Sweet Solitude
eBook - ePub

Sweet Solitude

New and Selected Poems

  1. 148 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Sweet Solitude

New and Selected Poems

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About This Book

Drawing deeply from the well of the African American experience, Leonard Slade's poetry addresses a wide variety of subjects and themes, from beauty, family, and nature to racism, religion, and politics. Running throughout, however, are the importance of love, faith, and the human need to be connected to others. Included in Sweet Solitude are new poems, previously uncollected in book form, as well as selections from the author's twelve volumes of previously published poetry. These are poems of celebration and endurance for all readers.

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Information

Year
2011
ISBN
9781438433462

New Poems

Heifer

She laughed with thunder
In her voice like a snake
Rattling and crawling to release venom
For bone and blood,
Sucking the marrow out of life.
She loved big butt cows
And with a body like an elephant
Called people names:
Heifer
Witch
Bastard
Then changed her tone
With words dripping honey.
Suddenly her asinine behavior
Began again with anyone
Who disagreed with her,
Challenged her ideas,
Complimented her sincerely.
She loved and hated,
She shouted until her foot broke.
She ceased laughing and began crying
Over past suffering and work conditions,
Inflicting pain on others
Who had helped save her soul.

Picnic

Crisp winds, radiant sunlight, the day
of happiness—maybe these are
the signs to believe the future. At least now
there are moments to laugh
before the picnic ends,
when conversation becomes
food for the soul.
More and more you learn to celebrate
the small things in life.
You know that God is watching
every day you live
giving freedom for love
peace and joy.
You may as well be God-like
at picnics, too, where
Divine light shines
and the devil runs for cover.
22 July 2007
Colonie, New York

What I Need Is

What I need is
Enough love
To last forever
What I need is
My wife
Sharing unconditional love
And my daughter
Believing in my immortality
And my mother promising
Never to forget me
In her prayers
And my friends
Accepting me for
What I am
My idiosyncrasies
My down-to-earthiness
My strengths
And my weaknesses
My country ways
And my worst days
I dream
Here and now.

I Want to Live While You Love Me

I want to live while you love me,
While you send me cards from afar,
While telephones ring endlessly for me
And yellow roses reach my door.
I want to live while you love me,
And bury the past pain,
And shower tears on our souls,
To heal before I am dead.
I want to live while you love me,
To understand my cross
Till blood ceases to drop
And deeper love to communicate.
I want to live while you love me,
And never, never apologize
For what we could have done
But celebrate the now and what will be.

Highway to Love

I want to send you
a love poem as long
as the highway
after evening
when we drive
around its dangerous
curves and climb it
slowly with you
next to me
every light and bump
in its way
enjoyed
every sound
so melodious
with radio music
we hear
we must stop
hug each other
we must kiss
each other
and remove fog
on the windows
have our hearts
slow down we must
hold each other.

I Do Love You

Everything you’ve given me, sparkling eyes
looking at the tears of the years, to give me
strength, massages on my back to unload burdens,
and the honey words of some saints, sacred from
hymnals, poems, and the Bible, and what
have you received in return for your oneness
with me?
The daughter from your womb. The hell of my
foolish ways. Lack of common sense. The
betrayal of hypocritical friends you warned.
I do love you. Who is to define. I love you, your
soft music, your letters stored in my heart for immortality.
I do love you.

Brothers

The hard days of youth at home
Were fraught with field work,
Preparing us for the real world.
We plowed behind mules,
Picked cotton from sunrise
To sunset,
Occasionally pausing to
Dream of another world
And crawling wit...

Table of contents

  1. Title page
  2. From Another Black Voice …
  3. From The Beauty of Blackness (1989)
  4. From I Fly Like a Bird (1992)
  5. From The Whipping Song (1993)
  6. From For the Love of Freedom (2000)
  7. From Vintage (1995)
  8. From Pure Light (1996)
  9. From Neglecting the Flowers (1997)
  10. From Lilacs in Spring (1998)
  11. From Elisabeth and Other Poems (1999)
  12. From Jazz After Dinner (2007)
  13. New Poems (2008)
  14. Acknowledgments
  15. About the Author