"A Piece for Jasper's Children," A Poetry Post

Let's have a discussion,

you and I.

Let's accept the fact that you are

misunderstood to be a 

grimy, murky artwork,

a tarnished bit of steel cast aside by your

Creator. 

This is why people keep spitting on you. 

With good intentions, I assume, 

they keep spewing out degradations and belittlings to

inspire change in your stature. 

With their old way of thinking, they assume that

hanging you over the line and

striking you many times with consistent strokes will 

result in a spiritual airing of your great bitterness. 

You, however, cannot be spit shined. 

You are not a piece of old rug somebody's grandmother

dug up from the back room in the country and

drug out the front door for a good beating in The 

Sun. 

You are a hidden gold. Gold. You are so long

hidden in the Earth of this great PIT of viciousness that you must now be

mined out delicately. 

You cannot even identify your own self,

covered as you are in years and years of

build up and wash over and run off and 

environmental toxins. 

Your water table is tainted with the dumping of others

trash and commercial waste. 

You are a used and abused place. 

However, 

your fundamental nature cannot be tainted. 

All elements are themselves because in their

very composition you find only one kind of

stuff. 

We must now find again the

goldenness that you are 

made of. 

It will take a team of us, 

a team of us to cover ourselves in adamance and

come out into your pollution.

We will wade into the muck because we 

know that you are out there buried beneath the

ugliness of others' raw, denatured materials. 

We will lift up and drag out the barrels and

barrels and barrels of lies about your potential worth. 

We will scrape off the top soil and underlayers of your

toxic anger. 

We will lay down the peat and granules of our

personal disappointments and frustrations to draw out your

deep vitriol. 

We will dig and dig and dig to get to your location.

All we ask is that you STAY THERE!

Though you cannot yet see the light of day,

do not believe you are the tainted ground around you. 

Trust us when we say we are the professionals. 

Trust us when we say the earth can be saved.

Trust us while we draw out mounds and mounds of

groundwork you believed you needed to be something worthy.

Underneath this mess is your goldenness. 

It exists despite the misuse of your holy place.

You are not a landfill. 

After we have removed the garbage and 

cleaned up the fallout and 

shoveled out the dirt and

gotten down into the bedrock of your purpose,

you will realize again the

true state of your existence. 

We realize that some us will not live to see you come up entirely

out of the pit, but that is alright. 

We have already gotten dressed, 

and we have already gotten started,

and we have already been soaked in the radioactivity of

your situation. 

If you will be patient and believe us when we say there is

gold in these hills, 

you will realize,

someday,

that we are talking about you.

And you will know then,

that everything that everyone else said about your landscape

was a lie. 

-T. D. James-Moss

  

"Important, Version 2" A Poetry Post

The first time
Jonas Salk
saw a thing
die,
he likely didn't
see its whole
importance.

The first time
Alan Turing
put a pencil
to a page and
solved a
math problem,
he likely didn't
think it was...

The first time
Hitler got the
attention of a
crowd,
nobody likely
thought that was
outstanding.

The first time
Anne Sullivan
pretended to
stand before a
classroom and
give instructions,
she maybe didn't
take it very
seriously.

It's likely that
the moments that we
easily forsake as
unimportant are
in fact the
turning points,
turning points,
turning points.

They are the vertices of
great planes in our
angular existence.

They are the pivot points
before our great
breakaways.

They are the "Hallo!"s
before unyielding avalanches of
change in our personal landscapes.

They are as minute as
Joan Rivers' first joke,
the one she told in preschool
during nap time that got her
timed out.

They are as "irrelevant" as the
first time Bach heard an
eighth note.

They are as fleeting as the
first time Einstein
looked up at the
sunshine for a
little bit longer than he
should have.

Our greatness is hidden in the
soft and simple elements of
God's creation, unveiled to us in
our silly trip and falls,
trip and falls,
trip and falls.

In de la Renta's first glance at a
spool of thread.

In Horace Smith and
Daniel Wesson's first hearing of
gunshots during
hunting season.

In Dr. Seuss and
Charles M. Schulz's
uncanny interest in
sketching strange figures.

In Jim Henson's first love for
doll babies, puppets and fluffy lay-about
stuff toys for boys.

In Ms. Giovanni and Ms. Angelou's
"original" observations of
life's small joys.

It is all important,
important, important to
life's tapestry of purpose.

Every thread, every color,
every hair that falls out onto the fabric,
every burn, every tear, every mistaken
footprint, every stain and every
leaf that blows in from outside in the
winter... it is all, all, all
important to where we will go when we
do go into our complete personal glories.

Such is life's story,
a big thing composed of tiny things literally as
small as letters, and periods, and commas, and
quotations marks; unexpected things as unwelcome sometimes as
pencil smudges and erasures;
as common and yet as wonderful as paper.

All of it is key.
All of it is you.
All of it is me.


-T. D. James-Moss