Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Poems Inspired by the art of Kai Watson




Sentenced


He is sentenced to death
without a judge or jury
Displayed as entertainment
His black soul is about to be flayed
stripped and separated slowly.

The cool wind spreads his sweat.
It hums through the trees,
his final church chorus through nature.
The chains press him against the tree,
so he breathes with the bark
His veins red as the dirt
He feels the leaves in his phlegm
tastes the wood on his tongue.
His lips and fingertips swell like ripe fruit.
His lungs feel heavy,
he becomes one with the earth,
before sharing his blood with the soil.








Conflict of Interest

With the poise of an emancipated mind,
Her shoulders stand erect
Her internal scars are hidden
but she feels the the breath of her past
on the back of her neck
A past surrendered to civilian generality
void of unique personality
A blend of smeared paint
conflicted with the desire
to expose her inner masterpiece

Her life is filled with boundaries.
Handcuffed and limited to the expectations of others
yearning to display her potential,
her pride and power.
She turns her back to the past,
lifts her head
allowing her cheekbones and her chin
to represent her inner strength.

Sunday, May 10, 2009

3 Poems

These are a few from a group I called When the Ghetto and the Suburbs Collide

Ghetto School Boy

He packs, showers, polishes his shoes
Puts on his school’s uniform
His father is ready and starts the car

He hopes that he will soon transfer
To a school without pickpockets and boys with scarred faces
Bruised and cut knuckles, scuffed shoes and torn laces

Classrooms are furnaces, lunch lines like prison riots
Food is thrown in the roads or in gullies
Boys are pinching girl’s butts and breasts
They couldn’t be civilized if they tried

Children look in the gully shocked, holding their nose
The boy looks in and sees a dead body with an empty eye socket
Rats nibbling on the skin, crows circle the sky
He throws away his food and walks back to class



Babylon


“The characteristics of Babylon are never failing. Babylon
will invade your privacy as a routine; insist on wearing uniforms, particularly
boots, guns, hats, dogs on leashes and they particularly love marching in imitation of robots.”

- Bob Marley



He loosens his top button, swallows painkillers
Buys a flask of white rum to stop his hands from shaking
The bodies haunt him, he thinks;

They call us Babylon yet they do devilish things to each other


He picks her up, pops a pill, takes a sip
He drinks to destroy nightmares, fucks to forget
She sucks away his sorrows, he ejaculates to erase his evil thoughts

He licks the sweat from her nipples
His flaccid dick sleeps and leaks
He takes another sip and spits out bloody rum

She laughs at his hallucinations
She doesn’t know the look of seared flesh
Or gaunt drained bodies that has been bleeding for hours

The hour is finished
Pay more or leave
His cell phone has two messages
He skips his wife’s and listens to his partners.

Another body, come now

The body is by a high school
He pays her, finishes his flask and grabs his badge and gun

God have mercy on those children’s souls.







Just Do it

He waits outside a cheap hotel uptown
The stripping paint falls on his neck
Down his shirt
Patiently he waits with his hand in his pocket
Fingers against the steel
He knows he shouldn’t do this
Questions it
Feels like he should walk away.

He sees his target and moves towards him
Slits then stabs, then runs
The man falls while his lover screams
The killer wipes everything clean
Changes and puts everything in a bag to be burnt
Everything except an envelope
Money from his victim’s wife.
Enough for a toy for his son, or a new pair of Nikes.
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Simon Phillip Brown's Poetry by Simon Phillip Brown is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.