In school he met an Arab
who was the the kindest of men
they shared religious conversation
that eventually came to name them
as boys their heads were wrapped in books
then disagreements on interpretations
it was the libation of their friendship
together they were strength no man alone could know
and that is Stone Hand and his friends
they bring new pieces of him
and fit them in, his choices are his own, though
at camp a summer he met a true son of Bohemia
present as the beating blood of Europa
who drank the Charles as nourishment
and rode high across the continent
they traded jokes and more gravely
they oversaw one another’s maturation
traded stories concerning masculinity
and profession, on grabbing life’s extension
because that is Stone Hand and his friends
they like epic things to bend
to them, to lend a hand to their ascension
in university, there was his Caribbean friend
born from its white sands and glass colored waters
the cousin of real revolution, sad son of destruction
mean to every threat, especially those unto a brother
the men lived as comrades do, neighbor friends
on a baseball diamond, but in the end this space
is only barely big enough for one ego in their land
they are always brothers in enmity, always kin
the crazy bonds of Stone Hand and his friends
they will always claim him, forever
changing as weather on his natural family
in the pine country of Durham, Stone Hand sat
with the Chief in a land cropped by tobacco
young for his stature, and staring right at him
the Chief told Stone Hand from where he began
“a journey like yours is hard to bare but
you are Stone Hand, and can shake it off
somehow live as testament to the days we know
the face of Representation.”
the Chief could only characterize
Stone Hand eludes the greatest among us
because he is amongst the greatest of us
somehow highly base, somehow leaning
erect, and my God! he said it to the wide world
what I felt, how he meant it
or the other way around
Stone Hand gets lost in
North Carolina’s
Research Triangle
its parallel piniverse
and its obliging arrogance
he knows himself there
whereabouts history rehashes
original sins including forced sterilization
slavery that beget tobacco’s rise
and it may be bad karma
to build prosperity’s foundation
on the dirty lungs of corpses
that puffed their last breath
but I’ll be damned
if this ain’t the best
pulled pork I ever laid my lips on
history also affords
wisdom to divine a well of inspiration
and that is where he found his
And that is Stone Hand and his Friends
self important, and promoted
by their counterparts of distant lands
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