Welcome to Poetically Yours. Poetically Yours showcases poems by northern Illinois poets. Today’s segment features Aubrey Barnes also known as Aubs.
Barnes is from the Quad Cities. He’s a poet, spoken word artist and teacher. He created Roaring Rhetoric to give artists a platform for their poetry. He also started the Young Lions Roar Project. This outlet allows Barnes to teach youth about writing and performance poetry. This is his first time on Poetically Yours but he was featured on WNIJ’s Sessions From Studio A with Spencer Tritt. This is his poem “Strange Joy.”
My first day in Haiti be one of irony.
As I sat and sipped coffee in earthquake shooken slums,
Where kids kicked soccer balls back and forth over field,
Formed from fallen buildings broken and buried under feet,
I saw Pallbearers who treated funerals like,
A high school graduation.
Trumpets, drums, voices cried out,
So loud that Silence ceased.
Better yet, She joined with noise;
Celebrating Life and Death,
Boasting in Body and Spirit,
Both the seen and the unseen.
Laymen would celebrate Souls of atheists in passing.
Family members who held long fiery feuds
Would pour tears over own wrath
That’d wash their heart that hurt for human they once hated.
No matter if members were sick of so and so,
No matter if nemesis made neighbors nauseous,
No tongue spoke ill of ill intentioned.
Besides grave, there was neva’ no dirt digging,
Neva’ no chucking stones at one’s weakness
When they can no longer defend.
Neva’ no bursting balloons of those grieving
Because you are filled with hot air,
And someone’s gotta get the smoke.
Someone’s gotta suffer like you.
Someone’s gotta wonder like you;
“Why must sinners be loved in death?”
Why shed tears for someone who shed blood?
Why show grace to someone who gave none?”
Cause that’s what the Heart simply does.
They say Heart be wicked above all things.
They say Heart should be kept above all things.
They say Heart caused Christ to be moved to tears.
When Lazarus laid, Jesus ain’t pull out no scrolls scribbled in sins
Reminding others of evils he did,
Nor rumors that ruminated ‘round him;
Jesus wept.
Only fools find ways to simplify a lifetime
To one fault found in a story with a million chapters;
Filled with good, bad, and ugly outcomes.
Yet we hold to stones to cast,
Obsessed wit causing payback by death,
Heart gripped wit vengeance
As rage beats through our chest
Instead of choosing to free our hands of the offense
As easy as the dead release their last breath.
I think that Pallbearers,
Who’ve literally held death in grips,
Can understand the Strange Joy
That comes when you let go.
- Yvonne Boose is a current corps member for Report for America, an initiative of the GroundTruth Project. It's a national service program that places talented journalists in local newsrooms like WNIJ. You can learn more about Report for America at wnij.org.