Monday, August 06, 2007

what music will we sing

what music do you sing
in your heart when you dream
what is your stereotype?

is there room in your soul
for more than what you know
to be the ambiguous archetype?

can you swing, can you sway
is courage there to play
in colors more than hype?

can you groove in the shoes
of different souls than you
in rhythms that are ripe?

are the skins of bronze and rouge
and browns with all their hues
coloring your world tonight?

can you share in the joys
of multicolored girls and boys
who dance in musical delight?

will you jam in your soul
as the inner-city grows
with drumming power and fight?

can your burdens unite
in common human strife
to breathe life’s vigil light?

can the music’s sweetness flow
from your head to your toes,
bring peace to your darkened night?

can we open our eyes
to see a paradise in
hides of our neighbors plight?

can we lay aside ways
long instilled through our days
to bring peace into purest light?

can you take my tarnished hand
and dance in demented lands
to usher in the noble knight?

will you lay down your blades
and calls for jihad’s ways
to dance with me in plain sight?

can you trust my outstretched hand
which longs for you to stand
with me, although i am white?

will you give me a chance
to act far beyond the romance
to dance in peaceful respite?

can you join my rapt jazz
and play a tune that has
the peaceful rhythms of right?

what music will we sing
in our hearts when we dream
when we write the new stereotype?

© 2007 BY W GARY FORRESTER

Saturday, August 04, 2007

if ere there's been a time

if ere there’s been a time that longed to call
upon a pow’r with greater strength than i;
to reach out to another one; to fall
upon my knees in humble fear, then why,
can it not be now? what wretched pride made
naught my fearful heart, and gallant folly
filled it's noble place? o that my faith was staid!
my unbent brow in contrition would be,
in awe before the holy majesty
of life and death and all that is unseen.
i'd bow in fearful hope to share my plea
to see beyond the way that i have been.

but yet, alas the fruit of death once hung
has poured it's deadly wine upon my tongue.

© 2007 BY W GARY FORRESTER