Mustard Seeds Update

My new book, Mustard Seeds, includes a poem on the back cover that's a bit of a brain teaser. See if you can figure it out.

Book Page: https://amzn.to/2SoucWq

Author's Amazon Page: https://amzn.to/2SmbqPm


View images from the illustrated version of the book Mustards Seeds at Fine Art America: https://fineartamerica.com/profiles/daryl-horton.html

Degrees of Love

Degrees of Love

Rain drops drip
Dripping…drip like
Lips tangled in confused twists,
Teeth embed in flesh, wish
Sounds of beating heart
Like beating fists
Dexterous enough to clinch
The folds of skin fingers pinch
As palms press
Heat rising from flesh
Igniting change
Merging, merging, merging,
Pleasure and pain
Pleasure and pain
Pleasure and pain.

Educate.us

Educate.us

Standing tall, next to the desk,
Little boy, speaking clearly,
I want to be a farmer,
Plant seeds in the field of minds
so people can understand the hand of God and
would use the two they have better than they do now.

Raising hand quickly,
Little girl, unable to wait, shouted
I want to plant seeds in the heart of men
so they would gladly go to the grave for one another
having become acquainted with the true meaning of love.

Shy one, in the back, slowly
Raised hands, waited to be called on,
Softly, words left lips and filled room with claps,
I want to be like you...
plant seeds in the souls of the young
so they grow tall with thick branches and
strong roots,
so dreams could reach the limits of space and
we, no longer captives of time, live in forever
because never would drop from vocabularies
replaced by I can...I will...

that's what I want to do.

If I Could be more...

If I Could be more
Than what I am
If I Could be better
Than what I might become
Than maybe I Could be
Like the Great I Am
A God, A God, A God

Grasping tightly to brush, fingers
Dipping feathered ends into can
Slowly stroke the canvas of life
Colors and shapes and lines
Reimange the world
Hands paint pictures on grains of rice
I said, hands paint pictures on grains of rice.

Taking a stand and refusing to simply
Allow words to pepper speech
With meaningless nouns of repentance
Tongue takes action, driving verbs and reverbs
Past clinched teeth, until until
Lips tell the story in a single sentence
In a single sentence.

If I Could be more
Than what I am
If I Could be better
Than what I might become
Than maybe I Could be
Like the Great I Am
A God, A God, A God

If hands could design structures with just a spec of mud,
If fingers could Write a song using a single note,
If heart had enough compassion to
feed millions of hungry with a loaf of bread and fish,
prevent the trafficing of women and men,
eliminate terrorism and racism from consciousness
Remove the gap that exists between the rich and poor.

If I Could be more
Than what I am
If I Could be better
Than what I might become
Than maybe I Could be
Like the Great I Am
A God, A God, A God

A Short Analysis of The Vacant Lot

A Short Analysis of The Vacant Lot by Gwendolyn Brooks

For this poetic analysis, I've chosen the poem "the vacant lot" by Gwendolyn Brooks. You can read it at Poetry Foundation at the below link. The poem is a part of the collection that comprises the book "Selected Poems" by Gwendolyn Brooks. You can find a link to the book below. I will focus primarily on imagery.

This poem seems to be about a woman, Mrs. Coley, and the way her daughter treats her new husband. A lot is said in this poem of 12 lines. Mrs. Brooks makes use of metaphor, the sense of sight and even a bit of metonymy to develop the imagery in this poem. She begins with metonymy, with a phrase that represents the homes of Chicago when she writes "three-flat brick." In the next line we are told that it isn't there anymore which does two things for the reader. First, it further develops our image of the Chicago home and it evokes a feeling of emptiness.

The next image we are presented with is that of our second character in this poem, a woman who is described as fat and little. The next line tells us more about this woman as Mrs. Brooks uses the action word "burst." Our image of this woman should not be that of a meek woman at this point. We also understand that she lives in the basement, but why?

Our image of the mother has changed as well because she says that she's "all done with seeing" this girl she described as fat and little. Mrs. Coley has a distain for this girl, who we discover with our next image is her daughter.

Our next image is that of the third character in this poem, a man we are told is Mrs. Coley's son-in-law, who she also has some distain towards. He's described as someone who is always smiling as there seems to be a very strong focus on the shape and color of his teeth. We also understand him to be foolish since his wife is further described as someone who sees other men in their home behind his back. Maybe this ignorance is why Mrs. Coley shows distain for him.

The fact that Mrs. Coley's daughter cheats could be the reason she lives in the basement. We are, however, still left wondering why the feeling of emptiness at the beginning of the poem. Shouldn't Mrs. Coley be happy the home is gone since she had to deal with two people living there she cared little for?

References

Brooks, Gwendolyn (2006). The Vacant Lot. In Selected Poems. Retrieved from

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/172085