This eclectic compilation of poetry greatly ranges in terms of style and content. The author, Alton James, reveals a command of words, phrasing, rhythm, and sound in a way that penetrates the heart. Anyone can feel the emotions and images that he conveys through this magnificent collection of poetry. Mr. James evokes the language and ideas from early British and American authors. However, in the same vein, he calls on utilizing the edgy and straightforward writing of modern African American poets -and everything between the two. Along with his craft of language, Mr. James intertwines his musicality and musical identity into his work. His multitude of experiences gives a depth and breadth to his work that is salient and original. While the styling changes quite frequently within and between selections, one thing is for certain. Alton James presents a fresh form of poetry that is real, raw, and ready to be revealed and received.

Cerebral Sentiments

By ALTON MAXEL JAMES IV

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2012 Alton Maxel James IV
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4772-8761-3

Contents

Active Comfort............................................................2Addition by Subtraction...................................................4Apothecary................................................................8As I Float................................................................10Being One.................................................................12Blackness.................................................................14Busy......................................................................16Chances and Choices.......................................................20Cosmopolitan..............................................................24Dominion of the Liberated Libertine.......................................28End of Time...............................................................32Epiphany..................................................................34Faces.....................................................................36Fragility.................................................................40Giving, Forgiving, Thanksgiving...........................................42God in Us.................................................................44I Quit....................................................................46If I Could................................................................48In Shades of Black and White..............................................50In the Gathering..........................................................52In the Wilderness.........................................................54Insatiable................................................................56Insomnia..................................................................58Invincible................................................................60Let's Put Tomorrow in the Past............................................62Limitations...............................................................64Living Fight..............................................................66Man's Privilege...........................................................70Me........................................................................72Memories..................................................................74My Plea, My Wish, My Prayer...............................................76My Test...................................................................80Queen Arthur..............................................................82Rebuild Me................................................................86Significance..............................................................88SomeBuddies...............................................................90Stagnant..................................................................94That Was Who I Am.........................................................98The Aftermath.............................................................102The Demon in the Closet and the Monster under the Bed.....................104The Door to the Left......................................................108The Holster's Sword, the Bullet's Gun.....................................112The Plight and the Blight.................................................114The Reason Why............................................................116Time Traveler.............................................................120Too Late..................................................................122Transparency..............................................................124Violence..................................................................126WWWW......................................................................128Your Voice................................................................130Youthful Vivacity.........................................................132

Chapter One

Active Comfort


"What is your purpose?"
How many times has this been said?
In genuine reflection ...
Or pejorative pain?

"What is the purpose?"
How many times has this questioned the world?
In interested inquiry ...
Or possessed pessimism?

"If you have nothing good to say, don't say ..."
Well, I'm sure you've heard the rest ...
Why not bring comfort to everyone?
When we can activate altruism

Be my comfort, be my strength
Activate my actuated action of affection
Let's be our, active comfort


Addition by Subtraction

My tongue slithered, cut, and torn
Severed, cracked and unearthed like an earthquake
Then finally ripped from its own place, mute, and voiceless
But the pain doesn't flee as every day the Amber of my blood
reveals my physical and emotional scars
Within my throat a voice wishes to speak
But it is beaten, raped, and manipulated
Just four simple letters does it wish to utter

But its unmerciful bondage binds it to its own misery
Enslaved by the revoked tongue and pain of running Amber
These letters bound for so long gnaw, rip, maul, and tear out
my throat
Now irritated, dilapidated, and frustrated it grows
submissive
A submission that only wishes to mutter just four simple
letters
For so long is it mute, blind to its audience, and deaf to its
own ingenuity
It seems endless ... as if 12 millennia, 15 centuries, 22
decades and 5 years
12, 15, 22, and 5 ... symbiotic with alphabetic articulation

Long lasting longing of life
Overly often overt in offering
Varying vitality vocalized in veracity
Every effort expressed in emotion

In time I come to find my audience my equal
Sharing in the abysmal wretchedness of my pain that flows
As we both are bound by cages, we seethe and growl like
animals
A cage, a cell in which we wish, we long to control but are
bound by
A prison of my being with no ceiling or floor, just
letters—four

And I fall, I fall, and so I fall
Two encaged, enraged, enslaved
Four times these two now double the pain
Eight walls, eight letters, eight months were tamed
Now things become clear, the knowledge I obtain
For my ignorance is lifted like a curse
One that plagues the body, heart, soul, and mind
Only to embrace in its cure

With the joyous removal of my ignorance
So goes trials, tribulations, suffering, pain
My tongue returned to its place
Its painful Amber outpouring now embraced, crimson
returning
As it supplements, gives life, and nourishes
I can see, I can hear, I can feel

The two are no longer bound, but free
The two are no longer inept, but enabled
The two are no longer slaves, but masters

As both were set free, we lay claim to our overseers
As our cages become a crib, rocked and pampered
As we were released we, now have control and freedom
The eight walls, the eight letters
Became the four walls, the four letters we now share in
Becoming the two of us
Which are now one


Apothecary

I fall to you ...

I run to you, for you hold what I need

You dangle it from on high and remind me of what I don't
possess

So you remain avail to taunt, tease, flaunt ...

Each new nuance you nurture in my nutrition

For you compliment and supplement simultaneously

I find myself unable to escape your dizzying spell

A numbingly neurotic narcolepsy-my narcotic

While leaving me in ecstasy, confused, frustrated, and wary

I never thought my heart, my mind, my soul, my being

Would ever open its self to marry

You—my apothecary


As I Float

Walking on wind
Running on water
Love locked within
Respect even broader
As I float
From what they do
Your feelings to share
Felt all the way through
As I float, you make me fall
As I gloat, from your call
As I note, the twinkle in eye
As I float, you make me fly


Being One

I know there's more to my life than this
More than power, money, or eternal fame
More than working to sustain my life
But to fall into one another as time lingers on
Among eating, sleeping, and breathing
Before anger and war kills our people
Preceding the bias and prejudice in our hearts
Lies the serenity of your sweet caress
If I could live in the way I desire
Or had to breathe my last breath
I would find myself in your embrace
Encompassed in joy that remains immortal in my heart
Despite the evils of our world
That thrive in the injustices around us
We become frozen in time
As we lose ourselves in being one


Blackness

Blackened blackness they view
But bold beauty I see
Running smoothly over
Flowing, oozing as a stream of strength
As they sit denigrating
The grade of Negro they negate
I make naïveté nil
And cement their negligence as all for naught
For they fought, then they fought, now I fight
For the right to make night my sight
Providing light to the night that frights
Them to hate, to mate rage
As they assume themselves sage
Only to see me away to a cage
But skin doesn't pin my soul within
Only my mind, in kind with love
My family here and those above
So as they sit, I stand
Poise, patience, and knowledge in hand
Balled in a fist and ready to land
Upon the sands
With my blackness


Busy

When I was a child, I reveled in the moments of
nothingness—
An epoch that consisted of careless thought and unguided
motives,
Streams of consciousness bereft of true feeling and purpose.
But as time progressed, depth, complexity, and neurotic
tracks closely
trailed as shadows in its wake-silhouettes of a countenance
Once imagined, but never captured-a picture of broken
promises
that now remain encapsulated in veracity-so clear that they
transmogrify into spears that pierce the very fibers of my brain.

So you ask why am I so busy?

The penetrating shriek mars my skin as my eyes go into
convulsions-
5:00 a.m. bleeds the crimson numbers into my vision.
Breakfast, shower, dress, the road traversed.
Papers, charts, graphs, presentation, meeting, documents
read and produced
Graphs, charts, meeting, documents produced and read,
papers
Presentation, meeting, graphs, production of papers and
documents,
Fleeting specs of thought, never coherent—disrupted,
created, and shut down
Again—no time I say, no time that I have, no time wasted ...
So you ask why am I so busy?

Night falls once more as my eyes capture every crevice of the
ceiling above
Brain segments in perfect unison, streams of consciousness
disseminate into
one. So potent I become transfixed, never pulling away—
you think it's a handicap? Is being paralyzed handicapped,
or something totally
foreign?
Now my thought takes razors to my epidermis, pours salt
into
its pores, places oil to the skin—healing and soothing—but
then, the
match is lit, smoke choking the very life in me.
Needles pierce the skull, the mind pleading for
release—EYES WIDE
SHUT—the torture persists, conscious, lying awake.
A cotton down thrown, the other side I occupy. I reach over to
the other, and you are not there.

So you ask why am I so busy?


Chances and Choices

Born into a state
Born into a state of status
Born into a state of stature
Born into a color, a race, a face

They say you can pick your friends ...
That you can't pick your family ...
How lucky or unfortunate for folk
Depending on their fortune

How frustrating when forged by fate
The state of one's state or mate,
When plight falls on their plate
Nothing to change in the change of rate

My existence an extension of existential eccentricity
An anomaly of another life, and lives
I live in this place and this time
My former selves no option either

Lives of persecution for their pigment
The breaking of bones in bondage
And now magically I arrived here
To hear the sheer fear and mere hatred

Why don't I salute your flag?
Or sing your songs?
Join you in praise,
Or forgive your wrongs?

For I am here by mere happenstance
A simple game of chance
For centuries you violated
Trial hated, with your vile hatred

Remember why I don't take up your lance
Because through your volition you vanquished our voice
Remember, I am here by chance
And not by choice ...


Cosmopolitan

As the elements multiplied from the spawning of one, came
the myriad beacons known simply as "son"

Seeds of illumination harboring ambrosia for joy, incarnate
through germination of girl and boy

As they frolic and dance in reckless infancy, waltzes turned
war amongst siblings

Through battle and death and pain and strife, prophesized
the impossible, the crib of life

Infants turned toddlers, maturation now teen, cemented
fledglings and all in between

The beacons stretching broad the roots of their trunk, still
entrenched in the forest long ago had they sunk

But with roots interwoven intertwined they be, can't help
but believe they're fixed tightly in me

In the breeze and the grass all captured in eye, and every
other body caught gracing the sky

When the roots stretch so far back through the Great Tree,
how can't its great reach be without legacy?

A lineage seen, a lineage heard, and a lineage felt, a lineage
born, a lineage died, and a lineage welt

But a lineage eternal spiraling twice over in helix, a lineage
adorned as the Intrepid Phoenix

Given breath in all real, in all realms and lot, alive in all
thought, in all known and not

As my hand grazes the contour of everything around, the
Great Tree whispers an all loving sound

"The world that you know and see and smell is simply the
creation of an austere hell. That which you taste and feel
and hear, is a state created out of your own fear. When your
eyes find a sight unknown before, and when your ears catch
bias and horrors in lore, forget all suffering this life puts you
through, for all is me, and connected to you ..."


Dominion of the
Liberated Libertine

In this domicile
This dormitory
This demanded and desired domain
Bondage cowers in the shadows
Yet restraint remains
These four walls
Enclose on some and expand for others
Yet no one traverses or transcends this place ...
This, the only nature in this dominion ...
One day when listening to a libretto,
I sat in a library
And read of a thing called liberty
In contemplating its consequence
I could find no consistency or cause
But the constancy of calamity for its company
As more letters poured into my eyes,
Words formed, then sentences, then ideas
My mind rose with the rhetoric
Soul souring, consciousness finally flew
With growing knowledge, self-awareness, and purpose
The literature littered amongst the libraries,
were loquacious libations leaked into my likeness
The life of this now liberated libertine
But what of this liberty when body binds
Heart to mind and mind to self

Suppressing in claustrophobic confines
Playing part in this puppeted prison—this place
I cannot forfeit to the demands of my desires
My dreams, my wishes, my goals ...
And no one can, no one ever will
You are not free
Despite your cries,
Despite the infinity of the skies
Despite the world's inquiring "Whys?"
This thing called freedom is nothing but lies
Free-Dom
Free's dominion?
The dominion of the free?
From one end ... "Let me live, let me survive, let me thrive,"
the pleading persists
From the other ... "Take me into your arms, let me leave this
world in peace," pushing pardon
So what is this, freedom?
So different in varied hands
So much for all
But nothing for everyone
For some the beginning, for others the end
So what is this freedom?
When for some death is freedom
And others, freedom is death ...


End of Time

Space is made of nothing
But even nothing has something
And in the end, something is nothing
But something is anything, and anything is nothing

So what is a thing when a thing has no name?
When a name can't define, a space without frame
So what is a space when we codify its measure?
And what is a measurement when one can't mark a ledger?

So if space has an end, "El Fin" we'd see
But a measurement is finite amongst infinity
And what is infinity if infinity is finite?
If time has a beginning but time has no end

See, the end must have a beginning,
So when is the beginning of the end?
But if time had no start then how could it finish?
And, how could the finish have a start, if the start had no
finish?

There must be a beginning before the start,
And a start before the beginning
So, in finding the beginning before the start, and the start
before the beginning,
Maybe I'll just wait until my time ends, or better yet, until
the end of time ... (or whichever comes first, I can't count on
winning) ...


Epiphany

Eyes wide open, eyes wide shut
A giant ray of lightning just hit me in the butt
It's like a symphony, played only just for me
Opened up the sky, and sang it in my key

Cause right before my eyes
When succumbed to my cries
I looked at my demise
And said my "goodbyes"


Faces

Counting the cacophonous caucuses that are the crevices
and counts of characterizations of my countenance proves
enumerable, enigmatic, and counterfeit
Behind slanted eyes and the smirk smile is a man someone
can see
Eyes that sought serenity when senility was the sight I saw
And you ask what I'm thinking?
Why race to make a case to find lies behind eyes when the
answers you seek would lead only to sure cries?
But the multitude of the myriad of muscular manipulations
upon my face are mired in meaninglessness
Falsified faces found to be furtive are frivolously futile and
without function
Why seek motive or unscrupulous thought when my face
lacks purpose?
What you seek, you cannot find ...
Wrap your mind around my own ...
Place your feet in my soles and your soul in my feet ...
Carry me when you think, walk, or speak ...
So what can be deduced when the display is deprived of
decision?
And what can be said when I know nothing of my own
knowledge?

When expression betrays emotion and your love is left in limbo,
Fall to the recesses of your own mind and heart
Forget all, forsake everything, and remember nothing
For not only am I ignorant of my own insights
Not only am I blind to my own reflection
But faces unknown and feelings not shown
I know not of what lies inside or shines aloud
What makes me cringe or makes me proud,
What makes me pry or raise hopes to the sky
Not yesterday, today, nor the future in eye
Neither will you, and neither will I ...


Fragility

One instant
One second
One moment
The colors, the sounds, the winds, the rain
The sun, the moon, and all from whence came
Gracing your eyes, ears, soul, and mind
All so precious, priceless, yet so immense
Monstrosities dwarfing all it holds in their palms
All from big to small, still to mobile
All so irreplaceable, and yet all so fragile
Captured in a moment
Captured in a second
Captured in an instant
The image still
Your thoughts mobile
Revering in the blissful motion
Life's canvas, your soul's potion
Time persists, the image fades
Thoughts hasten
Body's spryness chasten
The fibers inside all a wastin'
The body releases ...
Once mobile, now still
Never to move again
All so soon ...
One instant
One second
One moment
How fragile, being mobile ...
From mobility
All, ultimately, concede to life's fragility


Giving, Forgiving, Thanksgiving

The rules, the regulations ...
Negotiations, rules, and consequences
The parameters under which we live by
The ones that hold us until we die

Some say, "Live and let live"
Others say, "Avoid the foolish and those who follow the
fool,"
While most say, "Stick to the Golden Rule"

But, to have true living, start with giving
For in giving we become gifts
In living, practice forgiving,
For in giving, we are pardoned
And lastly, in living, exercise thanksgiving
For in giving thanks, we are given thanks
We welcome our worthiness
As our place is our grace,
For one another,
And we,
Are free ...

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Cerebral Sentimentsby ALTON MAXEL JAMES IV Copyright © 2012 by Alton Maxel James IV. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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