Poem about Walt Whitman, Edgar Allen Poe, and Maya Angelou. An ode to poetry and the suffering it heals, this is "Leaves of Glass"
Leaves of Glass
Sleeping, dreaming, stirring alone
In a broken bed
On the eve of some anniversary
I never remember,
There was a lonely ghost inside me,
Singing songs in grey tones of October clouds
Like perfected cloaks of memory
Slipping away into oblivion propelled
From people and mind,
An invitation greeted me from the ghost,
Entreated me to a tricky dabble of conversation
About emancipating minds
Of transplanted souls-
“Come with me to New Jersey!”
In Camden,
Where the leaves of glass shimmer…
Distracted by a cancerous raven
Above my door in Baltimore,
I shook my eyes awake to cry for Shiva:
“Dance!”
And then the world ends,
Blackness becomes the universe again,
And again;
Breathing Vishnu,
Chanting in ashes of Wisconsin melancholy
Already,
Forbidden I am from bidding in this world
Again, so I chained my eyes to darkness
And dreams to enrapture the reality
Of ghostly burns bringing themselves
To my patriarchal altar of truth.
How dare I speak of Truth?
When my boiled blood bones abide this world,
There is no truth to drink for my mind;
Only oblivion.
Knowing why the caged raven sings, hanging
From a noose in November for a funeral
In Madison,
I embrace the nothingness until I am nothing!
Figments of imaginations from decades
Of fragmented history evade me as I sleep
Lonely in an empty universe, no eyes
To see suns become but the burning suffering
Of forgotten friends.
There is only a realization of self
That evaporates me entirely;
Eternal energy emanates from what remains
Of my living dream…
Vanquished from fevers of desire, my heart
Starts to breathe and fill the vacancy of love
Surrounding me in this world-
Until three eyes grow like trees on faces
Of all men, women, and children
Until shards of purple wisdom penetrate
The veins of proud gluttonous snakes
The world will end and come again
And awakening is inevitable.