1: Rage of Jacob

Rage of Jacob!

Dragged by the chains of his namesake, you see-

"Burn that leather bound Book,"

is softly whispered in the left ear,

as the Sunday prophets buzz

like, the stinging bees

humming in the right.

"You cannot wear red!"

they scream, with a prick-

standing behind a wooden

odalisque.  "You cannot wear red!"

These bulls charge the poor man,

"only a white shirt! Always a blue tie!"

they demand, with their yellow jacket stains.

Jacob heads to his home,

a bus ride away-

from those wasps in their hives knocking on his

front porch.  His choice is wrong.

Jacob loves the honey, but the bees

are too much; yet he chooses

a land that hates sweet things.

"Eat this radish ." Its lumps are as arms and legs

He peels and skins the layers-

there is no sweet like the pops

in their paper wrappers (the same paper

he writes with at an institution

wearing the very red he cannot wear at home).

Trapped between walls, one infected with

bees, the other holds a hammer,

and he is a rat, by his sad nature,

like that Native Son.

They all stand behind a hypocritical oath.

"I hate these white walls!"

his mother says to a halfbreed,

might as well have named him "snow."

Jacob, with a hatred, screams-

like those sad backwards fool from

1948! "I did not come with eloquence

or human wisdom.  I am Simon,

you pigs! I have rested that day

in a beast-like stupor; look what

you do to me to make me all

Black and Blue! I have learned

so much and come back to rid

of your shadows-yet you

condemn me?" and that old bird-

that idiotic RED bird chirping

"Yum Yum Yum"-that fat little bird

squacks back "I do not trust

the validity of anything you have

to say" (watching a wall-with a campfire behind).

Caught between a left or right

ear, a hammer or a beehive,

"Red," or "White" and "Blue."

I have met Jacob at my home,

in my school, at my church.  He lives

in that monstrous reflection.

I will not be smashed

by red brick, or drowned in a blue sea!

I was not born with that name-

Do not treat me as that man!