Writings And Other Manifestations of My Mind

 “An awakened man is a warrior of the heart. He calls to other
conscious men to join the revolution, to lay down their ego,
and with true masculine energy, demonstrate what it means
to return to love.” — Daniel Nielsen

Watching you walk away from the house 
Cigarette in one hand, umbrella in the other
Wearing a suit of all-brown clothes
You looked like a man who had just come through
Your account of the events that put you here
And the pain in your voice reverberate in my ears
The pain is yours/mine/ours, John
We menfolk wear it 
Draped over our shoulders like kente cloth

Walk on!
Part company with hardheads and fools
Brothermen whose eyes are tinplate
Whose hearts have hardened 
From chasing delusions of patriarchal grandeur
No self-loving male person behaves himself 
That way anymore
What bastardization of one’s breath
What reduction of one’s potential
What needless pain to bear
What unnecessary dues to pay

You say your time here may not be long 
All the same, I say go back into the arena of life 
Not stuck on stupid as before, but championing 
right over wrong
Go back and give voice to a new paradigm of masculinity
One that values the character of every righteous brother
Regardless of his ethnicity, creed, hue, and sexuality
Go back and commit yourself to the struggle 
For wholeness, that the inner peace therefrom
Will lead one and all out of the wilderness of self-ignorance 
Into the light of self-acceptance

Go back, John, and help enlarge the circle of we menfolk 
Who seek deliverance from that herd mentality
That such change in our behavior
Will generate enough self-love to save ourselves
While there still is time
Go back with a considerate and compassionate regard 
For womenfolk and the nonhuman creatures 
Go back with the awareness that our humanity 
Is a combination of blended qualities
Yes, John, go back into the arena of life with the belief
That we menfolk all across the Nation
Will one day claim the unacknowledged truth 
Of whom we are in the spirit of the three musketeers 
And travel posthaste down the River Mississippi 
In flat bottom boats
To a harbor of democratic brotherhood
Copyright © 2019 Trifoglio

Buddies
one younger, one older
two males who seek peace
 
Brothers
one African, one Italian
two males whose hearts croon, seeing each other
 
In our reach for power  
we give orders, build skyscrapers, machines
bridges, parks, prisons, ponds
we choreograph ballets, make sculpture
write novels, preach the gospel of Jesus Christ
and live our days per the insights
bequeathed to us by Allah, Buddha, Brahman, Lao Tze
the seminal African gods, and Great Mother Spirit

Amico, as we behold the final summing up
let’s love and respect ourselves, our families, friends
womenfolk, and neighbors
Let’s reclaim and celebrate our humanity
and dance a New Millennial duet 
the likes of which has not been seen in recent times

We choose a course of action 
We do not choose our destiny
Copyright © 2022 Trifoglio

Listening to a deeper way
thinking how to outsmart adversity
without dying and losing his soul
he walked away from the juke joint
late Saturday evening/early Sunday morning
moving in communion with his third self
and the embrace of Grandmother Moon’s silver-gray arms

Poor
shy
scared
colored boy:
emotionally intelligent
physically strong
a tender-hearted thinker
the outside insider
raised up on corn, beans, squash
rabbit, fish
his mother’s biscuits, her collard greens
her teacakes and pecan candy

Passing the cotton patch
in the afternoon of the next day
he watched Iretha Swinson stand upright and blow
between its endless rows and bolls of whiteness
Her idealized beauty against the piney-woods horizon
caught his attention in a way
that leavened his uncertainty
and brought to mind the Mississippi tonality
of Jerry Butler’s floated vocalizing
Farther along, he started to disbelieve
the lies they told in the aftermath of each murder
knowing that said and done
neither were the whole truth nor gospel either
but empty words and aggressive actions
weapons for making extreme intergroup conflict possible
and sincere intergroup harmony impossible
Even farther along, he asked himself for the eleventh dozen time
how best to make it in a world without reverence 
for blood running warm in human veins
and the chorus of ancestral voices took him to task once more
“Normality is a paved road, Roijun2. It’s comfortable to walk 
but no flowers grow on it. The day will come, my son, when you have
to choose whether to be like everybody else the rest of your life
or make a virtue of your peculiarities. Care about what other people think
and you will be their prisoner”

Tonight, sitting in the presence of his memories
he recalls balancing the need in him to be alone 
with spending time in the company of like-minded others
during which fellowship he neither pruned the greenery of his spirit
nor withheld the multitudes inside him
but displayed each characteristic openly in childlike mode
And, smiling at himself, he tells himself 
each explanation given to justify the insane acts of life-taking
was/is an inseparable part of a procedure they follow without thinking 
of the consequences
Rocking in rhythm with this thought path
he contemplates George Perry Floyd Jnrs’ murder
from the standpoint of old folks’ wisdom
whereupon the chorus of ancestral voices gather around
and counsel him slowly in a mellow tone:
“Considering that it’s a man’s, man’s, man’s world
and domination and subordination are attributes of power
and Donald John Trump won the election in year 2016
and love, wisdom, and compassion are in need today
who is global enemy number one of humankind?”
Copyright © 2022 Trifoglio
  

Considering menfolk’s disrespect
for womenfolk, our only mothers
I recall La Chiesa Gran Madre di Dio
this April Sunday mid-morning
 I say the name to you
in an imaginary conversation
and drink coffee

In questo momento io ricordo
molte cose meraviglioso
your brown eyes, your ready smile
the flow of our jazzy give and take
speeding from Torino to Piossasco
to visit Sorella Rosella and Fratello Luca

Ti ricordi?

Yes, sitting here 
this April Sunday mid-morning
I am carrying the feeling and whatnot
Copyright©2021 by Trifoglio

 
 Buster, I know that you
the posthumous baby of seven
made some risqué choices
while feeling, thinking, and living
the melody of you/yourself/he
throughout the past fifty years
Thinking about old-fashioned loving
and how it begat the invader virus 
that bested your immune system
 and took you out on November 3, 2005
saddens me, little brother
 Likely as not, your ambition
 was to be a real man, to which goal
you worked hard, smoked weed, drank beer
made love, and neglected your well-being
Now that you are released from the flesh
and no longer subjected to the relegation of know-it-alls
who do not know it all, much less the half
 the news of your death brings in this thought 
concerning the transience of human life:
 When my soul returns to the place from which we all come
where space, time, and said and done
are of no significance whatsoever
I will greet you not as Buster or brother
but as a selfsame spark of undifferentiated spirit
©2005 by Trifoglio 

He was not goofing off, but
meditating on the snatches of hymns 
that hovered protectively above the hurt

He was not goofing off, but
repulsing stones hurled at him
by narrow-minded brothers

He was not goofing off, but 
managing as best he knew how
the pain of familial separation
and the temptations
pulling him up, down, down, up, all around
following nine years of living under the authority
of a petty tyrant 

Tonight, he exits the wings onto to the stage
dips his foot to the proving floor
and dances soulfully  
a whirlwind of strength, beauty and sound
for little African American girls who need a prince
©2021 by Trifoglio

You and I will meet again
in a place beyond here and now 
we will talk without using stock phrases
and heaping judgment on one another
like we did in the Paramount Theater
but smile and recall earlier days
when waking up in our right minds
brimming with the motivating impulse to grow
and become whole male persons human beings
was joy aplenty, purpose enough 

Upon arrival at that place of self-acceptance
a.k.a
the highest degree to be 
we will look into each other’s eyes
and understand why
Copyright©2020 by Trifoglio