HARAMBEE GREY-SUN

​ My poetry has appeared in a handful of literary journals, including CrossConnect, Epicenter, RiverSedge, the South Carolina Review, the Squaw Valley Review, and the Wisconsin Review. I am the author of Wine Songs, Vinegar Verses and Spring’s Fall (Autumn Numbers, Book I). I am also an alumnus of the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley.

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​                THE MOST MISTAKEN


Stan called it an accident of God--
“the Most Mistaken Revelation”—this
enhanced determination to subject one’s enemies
to Love, 
to release judgment and to forgive their trespasses
as they trespass on the correct way to grasp and
to love.

“The Eleventh Commandment.  It’s perverse.  A one doesn’t fit
inside a one,” Stan contended as he stripped down and strapped on
his vest of many favors:  bulletproof, fireproof, 
and a flotation device.  It covered an array.  
But it couldn’t delay the inevitable.
“Past time to put what’s right right.  Even the odd.”

And thus Stan began his war with and for his God, 
saving Him, correcting Him, by sacrificing himself
as he set out for his job, maintaining the water park,
at dawn on the day
devoted to Pride.


           WHAT MORE IS THERE TO SAY?
 
It could not be worse
than when he answered
“Favorite fictional character?”
with “Myself,”
later adding “God,”
and “Satan”—an odd conflation
of artistic cons,
some called it.  The Artist who purposely limits
potential influences simply to achieve a pure
and surely limited audience may get a side
effect for his cause:  apple-saucy applause,
rustling leaves.
 
So many years without one date
can force one’s mind to feed on more than memories
when making queries of history, carried and
left to be parried by future myth-makers tracking
their way back to ruin, then (maybe) reinvent.
 
“The only fact to leave those not yet born is a warning:
‘The greatest trick Love, hustling, might play is
to make would-be lovers believe It doesn’t exist, save
as a joke, a gas, the ghost of a pact between deities
who divorced on an orchard’s stage.’
 
“Can you imagine a situation where the population regards Love
as nothing more than a minor character in a fantasy?”


                TO BREAK A WORLD

Mary, mirror your lover’s error;
pass the lipless kiss, Word
without letters, to flow, 
sowing waves—no sound, 
dry witness, no bounds--
Imagine the blue mute Singer, 
her green seeds growing
a dirty ditty in all 
willing and open to cut 
the immaculate
but immaterial cords.