Gordon Parks Poems
THE FUNERAL: By Gordon Parks:
A Trip Home In Memory Of His Father
After many snows I was home again.
Time had whittled down to mere hills the great mountains
of my childhood.
Raging rivers I once swam trickled now like gentle streams
and the wide road curving on to China or Kansas City
or perhaps Calcutta
had withered to a crooked path of dust
ending abruptly at the county burial ground.
Only the giant that was my father remained the same.
A hundred strong men strained beneath his coffin
when they bore him to his grave.
“COME SING WITH ME”
By Gordon Parks
Despite the turmoil, anguish and despair
Disrupting the planet we inheritied,
There is something good I choose to sing about.
That something lies within us, patiently waiting ---
Beneath us, above us and around us.
Its peaceful message yearns to fill
Our places of murderous anger and hatred,
To flourish forever.
Hope is the song I have chosen to sing---
A deathless song, flowing steadily beside my faith.
Whenever the fist of doubt knocks at my door,
It is powerfully turned away by my hopeful singing.
When things go from bad to worse I still sing my song.
Why not?
It helps me endure the bloodthirsty days.
Once earth’s fire had devoured my hopes.
As my twisted soul slid toward Hell,
Fate came racing from another direction.
Pinned to it was a belt of sun with new instructions.
These, it said, are for you! Suddenly fear was gone.
I made peace with the mean roads I’d walked.
My jackals could now lie down in truce.
From that day on, I began singing the song called Hope.
I still sing it loud---
Above the waves, fire, darkness and mud.
EYES WITH WINGED THOUGHTS
Gordon Parks Poems & Photos
We recommend Parks most recent book of poetry,
Eyes With Winged Thoughts, published by Simon and Schuster, 2005 - 128 pages:
A collection of fifty-eight new photographs and more than forty new poems by the acclaimed photojournalist, composer, and filmmaker conveys the author's personality as a Renaissance American and consider his meditations and raw emotions pertaining to such topics as the war in Iraq and the tsunami tragedy.
CLICK HERE For "Eyes With Winged Thoughts" by Gordon Parks
Editorial Review
Editorial Review - Reed Business Information (c) 2005
With more than 60 years behind the lens, including a stint as a New Deal documentarian and more than two decades at Life magazine, Parks is by acclamation the nation's most important African-American photographer. Film fans know him as the man who directed Shaft, along with several other feature films and well-regarded documentaries, many of them focused on black urban life. Meant to accompany A Hungry Heart, his fourth prose memoir (also a November book), this collection of Parks's straightforward, sincere verse plays up its links with his pictures, almost 50 of which adorn the book, from abstract photos of crystals and sunsets to closeups of soldiers and candids of people in need. The verse itself consists of clear and sometimes moving meditations on Parks's upbringing ("Momma's words refuse to die./ Instead they grow wings and soar"), on American history and on current events ("Forty killed in Basra today! Small children blown apart!") along with pithy advice from a now 90-year-old working artist: "Keep acting and thinking upward."
Want to learn more about this multi-talented photographer, poet, film producer and more?
CLICK HERE for Parks biography and photos.
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