Gifts Of Strength Xx Unit Poems Xx Improvisations 06 17 2018 Xx 10 15 2016

Charlotte, NC 28269

Improvisation [4] 10 15 2016 xx 02 26 2011
(Improvisation [2], Page 34-39,04 30,2004)
Improvisational Modal-Poem-Jazz-Suites
Original 09 06 1975

(page 1 of 8)

GIFTS OF STRENGTH:

I

(poem no.1, Gifts of Strength)

When fear was almost laughter almost tears
None were but were to be becoming
Life’s givers and life’s takers becoming
Always from giant black figures of strong
Backs
Mansion attics hiding written wills
Master architects
Silent bearing
Gifts of Strength;

He snapped the head from the slimy-backed
Blue racer, crawling under hay field foot
And smiled
His one life’s smile at me
Grandfather Noah
With clock like face and a father’s
Giving
Gifts of Strength;
None of us were there are here or will endure
through fields of fear can keep from where we
Came returning
Gifts of Strength.

Lee Mack copyright 2009. ISBN # 0615318347.Reproduce with permission only.

(Lee Mack, Gifts Of Strength: Improvisation [2] 04 30 04 – page 2 of 8)

II

(poem No.2;

None of us were less becoming
Out of laughter out of tears becoming
Through fields of fear
Giving,
Gifts of Strength;

Fields of fear spread shapelessly
Over arc-life bounded smothering wonder
Arbitrary action and adventure but we
boundless and whole
give-on giving
Gifts of Strength;

Some were bringing fear in laughter
Some bearing fear in tears some borne
For others
Giving
some kept in doubt forgiving
Some silent bearing
Gifts of Strength;

III

Some were anxious without being – minstrels
Of fearful insecurities telling tales of
Night before myths to make themselves fit in
With ideal observable facts
Of life’s giving and we were little girls
And boys
Becoming fearfulness and silent
Gifts of Strength;

Lee Mack copyright 2009. ISBN # 0615318347.Reproduce with permission only.

Lee Mack, Gifts Of Strength: Improvisation 04 30 04 – page 3 of 8)

(poem No.2;

Black male bodies scavenger hunters
With Kentucky ‘craw-dads’ in spill-ways
Flowing through city sewage waterways
Caught some and let some go
Like female out-of-season catches
Or members of holy ghost church choirs
In winter time summertime Church choirs
Were muted by absent female voices
Summer voices
That sang places… male and female
Rang out
Gifts of strength,

IV

‘Hunt the skunk with wolves’
Chased the same valued railroad
Cattle-corral hay-beds
And nestled hot touching bodies
Together giving
Gifts of Strength;
On hot summer days females sat on
rock fence posts – holiness
Amid seas of hay fields where youth
Toiled at harvest time at becoming men
Black-boy sun scorched backs
Bled with sweat’s fearless hope
Life’s once female smile
Was all the observable facts
Of life’s giving
Gifts of Strength;

Lee Mack copyright 2009. ISBN # 0615318347.Reproduce with permission only.

(Lee Mack, Gifts Of Strength: Improvisation [2] 04 30 04 – page 4 of 8)

V

Poem No.3; ‘Aborting Female Summer Heat’ [Gifts of Strength]
06 17 2018 Improvisation

On school days buses smelled
Of wet-licked rubber tipped pencils
And sport sweat and aborting female
Summer heat and fall’s falling
And winter’s dream solitudes
Summers’s valued loves and beds
Less remembered than
Bodies held recalled
In giving
Gifts of Strength;

Almost without dreaming
days become real dreaming real
Almost together real dreams;
Spring’s observable life giving
Melding all of us each becoming anew
Together like hay at harvest time
Growing into life’s arenas

VI

From blue funk traditional Fridays
Into transformed cabarets
Of weekend
Gifts of Strength;

(Poem No.4; ‘Crossroads’ [Gifts of Strength]06 17 2018, Improvisation

In nineteen fifty-two
Used Chevy sedans
We painted over life’s giving
At crossroads,
At meetings of indecision
And partings of regret
We became in becoming
People traders
In the marketplace of souls
Finding
Some willing traders bartering
Day-dreams for night-beds
And sometimes
Long term life tracts
To make ourselves fit in
With life’s observable facts
Of life’s giving
Gifts of Strength;

Lee Mack copyright 2009. ISBN # 0615318347.Reproduce with permission only.

(Lee Mack, Gifts of Strength: Improvisation [2] 04 30 04 – page 5 of 8)

VII

We kissed painted faces
And caressed bartered bodies
Scoring sides
With broken hearts
Wrapped in wet chic chicanery
In smiling faces without
Ego trips
Without mutual externality
With gestures of chivalrousness

Spirit-filled
Giving
Gifts of Strength;

Still we touched each other’s
Warm body places
That could be
But once
Yet came again and again
To feel-dream empty intimacy states
And reasoned full lust-hardness
Softened
Into life’s giving
Gifts of Strength;

VIII

We watched each other give
Through tears, saw ‘jive’
Sometimes in laughter
Who gave with tears
Love’s labored joys
And in laughter
Love’s unfulfilled once
Smiled upon,
All of us shimmered
And we shake more or less,
To each other’s touch
In cold embrace
Returning
Gifts of Strength;

(Poem No.5; ‘Life’s Shared Humor Secret’ [Gifts of Strength]06 17 2018, Improvisation

Our life’s shared humor has become
secreted knowing non-realities
And spirited changes
Sometimes we give away our bodies
Without minds
In the plaza of mind-changers,
Value raisers surround
The one once smiled upon who sits
Like earth drawn around
A Gambian root alone observing it…
To wit
Or to wit not in giving
Gifts of Strength;

Lee Mack copyright 2009. ISBN # 0615318347.Reproduce with permission only.

(Lee Mack, Gifts Of Strength: Improvisation [2] 04 30 04 – page 6 of 8)

IX

We combed city streets clean
Of wasted tears and laughter
Sometimes in some timeless places
We found imagination in
Still-dreams at love depths
Or we found real-ways in dream-ways
Of the mind
Never taking place from places
To place on places found
And closed within and
Closed without to loves shared
Bosoms lifted
To rest ‘That Way’ and never given
To name to proclaim
Gifts of Strength;

Tell in tears deep depressed Monday’s
Forgotten Friday’s laughter
Recall if you gave anything at
Weekend’s convention or took the drug
Or drank the wine or loved
In warmth you gave
Recall no more convention
In giving
Gifts of Strength;

X

(Poem No.5; ‘Outcomings of Caprice’ [Gifts of Strength]06 17 2018, Improvisation

Few ever humored us alone
Without out-comings
Of caprice, those were humbled
That once so glad
shared Smiles upon that good night
We danced
And we dared the vows
We loved in giving
Gifts of strength

Do recall we smiled
Upon each other’s
Shoulder at birth giving time
And again in the habit we had on
Chased away a field of fear
And gave
Gifts of Strength;

Lee Mack copyright 2009. ISBN # 0615318347.Reproduce with permission only.

(Lee Mack, Gifts Of Strength: Improvisation [2] 04 30 04 – page 7 of 8)

XI

The wind-song of our wordless mouths
In light of curriculum schools
Of child-like reflected
Minstrels and ventriloquists faces
We smiled bemoaning we were lusting
The sculpturing of wonder defining
Faces discovering the body worthy
Becoming fearfully
Gifts of Strength;

(Poem No.7; ‘Dying Hearts and Digital Soul’ [Gifts of Strength]06 17 2018, Improvisation

On corners we stood to lose
We protected life’s goodness
From assassins
And raged into city streets
We gave all we could give
Before
The long sleep and raged in
silence promised
Gifts of Strength

XII

We watched each other give
Through tears, saw ‘jive’
And sometimes
Laughter
Who gave with tears
Love’s labored joys
And in laughter
Love unfulfilled once
Smiled upon but all of us
Barely matter
More or less, responsible
For each other’s touch
In search of
returning
Gifts of Strength;

But life’s shared humor
Flashes a smile and dims it
To cover secret hidden
Non-realities
And spirited changes
Given but taken away
To give again
To inhumanity bodies
And minds without the code
To transform electric water
Dying hearts and digital soul
Channelling to translate
Blood red love
To one once smiled upon who sits
Disconnected at the root
Observing it…
To wit not
In giving
Gifts of Strength;

Lee Mack copyright 2009. ISBN # 0615318347. Reproduce with permission only.

(Lee Mack, Gifts Of Strength: Improvisation 04 30 04 – page 8 of8)

XIII

When we grew weary at forty we looked
Into painted windows
Into transparencies of
Experience Into the dust of our decay
– Again into the wind-song of our half
Smiling faces -there reflected in tears
And joy
Underneath herb filled mind
Behind the eyes a spiced wound whines
Between our love addictions
To bind to life giving
Gift of Strength.

Some of vision could not blindly accept
Went on beyond the ordinary
Asking questions of an empty silence
From which no answers come
We nod to acceptable permissions
Giving
Gifts of Strength;

XIV

So hands were held for rings
And bodies unto themselves
So minds again melded
More to laughter than to tears
On dark days of separation
And giving in to loves addictions
We sank into opiate lives
Wanting each other’s love addiction
So souls took for granted
Giving
Gifts of Strength;

We grew weary at sixty
To look again into windows
Of unfulfilled memories
Coveted allusions – happiness
Intent on avoiding
Committing
Murderous adulteries of the soul
So the herb filled mind
And love addictions
Found life’s giving
Gifts of Strength.

Unconditionally
Human nature
Strengthens conditional desire
Giving all that gifts require
Conditionally
A quantum God to feel me
And let me go
For infinite desire
For yours for mine
Strengthens
Conventionally freely
Giving love to me
for
giving us
Gifts of strength.

Lee Mack copyright 2009. ISBN # 0615318347.Reproduce with permission only.