Category: Poem

Tommy

We began in the same house,
two boys at the same table,
same passions passing back and forth
like playing catch.

Always knowing,
never having to ask.

Years later
I put down the glass
and questioned everything.

You stood on the other side of that
as if I had closed a door.

Moving forward.
A ring. A home.
My life moving one way,
yours another.

I called.
I wrote.
I left the porch light on.

Nothing.

Then the telephone rang:
fifty-one,
his heart,
sudden.

A few ordinary words
and every door locked at once.

Twenty-five years today.

Some days I still want
to pound on that door.
Other days I sit beside it
and remember two boys
who knew nothing yet
about leaving.

This morning
the chair across from me
is pulled out slightly—

just enough
for my younger brother
to sit down and say hi.

Looking Back to Africa Where Time Has a Different Density*

I came,
I saw,
I was conquered.

The world
incomparably richer
than anything I had been taught.

Africa does not exist —
only poverty,
only dignity,
only abandonment,
only endurance.

The malaria mosquito
decided history.
The desert
teaches humility.

Independence brought
responsibility.


Colonialism left behind
borders,
habits of thought,
fear
that travels faster
than wind.

A crowd
is a separate being.

The traveler
discovers himself
only when he loses his way.

Time
has a different density.

The problem is not only poverty,
but the absence of choice.

The reporter
must be quiet enough
to hear
what is not being said.

The world
is not a rational place.

The greater the poverty,
the greater the need
for dignity.

Patience
is a form of intelligence.

I came.
I saw.
I was conquered.

These words and phrases were gathered from the Polish writer and journalist Kapuściński’s The Shadow of the Sun, a collection of journalistic accounts and essays during his travels in Africa.

Hohoe, VR, Ghana

Bitches Brew

The studio became part of the composition.

Not chaos —
direction.

Rhythm moved to the center
and stayed there,
low and circular,
like a thought that won’t resolve.

Texture replaced harmonic motion.


Improvisation was collective —
no one stepping out front,
just currents crossing currents.

Electric sound opened new space.


Tape hiss.


A razor blade lifting silence
and laying it somewhere else.

The music mirrors its historical moment —
voltage in the air,
streets unsettled,
nothing wanting to close.

Davis was always listening forward.

Jazz did not end here.


It changed.

And in the change
pulse overtook certainty,
groove kept widening,
and the lights in the control room
burned past midnight
while the future assembled itself
from fragments.

And listening changed too —
no more waiting for the solo to arrive
like a clean answer.


You had to lean in,
stay inside the weather,
let repetition become hypnosis,
let ambiguity breathe.

The listener became part of the mix,
not solving the music
but entering it —
finding meaning in the mystery of the world,
holding the pulse
until it began to reveal
what it never intended to explain.


This is a found poem composed from words and ideas from Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew by George Grella Jr. Feel free to share your experiences with this masterpiece of modern music.

Weather inside the Weather

I’ve never trusted the loud surface of things,
the noise beyond the headlines
hijacking my attention.

I turn instead toward the weather inside the weather,
light breaking out of its own shadow,
a chord held longer than it should be,
almost refusing to resolve.

I wait for the hush after the ferry horn
when the harbor keeps breathing anyway.
Kapuśińki walking through Accra dust —
not filing copy, listening.

Noir light slipping through blinds,
everybody marked, nobody simple.
Deep thinking feels like this palm at night —
fronds flaring out of blackness,

structure rising from dark without announcement.
At this age I resist the easy answer.

I grow outward into depth.

Ambition has fallen away.
What remains is home.

St. Simons Island, Georgia