Sapphire Us

Sometimes I paint.

Does Sonia Sanchez paint? The window pane

Inflamed by the sun’s arms reaching in, pain-

Ful at such a green hour. Hours pass

 Our bodies. Undulating and crafting

Reasons not to stay. Trapping shadows in yesterdays.

Peter pan. Poor man. I wonder what

It would be like to walk the walk

Without a translucent friend of incandescence

Under our bodies. Martin Luther King Jr.’s shadow bled

Black. The same as him. I bet.

I bet a saxophone’s shadow bleeds blue

And breathes indigo too and catches the gold,

Dripping notes of its friend, the saxophone,

And feeds them to ours. Our hours 

Here are not long. But our hours are ours.

And my daddy loves Johnny Coltrane

And for some reason also loves windows

Because they’re mostly squares.

But I’m not so sure he can say the same about jails.

***

Light/Inverted Light

The light.

It floats

to clothing & things,

and doors partially open.

And if the light can answer a riddle correctly or

if these things have considered it

with an open heart, they will surrender

a part of themselves as a place

for part of the light to

rest. A refuge, for the time being.

And the uncollected saturation,

unphased, and as content,

will become inversions 

of clothing & things,

and doors partially open

and paint its own mysteries

across walls & ceilings,

without any riddles!

How willingly

a room exchanges itself

for mysteries & things,

and places for light to

rest. 

How willingly.