filled corner as

The Raven taunted from its perch

while a hand fell upon my shoulder and a shadow spoke,

“Do not fear to express that which needs to be heard,

do not succumb to personifying a Dream Deferred.”

 

A cloud of smoke descended upon the scene,

and a booming chorus imparted their wisdom upon their ghastly departure:

“View the world with a fiery embrace, yourself with chilling discontent.

You are trapped here for all eternity!

You must burn like an inferno,

taking what surrounds you and creating with it a bright flame

without burning your internal

glacier of cold resolve.”

 

I was occupied by this vision and my ambition blinded me

to the needle plunged in to my veins,

that left me insane with Wordsworth

more than gold etching themselves upon my cerebellum

giving me the ship to sail like Magellan.

I looked to see who had done this deed

and Ms. Angelou looked at me with a smile,

and whispered, “Sleep well my child…”

 

I awoke, peering into the mind of

a skull, still clad with a jester’s hat

that questioned my conscious, yet clenched

in the mandible was a quill and parchment.

My hand twitched and my digits flared

As I chartered that quill to etch the white blank

with a map to the true wonder of the world.

 

So here I sit in my corner, my dark crevice

A wordsmith at work,

with the premise that when hardened

my steel will solidify the world’s truths,

become the bullets to combat ignorant worldviews,

and teach more than mind-numbing institutions we deem schools.

 

 

I will never rest, as peace is a notion that lies

In that tiny sliver between the finger and the trigger,

A martyr these poetic bloodlines are not,

For our words will never die.

 

Illipsis

Speech is my hammer, bang the world in to shape now let it fall

-Mos Def