for you, Gearity
This poem is called we are all orange
They asked me to speak to you
About poetry, diversity
To say we are the same would
Cause scandal, controversy
To say whether we are sisters
Or brothers, adults or coming up
We’re all corrupt and are corrupted
To say we start out right, even
If we are interrupted, to say we
Start out downright perfect,
o Say, somewhere someone loves us,
Even if it's just one person who isn’t nuts
To say we start out fresh and gather
Dust, to say we have the world in the
Palm that grows outside our huts
In the hassles happening outside
Our castles, to suggest the streets we
Walk to stand in line for the bus
Or limo, tractor, compact, Hummer, trailer, SUV
To suggest those streets are any less than
What makes us us
So so we grow every day we listen up
To the traffic, (o say can we?)
Beats in tires squeal ling
Drums in the weathermen flying
In the copters, songs in the ivy
And the pattern that it makes
On buildings, sweet and ill feelings
Climb up
What climbs on us? What jive shucks?
Black yellow brown red and white
Fingers grip a pen or punch a pad to write
Man woman child and in between
Copy down to share what they’ve seen
Whether voices carry on with fictions
Or speak personal truths to say we
Are the same is contra(diction)
Diction means to speak
Make us proud
Make it from the heart
So we can see we
So we can see what’s we
So you can see that you
And i are me
Yeah right, you and what army?
The power of the pen the sword
Cuts down the might of
Buildings, businesses, mayors
Contracts, cancers, districts
Color blinds venetian opening
Consciousness like traffic widens
Power of the pen so much stronger
Than living in one
Opening consciousness
Doles out beats
Could walk or could be walking beats
Could strum or drum or try’n compete
With the sounds outside and ivy growing
Patterns round the style you all
Are just now knowing
That you that makes you you
And me you too you
Yoo hoo –did you say diversity?
To say you’re me would cause a scandal
Differences is who it is that just loves us
Cause they give the boost so you
And I can know just what is what
Is that’s what
Blue green violet and orange
In sixth grade the joke was ‘nothing rhymes with
Orange’, but I’m not listening
When fruit is just been washed its glistening
When I speak my rhymes whole hoards are
Listening, so when they say cant you rhyme
You spit o-range
Ohio’s in the foothills of mountain o ranges
We climb and descend
o Cleveland we can’t rhyme with us
In the sunset we are orange, all of us
When the sun sets another day makes history
o We start out right, we climb we.
