Yusef Komunyakaa Online Poems Essay Research Paper
Yusef Komunyakaa: Online Poems Essay, Research Paper
Elegy for Thelonious
Damn the snow.
Its senseless beauty
pours a difficult visible radiation
through the hemlock.
Thelonious is dead. Winter
impetuss in the hourglass ;
notes pour from the encephalon cup.
curse the back street cat
howling a muted coronach
off Lenox Ave.
Thelonious is dead.
Tonight & # 8217 ; s a lazy rhapsody of shadows
rocking to blue dizziness
& A ; metaphysical funk.
Black trees in the air current.
Twilight with Nellie
dramas inside the bowed caput.
“ Dig the Man Ray of piano! ”
O Satisfaction,
hot fingers blur on those white rib keys.
Coming on the Hudson.
Monk & # 8217 ; s Dream.
The shade of bebop
from 52nd Street,
footmarks in the snow.
Damn February.
Let & # 8217 ; s travel to Minton & # 8217 ; s
& A ; play “ modern maliciousness ”
boulder clay dawn. Lord,
there & # 8217 ; s Thelonious
have oning that old funky chapeau
pulled down over his eyes.
from Copacetic. Copyright? 1984 by Yusef Komunyakaa
Online Source
A Break from the Bush
The South China Sea
thrusts in another herd.
The volleyball & # 8217 ; s a punching bag:
Clem & # 8217 ; s already lost a tooth
& A ; Johnny & # 8217 ; s left oculus is conceited shut.
Frozen airlifted steaks burn
on a wire grill, & A ; stat mis off
machine guns can be heard.
Feigning we & # 8217 ; re someplace else,
we play harder.
Lee Otis, the point adult male,
high on Buddha grass,
buries himself up to his cervix
in sand. “ Can you see me now?
In this topographic point they gon na construct
a
Hilton. Invest in Paradise.
Bang, fathead! You & # 8217 ; re dead. ”
Frenchie & # 8217 ; s cassette participant
unravels Hendrix & # 8217 ; s “ Purple Haze. ”
Snake, 17, from Daytona,
sits at the H2O & # 8217 ; s border,
the ash on his coffin nail
indicating to the land
like a crooked finger. CJ,
who in three yearss will trip
a atomization mine,
tallies after the ball
into the white horses,
express joying
Copyright? 1993 by Yudef Komunyakaa
Online Source
Confronting It
My black face slices,
concealing inside the black granite.
I said I wouldn & # 8217 ; T,
dammit: No cryings.
I & # 8217 ; m rock. I & # 8217 ; m flesh.
My clouded contemplation eyes me
like a bird of quarry, the profile of dark
slanted against forenoon. I turn
this manner & # 8211 ; the rock lets me travel.
I turn that manner & # 8211 ; I & # 8217 ; m inside
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
once more, depending on the visible radiation
to do a difference.
I go down the 58,022 names,
half-expecting to happen
my ain in letters like fume.
I touch the name Andrew Johnson ;
I see the dumbbell trap & # 8217 ; s white flash.
Names play on a adult female & # 8217 ; s blouse
but when she walks off
the names stay on the wall.
Brushstrokes flash, a ruddy bird & # 8217 ; s
wings cutting across my stare.
The sky. A plane in the sky.
A white vet & # 8217 ; s image floats
closer to me, so his pale eyes
expression through mine. I & # 8217 ; m a window.
He & # 8217 ; s lost his right arm
inside the rock. In the black mirror
a adult female & # 8217 ; s seeking to wipe out names:
No, she & # 8217 ; s brushing a male child & # 8217 ; s hair.
Copyright? 1993 by Yusef Komunyakaa
Online
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