You Gotta Have Heart by Deborah Guzzi

The Gift of Presence by Raymond Saunders, 1993.

You Gotta Have Heart
 
Tag words: advertising, bebop, bird, bottle, Charlie
Parker, Coca-Cola, Cole Porter, Dizzy Gillespie,
door, flag, heart, jazz, light bulb, Louis Armstrong,
Miles Davis, palette, Pepsi Cola, pluralism – found
object, retablo painting, sculpture
 
Arbitrary or subconscious, he picked six.
Man created on the sixth day from darkness;
we came into the light, of knowing, of naming.
Satan, sin all held within, black of skin Oh
Africa chopped up bleeding, a third world’s
doors, Saunder’s shows black, nailed shut.
 
With the skin of drums, the heel of hand, he
pounds the nails on the trail of the carpenter.
 
Kept in place, Lot’s of salt white line the globe.
White powder, white power, sugars the impalpable,
addicting first with coca leafs and caffeine, doping
the public poor for dimes. Reinforcing the lure
of the bottle; the cola bottle that fell unbroken
earth from the sky in The God’s Must Be Crazy,
 
some have always used their addictions to create
like a found object we too fall calling to Mother Mary.

Deborah Guzzi

This poem was written for the 20 Poem Challenge.

Deborah Guzzi's poetry appears in Magazines: Existere - Journal of Arts and Literature in Canada, Tincture in Australia, Cha: Asian Literary Review, Hong Kong, China, Eunoia in Singapore, Latchkey Tales in New Zealand, Vine Leaves Literary Journal in Greece, mgv2>publishing in France, RedLeaf Poetry, India and Travel by the Book, Ribbons: Tanka Society of America Journal, Sounding Review, Kyso Flash, The Aurorean, Crack the Spine Literary Magazine, Liquid Imagination, Poetry Quarterly, Page & Spine, Ekphrastic: Writing & Art on Writing and others in the USA. Her new book The Hurricane is available now through Prolific Press.