Home Poem (an update to an oldie)
Posted by Tracey Gilbert (Alumnus) | Filed under Poetry, Print
My hometown is a deficit full of shit and blood and pride.
Kids grow up cleaving to each other like mad-crazy lovers,
Leaving bruises, leaving scars that resemble the tributaries of the Mississippi.
We were beautiful, we were jaded, we wanted out, we made it painful.
I knew I was leaving.
The stagnation in that tiny Appalachian town was so thick in the back of my throat I needed to stay high just so I could keep my head above the bullshit and breathe.
I grew up bored as shit.
When we were young we destroyed things just to see them burn,
Beautiful and bright like cities lit up from afar
There was a life we weren’t living out there somewhere.
And when we were older, instead we burned each other,
Flesh and spirit, we clung to each other too hard and it still stings when it gets wet.
And I did get out.
My house was a crazy house turned mental asylum.
So goodbye to regret and abuse and fundamental values
Goodbye racial slurs, goodbye Dixie. I’m so over it.
And now, home smiles at me from behind bad perms and calls me on the telephone to tell me to be home before midnight.
It waves a confederate flag proudly from my bedroom window so EVERYONE will know where I came from.
Home lives in my closet as skeletons with names and faces not fully decayed.
It wears dark sunglasses and tells me it fell down the stairs.
Home drives a primer colored 1988 Cutless Supreme with no muffler so I can hear it coming from WAY down the road.
It sleeps till mid afternoon cause that’s when everything feels worse than it really is.
Home stings more than it burns, and it keeps a strict list of those of us who’ve escaped it.
It plays a cruel ping-pong game with our hearts.
It will do ANYTHING to get us back.
My hometown wears a t-shirt that says, “The south will rise again!” and I ask it, “From what? From the ashes of burned crosses and churches that still can’t be rebuilt in some neighborhoods?”
Home begs for me to understand.
Once, in the graveyard behind my house, we laid on the grass smoking a joint, and sucking the nitrous oxide out of whipped cream canisters. Anything to feel numb to this.
My best friend Amelia stood up, picked up a can, and fizzled out the last of the whipped cream in the shape of a swastika on the grass.
And we all stared at it in silence as if it were the most beautiful thing we’d ever seen.
She looked up, her gaze distant and said, “Fuck this shit.”
And we understood, and we walked back home without saying anything.
My hometown is a deficit and I’m still broke and it still begs me for pocket change.
It says if I can spare some change it can sure use it,
And I’m starting to see that I owe as much as I’m due from this place.
My heart tells me so.
Home knows all my secrets, and I keep running back there,
Whether I like it or not, empty resistance giving way to home.
Home knows me, and home knows I’ll keep running to it, and from it again
And home knows, that as long as we owe each other, we’ll never be broke.
Fire (A Poem For My Students)
Posted by Tracey Gilbert (Alumnus) | Filed under Poetry, Print
To my students, I have but one thing to teach you.
The pen is mightier than the sword,
I promise you that.
And just as far as everything you say echoes infinitely throughout the universe,
Your words will hold you in your darkest hour
As long as you have them with you.
But how do I reach you with words when
Your truths are already further from my truth than the difference I can make
Please reach me.
As far from my grasp as possibly could be
You’re following too closely to mimicking something you don’t fully understand
I’ve lived a life I can’t fully explain to you in this venue
I promise you it’s so much bigger than you
Will you listen, even though you don’t think I know what’s up?
I still believe in the power of the word to inspire you,
to remind you that it’s bigger than this tiny big city
Please help me to know that it’s possible to awaken a meaning in life.
I’m trying to give you a gift that will eventually save you,
Pick your ass up and take it far away from here.
Just write it down.
Take yourself across sands and skies, transcending lies
Yet far enough from the truth to see straight.
Crooked analogy, unauthorized biography
Your words will tell their own stories.
And their stories got stories,
Let them bitches out.
Before words ball up behind your eyelids and press, hard, creating unimaginable pressure.
This is something I should be able to control.
Is this really life; can we dig it?
And look at what multiple generations of oppression have done to a beautiful people,
Can you think of a deeper, darker power than the mind?
You are a child, but you don’t know that.
You are so young.
By the time you realize what you’re doing here, they will have gotten you.
You’re beautiful, don’t blow this.
Think you’re content on that bangin’ bullshit
Reppin colors like it was 1994 and holding on to your learned convictions like they’re all you have.
You’re acting out something bigger in your world, and you only know one side of things.
What you don’t know yet is the police rep both sides
With alternating lights on their cruisers
Red and blue
Crip/Blood toss-up
And suddenly the label of ‘colored’ has a new connotation.
It’s in their best interest
For your affiliation to fester and boil and be made obvious to them.
Why are you just giving it to them?
Enemies are only real if you acknowledge them.
After whom do you truly seek revenge?
Sometimes I swear to you ink is as dense as bullets and
Pens don’t weigh as much as guns in your pocket
But they unload a hell of a heavier load when you empty the cartridge.
Just let it blow.
You’re burdens will be lifted
And you’re secrets safely guarded,
It will be enough to protect you.
This is something you can control.
In the streets, someone stirs,
Forces rally, you get your call
This is something we take under control.
Tuck your weapon, pick your playmates
Son, are you ready to ride?
And you wonder, as your finger grazes the trigger
Can you do this? Are you with this?
And you pull up, in position,
Click to ready
Steady, aim,
And onto the page,
You fire.
