Glass Rock

Glass Rock

Nicole M. Jenkins

AuthorHouse™

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Bloomington, IN 47403

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Phone: 1-800-839-8640

© 2011 Nicole M. Jenkins. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 3/17/2011

ISBN: 978-1-4567-1257-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4567-1256-3 (e)

ISBN: 978-1-4567-1258-7 (hc)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011901889

Printed in the United States of America

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any Web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Social Tension

In the Beginning Was the Word

Makin’ It to the Mountaintop

Two Different

Game Over

Brooklyn (The Projects Personified)

The Revolution Will Be Criminalized and Distorted By the Media

Seeking Gains but Childhood Lessens

Mama

Partly Cloudy With a Chance of Sunshine

Unaccomplished Mission…

Sixty Seconds, Madam

Yellow Taxi Cab

Innocent Intentions

To Wait For Something

He’ll Leave He’s Leaving He Left

Window

Longshot

All or Nothing

Sitting Across From Each Other

All The Things Unsaid

To Waste Something

Glaciers

Two United Dimensions…

What It Was Like to Like Being With You… Metaphysically Speaking

To Want Something

The Love Song

The Long Walk Home

In Love

Breezin’

Fulfilled Vision…

Inertia

The River

Kinda Wonderful Sometimes

Still Here

Witches’ Brew

To Wake Up and See the Sun

Morning

On A Streetcar Named Success

Daughter

A Sunrise for A Ray

The Dissection and the Merging

360 Degrees

Ascension

The Culmination of All Things Incredible

Dedicated in Eternal Love to Ms. Patricia A. Wallace-Guice

"We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time."

T.S. Eliot

"What is living

Must die

So that it may live again…"

T.D.G.

For Aurayah, my Ray of Sunshine, Hope, and Light

And for my Mother, who made me what I am

The road to hell is paved with good intentions, but what of the Stairway to Heaven? (T.D.G.)

Social Tension

In the Beginning Was the Word

In the beginning was the word

And if this poet spoke the word

Standing without other man on the earth

Before woman on the earth

If he spoke the word

But no one heard

Wisest Teacher

But no one to learn

Does he exist?

I would stay up all night

‘Til daylight

Just to write

I’d sit in class

Think up lines fast

And it’s how the time would pass

Writing got me through

The hard times

Cheaper than wine

Or therapy

Always there in the rhyme would be

Comfort

Divine innervision

My form of meditation

The peaceful waiting

For God to speak

Sacred role of scribe

I was assigned

When I asked Him for

A sign

Of His presence with me

Fragile I was

But ironically hard

For others to understand

So I abandoned

Abstract language

For a more

Straightforward tone

Just as Edgar Allan the Poet

This one chose from childhood’s

Hour to be

Alone

Or with the shunned crowd

The girl in the corner

With the book they mistook

For soft

Never talked hard but

Wrote loud and

Could use the mightier sword

To create an order of

Swift destruction like

Firestarter

What came so easily to me

Others had to try harder

And still couldn’t climb

What I stood atop

But even with that being true

I strive to equal masterpieces like

Dwele’s My People and

Swing down sweet chariot

Stop

And let me…

Know what’s on your mind

(You better think) like Rakim

Ordained with the name

Street poet like him and

Can’t stop won’t stop (what)…

Classics like Nas’ Life’s A Bitch

For a Black Girl Lost

Described Talib’s Four Women

Descendants of those who danced

the Nights Over Egypt away

Jay getting paid from the customers

Walking in the presence

of Dead Presidents

Inhaled every syllable of Respiration

Waiting for the day

It would all make sense

To the hungry hip hop heads

Fed only processed dregs

Common, Mos, and Roots produced

Health food

I was sent flying

Even without any wine in the house

Because love was a losing game

I could make any breakbeat DJ

Worth his turntables and mixtapes

Smile sweet memories

Make him laugh and cry

At the mere mention of

The Mexican

Remind the young black youth

of their Royalty as Guru used to do

(We still Reminisce Over You)

I could tap into a Thug’s Life

Always trying to save ‘em

Considered great like The Mona Lisa

Or Benita Applebaum

I’d put you on like my Adidas

‘Cause I was a one-woman

Corporation like the company that made ‘em

I had every Slick Rick tape

And I could state verbatim

But still well-rounded enough

To be held close by a dancer

Who had a busy day,

Slowed down by a ride

In a Fast Car

Counting headlights on a

Highway during the

Night Shift

Where the city’s heart would beat

Faster to the tune of Human Nature

And the Heart of the Matter

Is that words became the world

In the beginning…

And in the beginning of my world

I was an eighties baby

At a time when girls just

Wanted to have fun

And End their innocence

With the Boys of Summer

And I certainly exercised my Freedom

To do that and more

So many mornings up at four

I used to listen to the stations

In between the stations real late

When they didn’t bleep out the curses

Underground mixtapes blended

The verses and you heard the

Hottest shit first before it even

Hit the streets

On the train moving between

Philly and NYC I’d need

Every issue of Source Magazine

Had a stack higher than you’d believe

Before it became mainstream

Never had a Clue my dream

Would come true when my words

First graced those kinds of pages

Not paid in wages but

They paid attention and

I learned what it meant to

Justify an end

That has

Greater worth than dollar

Signs

Product of the times

But not of it

I am the living paintbrush of God

And Life is the subject

Its point in one line

Of words

Is to learn how to love it

Makin’ It to the Mountaintop

(In Memory of Martin)

Let freedom ring

There is a ringing in my young Brother’s ears

But it is not freedom

It is the resonating sound of a crowd of

what feels like a thousand

brazen bodies

sending blows to his bloody head

as he lays still on the ground

jumped into an initiation

on concrete

almost beaten below it but for him

at least

now

he belongs…

For a broken boy in Brownsville

Brooklyn is the mountaintop, Martin

No other world exists to him but on

TV there are those in which they

call the Third— about which they

throw around words like terrorists

and religion and national security…

sounds pretty secure we must be

when all we see is the big bad

Bureaucrats taking over more territory

in foreign city streets

But how foreign can they be when they’re

closer to the color of

you and me

see, It’s the most organized gang activity

ever to be seen but it comes with no

handcuffs holding hands together

attaching them to time…

The screen

shows the enemy as

Bin Laden

in a cave hiding deep inside

The Middle East smiling that he’s

sending killers in to bring

America’s defeat

It’s too late, Binny, you see

The killer is already here

in McDevil’s beef

The killers are already here

Chase ing

Washington MuTilating

Washington DCeiving

And they broke levies in New Orleans

The killers

are counting the money

they rake in by making

these tapings

of terrorists waving

weapons of warfare…

The weapons

of mass destruction are

already here

in your food supply

your drinking water

and emitted in the air

from laced fuel

and the concept of

waste removal

is a sad joke

And after all these years of cigarette sales

then we heard that it’s bad to smoke…

After years of guzzling soda

they told us it was laced with coke

Then we found out

they were pissing off cows –

having them graze on, not grass

but grinded infected animal meat

to make them fatter,

We were broke

and

We thought it didn’t matter while we were

chomping on a slab of dollar menu

two all beef patties special sauce…

And then we started to choke

There is a ringing in my young Brother’s ears,

But it is not freedom

It is the resonating sound of the decree

Guilty!

It is the grating and high squeal of steal

grinding

to a finite close

We had planned the day we’d make our way

to the promised land

But then we heard it was

tax- free week on clothes…

There is a ringing, Martin, yes

But it is the sound of dreams denied

Not even deferred

Sagging…(all that fast food fat)

and Stinking…(or is it from the drinking?)

Rotting…(or is that the effects of the smoke?)

And then…and then…

Explode!

It is the sound of no

to requests for home loans

It is the sound of

"Baby, it’s the last time,

please forgive me"

and

Rizzo, Rizzo: Let my people go!

Fast forward to shouted lies of those

who have no souls

and who do not care

about Black people

or lost lives,

It is the sound of gunshots

that pierce the night air

and pierce the flesh

and pierce that sleeping young Brother’s dreams

along with sirens and screams

No, it is not the sound of freedom

It is the sound bouncing around the walls of

so many Black homes:

Mommy, where is my Daddy?

and

Mommy, who is my Daddy?

and the sound of

This is a call to all black power activists!!!

…Dial tones.

And if you should ever take that stroll

across the landscape of the

United States

Don’t forget to go through the ghettoes

The ratholes made so and controlled by

these slumlord assholes

These segregated lands where Uncle Sam still

rides around with Jim Crow

through the city streets

The villages where impoverished browns

are dethroned and thrown

In the first half of the twenty-first century

We still must maintain unity

We still want to be free

Black

Beautiful

Butterfly

Martin

Soaring high across the sky

All the wars

The rumors of wars

We don’t worry

We will meet you there

At the true mountaintop

In due time

Two Different

You and me in the same room

Playing two different songs

It’s you and me in the same room

We’re blasting two different songs

When did it get to be so hard to get along?

We both pulled up to the stoplight

Same time

Same timing

Said I was pretty and it made your day

Never quite heard a man talk that way

Sun was glistening my coiled tresses

It was your Sabbath

The head covering suggested it

White skin would incense the bredren

But since when do we need to please them?

Then

The light changed

And left the moment at the intersection

Colors range the spectrum

But Affection is Affection

Still…

You and me in the same room

Playing two different songs

If you and me would be in the same room

We’d be blaring two different songs

Why would it need to be so hard to get along?

Israel and Islam

The marvels and wonders of God that span from

Afghanistan to Palestine

The women of sand and myrrh give birth

And love no less than

Those over the wall do

Sweet smile and eyes crisp water blue

But your father wants to have Brooklyn Ave

Eastern Parkway, Schenectady too

And all the surrounding blocks

Must give him credit for forcing

The perfect fit to survive

Now owning the homes he once was

Sent to roam in when he arrived

Figured out that one may die

But a unified three will thrive

He will if the dollar will

His will all over the dollar bill

Blood-soaked hands and

Gentrification in the blood of generations

Hostile takeover which does not pass over

The tenement homes of young

Brown figures clutching

Tiny frames in layered blankets

Clinging not for hugs

But for heat

Would this do them a dishonor?

As they prepare for court tomorrow

To say "Repairs don’t happen there, Your Honor

The rent goes up

The building goes down"

His black-robed father

Leans back in the leather chair

And in a foreign legal-coded language

He says he does not care

And for once the language found

Between the two

Is clear

One may recognize me as she

Looks out the window while

Winter-proofing

Saying ‘Isn’t she the one who once

Donned the headwrap

Black fist clenched at the marches

No Justice, No Peace!

Star of David dangling

Screaming prophetic passages

From open mic poetry pedestals

Condemning Babylon

Has she gone out of her mind?’

In another place in time

We throw care to the wind

With the hand not clenching yours

I make a gesture toward

All the lonely loveless people

Passing by our speeding car,

Flying down St. Marks

Then shutting off the radio

No need for music now

Sound is our voices intermingling,

Wheels against road,

Wind against blue

Beige against cream

Passing the ‘tongue against cheek People’

Passing them traveling

At the speed of light

Anticipating the night

For its unbiased view of color

Carefree and clear as the April wind

Content with life shared

Under an indifferent sun

That shines Liberally over both

Crown Heights and Palestine

Game Over

(Dedicated to Dejuan – R.I.P., and to Xavier – that he will live)

It was Sunday

It was around two

Two-twenty in the afternoon to be

Exact and now looking back—

The sky was the brightest blue.

He was running

They were coming

He was wondering

What