Poems by Erren Geraud Kelly
October 25th, 2013 by admin
Buffalo Girl (Annie)
Knew a chic named Annie Who wrote poetry Later taught herself to play Guitar and discovered she was Pretty good at it I met her in a coffeehouse in Greenpoint, Brooklyn One night, when I was reading And looking to score some Boodah Annie told me she left Buffalo because living there Was like slow death And the factories made Ya old Before your time Annie’s face was a map of Sicily Her eyes like dark Olives You couldn’t stop looking at her Her mother was 100 percent Sicilian Annie hated being pretty And did things purposely To make herself look plain She didn’t want guys lookin’ At her She said she wanted to be More than just a pretty Face Annie would dress down sometimes Wouldn’t wear any make up But her Sicilian face didn’t Really need it Annie used to joke If I broke her heart, one of her uncles Would break my legs But she gave her love freely like the Wind Didn’t matter if it was a man or a woman A lover was a lover to her Once, Annie showed me her breasts In a private spot At the Brooklyn botanical gardens They were the size of honeydew Melons I nearly fainted She joked they were her best features They were her calling card Her songs were protest songs Which was to be expected of Folk songs And it’s always weird To see white people Rage against the machine When they are the machine “But Italians aren’t really white,” Annie said Annie was always trying to get Me to come to the Communist Party meetings I would always refuse I’m not patriotic, but I’m not an extremist I’m for nothing, I’m against nothing I fight only for the things that matter To me But I think Annie was about sex More than anything else She believed those myths about brothas Annie started out by selling cd’s on her website She figured came out better Than being on a major label She had more control And made more money The way Annie and I Broke up was absurd, comic maybe Things had been tense between us The last few weeks We got into a fight at a Chinese resteraunt And I accidentally knocked a Glass of water over She started screaming something In Italian And then stormed out I never saw Annie again after That A friend told me Annie had Looked up an ex boyfriend And wanted to play rerun Again I think Annie just wanted to do the “rock star“ Thing And she didn’t want to deal With a nobody Or maybe I was just a rebound fling Something to help her get her self esteem Back? I hear her albums from time to time She’s come along way From the coffeehouses in Brooklyn But I’m always cautious Of olive-eyed Sicilian women Who give their Love like the WindShoulder length and longer
If a woman’s hair Could be a flag Hers would be the Freak flag jimi Sung about so proudly Her hair would be the Star-spangled banner On steroids Her hair doesn’t scream “fuck you" so much As proclaims “this is me, deal with it" Like she stole a peacock’s attitude And co-opted it All those long brown locks Are the united states of HerEbony Body
She chills to pac p biggie bone Because black pride is a special thing And aping one’s culture Makes her feel less guilty about her Own She is rail thin stocky pleasantly Plump Around the middle sometimes Down home pail with freckles Rarely Hollywood tan Maybe new England alabaster Just enough accents around the breasts and hip To make a brother get his game Tight Get him thinking about getting in that wet A mutation god never finished She’s down (some say she’s dumb Say it’s more hip to be square But she’s a square peg In a round-holed world God never got around to finishing Her properly Ebony soul trapped in a white bodyFourth Of July
i don't know what the crowd watched more the fireworks: or me in my danger educated blackman t-shirtexotic
"you're not really exotic anymore," she told me "there's nothing about you that's unique or marketable. your only real talent is you know how to work a cliche." "angry black poets are a dime a dozen these days and the 'victim’ schtick is getting old." but that was what i always wanted: to be black on my own terms not be a black man the way the whites or blacks wanted me to be but be a black man in my own way i'll never be a prisoner to anyone's stereotype or be confined to a fill-in-the-blank on an application so, if you're offended that i like "catcher in the rye" more than "the autobiography of malcolm x," too damn bad if you're pissed off cos bach, rachmaninoff and bob dylan move me as much as miles, jay-z and al green i have no apologies i'm nobody's black man but mePosted in: Uncategorized, Forever Journal