Ball Point Poet: Demetria Martinez
ears are pricked to rapt attention…
A few years back I went to a reading by a woman I didn’t know and had only heard about her through other poet friends of mine. The reader, Demetria Martinez (above), spoke with such passion, commitment, a force that I never forgot that reading. Even now, after those many years ago a fading memory of her words of activism and teaching about equality ring true with integrity and strength. I wrote this poem within a couple of days after the reading.
Ball Pen Poet: Demetria Martinez
A lyrical wave of your hand punctuates a life scattered
with the debris of debt and desolation
as T-s are crossed with thumb and forefinger
and I-s are dotted with a fist, held high into the air,
that opens to caress and test line after delicious line
with a voice of passion ripe with experience
and full of the pain that has been the driver,
as relentless as a southwest monsoon,
to where you have always been
in the eyes of destiny and desire.
Peering into the crowd, past, present and future
arrive as one and all are immediately transfixed
by the power, absolute and…
