This is somewhere in Nigeria today.

In the cities electricity is rationed

Meaning water is off too

Those that speak out

Against corruption in government

Are subject to the souls that have been bought…

Renowned American Poet Ray Whitaker Shares his Poems

Ray Whitaker has been writing poetry since about age sixteen. His poetry writing covers current events with intuition, clarity, and form.  His poetry has been described as poignant, relative, and invoking. He is a member of the NC Poetry Society, the NC Writer’s Network, ‘The Neopoet Group’ in promoting an International Poetry Family and participates with other Poets in anthology works [2022].  Since moving to the Colorado Springs area in 2021, he has been participating with the Pikes Peak Arts Council and other cultural resources during National Poetry Month and Arts Month in Colorado Springs. His interest in photography has been in place since his teenage years. He uses several Olympus Digital Cameras to record and compose his images. One of the mature voices in poetry, his work brings insight to the everyday occurrences in our lives, as well as in-depth examinations of the dilemmas we find ourselves in.  Sometimes writing as a Poet of Agitation, as well as a Poet of Witness, his work is current to most any reader.

TERRIBLE NIGERIA

Green troop trucks

Rumbling thru the jungle

Roads there rutted, potholed

Big enough to splash thru

Troops benched up in back

In green and brown camo uniforms

Fifteen year olds clutching AK 47s

Trucks lurching towards a distant vil

Where an organic thatched roof village

Was existing unbeknownst

About the brutality about to visit.

 

This is somewhere in Nigeria today.

In the cities electricity is rationed

Meaning water is off too

Those that speak out

Against corruption in government

Are subject to the souls that have been bought

Enforcing rationing of the basics

Those that are looting, emptying store shelves

Are hunted down and shot

By these teens in troop trucks

 

While TV talk shows

Pretend to be progressive

Talking about equality with their women

A farce,

As if having the freedoms of first world countries

A duplicity, a fake, a dichotomy

Envious of the satellite downloads

That representation of enviable cultural components

Only dribbled out to the population

Just enough to prevent rioting

Sometimes.  Those fifteen year olds

With AK-47s are a present reality

Distinct, surprisingly quick to pull triggers

This experience country wide

Revolves and devolves

It is a whirling current at two rivers

Intersecting.

***

FOLLOWING THREE POEMS ARE FROM THE BOOK “ANIMALS” 

MYSTERIOUS TRACKS

Something is walking on the lakeshore rocks

It is big enough to move some of them

Slightly askew, each morning I see

Some more of them have slid into the water.

 

What carelessness

Causes rocks to move

A weight of whatever context it was

Is a telling factor, speaking tales around the fire

 

The heaviness of personality traits

Moves us

A deadweight might be so much

That we seem to be only moved

In the direction it takes us.

 

It’s not all we are compelled to do

That force,

Those directions, and conceptions

Driven by the myriad complexities of Human Being.

 

Whatever is walking on the stones lakeside

Has all of the exigency of experience

Nearby up the shore are Human footprints

Petrified, half a world away, that line of footprints

Is found on a long ago, dried up ancient lakebed

Having walked ever so slowly thru the eons.

***

REDISCOVERING LOST WORLDS

A waterfall plunges hundreds of feet

Down into a chasm

Only flown into by Hummingbirds

They dip into the edges of the cascading water

And slipping thru the rainbows of red, blue, yellow and purple

Down there.

 

Green vegetation grasps tenuous footholds

On rock faces lining the walls

The water cares not, it goes on

There is a quiet roar from below.

It is as if the water is civilization

Slipping towards discord

Descending away from the heights of culture

Languages, arts to be forgotten as they always are

 

On the broken cliffs of time,

As humanity searches for the right answer

Stubbing toes on the wrong interpretation                  

Even whilst standing in broad sunlight.

 

The river continues to pour over cliffside

White mist obscuring seeing the way

Pouring towards a new enlightenment,

A coat of many colors.

 

The rock beneath is ancient, smooth brown sandstone

Fossils can be seen within them.

 

To trudge on this unevenness

Is stepping in the direction of a distant hut

Barely visible off in the horizon,

The light inside welcoming we strangers

Encouraging us to step determinedly

Towards building anew.

***

BLACK JAGUAR

Moving in the pre-dawn light

Thru the mostly dark scrub brush off the beach

Putting distance along and away, then over dunes.

It was important to get to the rocks

To bathe in water energy from crashing waves

The direction heretofor untraveled needed it.

 

The moon, the moon had

Shifted into a new moon

From its last reincarnation of blood moon.

 

Now doubling back

As if to follow the energy

It felt.

 

He retreated, suddenly leaving,

Having seen the big cat-

Moving back to the safety of porchlight,

 

Or the illusion of safety

That all would be somehow remain well

Near a structure.

 

Hearing it’s breathing just around the corner

Freezing, not daring to look or even breathe

Both he and the animal were formidable.

 

Jaguar stealthily came around and looked at him

Unafraid of each other, they were both still, standing

In the pre-dawn looking intently in each other’s eyes    

 

Waiting

For the moment of realization

Really for the transference of spirit each had to give

 

Receiving courage, strength

And just enough stealth from jaguar

Jaguar kept eye contact.

 

Receiving intuition also

Reading signs, with unveiled eyes

He broke eye contact with his feline brother.

 

Thanking it out loud

Hearing a low grunt in response

No blood shed or combat like infantry with swords.

 

Each moved back to their own spheres

Better prepared to press into

A new path awaiting the new moon

 

Demanding, insisting, no choice but to

To be traveled, that traversing, immersing

Into differences shaped by old blood moon’s fading.

 

He never saw it again

Part of him sadly missing

The communion he’d just had.

***

STORIES FROM THE BEFORE

There are many great warriors

And the tales about them

Are about the steel

 

The shiny metal dragons flying separating the wood

Grey metal whales cleaving the sea

Those steel armadillos dissevering the enemy.

 

There are many great renditions

About the brave, who once having been fearful,

Became fearless, facing enemies with found courage.

 

My Father was one of them.

He flew the steel dragons dropping from the sky

Inside God’s Bubble making the ground shake

And those on it afraid of the fire from the sky.

 

Three great conflicts did he fly the steel dragons

Girdling his iron underwear to ready for the fight

Carrying the fire to his enemies.

 

There are many accounts of dropping out from clouds

Silently falling earthwards bringing terror

To those bound to the ground, the hordes of Mongols dissolved.

 

I have his blood in me being of the warrior clan

Courage flows in my arteries

Resilience courses in my veins because of that.

 

It is a joy to know this part of me

Because of that I can look the bear in the eye.

If I should die from it, that will be a good death.

 

I will join the others from The Before

Swiftly when that occurs

The shared blood draws it nigh.

 

My Father waits for me there

We will see each other again

And tell our stories of the Earth.

________________

Read: No War – Selected Poems of Ray Whitaker, an eminent American Poet