PERSONAL REVOLUTION

Mr. Morgan is on the streets

Homeless and stressed

Because he can't read

Sister has a child

Alone with no man for support

Just a boy

Who is the father of the unborn

No direction for the future

Blaming his parents, preacher and teacher

For his bad decision

Is this away of life

Or just a personal revolution

Can't find a job

Sitting inside, without education

Can't keep the faith

When its' GOD you hate

The cop has you locked

Mad because you know your wrong

But you can't change that wrong now

Is this away of life

Or just a personal revolution

A child killed to day and yesterday

Taken away from it's mother

So much greed in society

We can't believe

Now what does all this mean

Is this away of life

Or just a personal revolution

Find your self a new direction

Make revolution of education

Don't take what they give you

Take all you need............and more

Don't make revolution with blood

Just because of the ignorant word

Your brother said

Is this away of life

Or just a personal revolution

Don't let your daily life

Equal to a 40 ounce or a dollar fifty

Just because ignorance is thirsty

Is this away of life

Or just a personal revolution

The Development speaks out

With life music

They have the right to do that

That is a personal revolution

Alice speaks out

Because her sister

Wants to harm her-self

Because of tradition

Living by the word

Living for the word

That is a personal revolution

What is our true direction

Our true way of life

Covered by the lust of inhumanity

Break the chains of political enslavement

Break the chains of social enslavement

Break the chains of education

To limitless knowledge

Break the chains of racism

So we can be brothers and sisters again

Let us wash our hands 

In the waters of revolution

Make personal revolution

The direction can only be chosen by you

Are you going to work for your better day

Or just play like its' your last day

What is your true way of life

Were is your personal revolution

©Copyright 1993 Thomas Dooley

ALL FROM WITHIN

Is there a place? was the question asked

A place for all the pain All the tears and suffering

A place for the difficult

She found it within a poem

With in the ground, in all of nature

She found it... Within the banks of a river

In a river that has gone by so long ago

As she stepped in to bathe

This river wasn't the same

She wasn't the same

This was her time of self discovery

She found the answers to her questions

She found them within herself

The joy has been found

The words still survive in her heart

Our mother's gardens still bloom

She has survived the difficult

She found it all from within

©2009 Thomas Dooley

This poem was inspired by the book The Same River Twice: Honoring the Difficult (1996) by Alice Walker.

MARKS

MARKS

Marks from long ago
Marks that pierce the skin
And cut the soul 

Marks that defined the sense of pain
living in the memory of it day after day

the scars might be old
but the pain is still well known

Marks on the body
Memories for the soul
Should we always do what we are told

In a pool of empathy I swim
I float on the surface
Pulling close to a word
Hope that I will never sink in
Marks of lies, killed by time
but the pain remains alive

© 2009 Thomas Dooley

It has always been my dream to walk in the footsteps of AliceWalker. I wish I could just sit back, enjoy life and just write. I know not everyone's life is perfect. There might be some dreams that Alice wishes her life could be like too. The past five years I maid it my goal to write over one hundred poems a year, with the exception of this past year of 96' I have achieved that goal. When I started out 96' the concept of POET TREE came to me. At first I didn't understand it until I maid trip to Atlanta. I went down there to work the Olympic Games. I was able to stay at the dorm at SPELMEN College. It was a thrill for me to know that Alice Walker walked these same sidewalks and been inside these same buildings. As I looked the campus over, I found it The POET TREE. That visit still moves me deeply, I hope to one-day return to this place.

POET TREE

A word to grow, a seed in the soul
Hold to a phrase, branching out your way
What is in you, grows as you become whole
Growing high, growing with time

Each word growing freePoet Tree
Words are the leaves
The title is the tree. It grows in me
Many lines many pages, another poem today
Life has changed; it has gone it's own way
Don't want to write another poem the same
Poet Tree, It grows in you as it does in me
100 more poems growing from my soul

©2009 Thomas Dooley

Poetry is from the soul; it is a moment in life put to words. It isn't words that we use that define us, it is how you use them. If the words you have never pass your lips or the end of your pen, then they are just words, words that go unsaid. Alice Walker explained to me in one of her books what poetry was. It was so clear, poetry is an emotion. I feel it is this emotion that gives a voice to all the other emotions within us. That is true expression. Thank you Alice Walker, now I know how a poem is made.

REALITY DREAM

In the eye of inspiration

There is a dream

A dream of beauty

A dream of a destiny

The need, the desire

I focus my prayers toward that dream

To touch, feel and hear

The inspiration of that dream

It can't be given to me

I must take the best of me

Reach out for that dream

And make it reality

©Copyright 1993 Thomas Dooley 

ONCE AGAIN

In the begging
There were peaceful things.
As time went on
The man has made walls.
Tall and strong
Holding in, keeping out

Someone seeing
The justice being denied.
Need protection
Not from evil things
Not from greed
(but from you and me)
Stores of the past
Of our past
Denied, hidden in time
Time and education will release
The stores from their prisons

Stores of Denmark
Stores of Nat
They had solutions
Like many other solutions to fallow
A solution to be heard

Why should I question my friends?
They show me no contempt.
Only if I'm not true to my words
My friends are the words.

A child with old eyes
Grandmother's eyes
With a warm soul
A warm heart
"I'm your friend," she said
(I would smile)
What will this child be like
When she sees the anger and fright
When she proclaims who she is
And who her father is

When I'm told of other people's sins
I feel I should commit even worse sins.
To feel worthy to forgive
Something to confess

History is too scary to forget.
To truthful to remember
It is repeating its self-today
Ignorant mistakes won't change it.
It is the same thing today.

Will we return to segregation
When some say that is the only solution
Restricted from my brothers and sisters
Because we are different
Not to learn from each other.

As a child
The little boy
Would wave the flag
During the parade
Now he argues and complains.
Because he can't burn that flag today
Once again, we look to find
Our ancestor's graves
Across, a rock, a mound of dirt.
Without any words
Not many clues, for some to know
Where they came from

We look to the sky
Once again

THRIVE TO WRITE

I thrive to live a writer's life
Pouring out my soul in words
Craving needing inspiration
So I can write

So many writers come and go
In a poem, they left their song
Soon they became insane
I pray I don't go that same way

Fearing the sight of my own blood
I use black ink instead
Putting my pain into words
Will it ever do me any good?

A poetic child I am
Falling in love with my teacher
She is the writer I would like to be
Teaching me how a poem is made

I thrive to live a writer's life
Not the kind who looks for something to write
But the kind who find it in nature
Who finds something to write about themselves?

©2011 Thomas Dooley