Speak My Soul addresses the challenges, strivings, aspirations, anxieties, and perplexities of the human condition. The author's prose form is stylistically free. Characteristically, several of his poems are composed with meticulous attention to rhyming tendencies, while at other times he just lets lines flow as they come to birth in his soul. He tries to locate liberating speech-acts that are able to resonate intimately, from a universal standpoint, with readers of his prose. The book's four-part organization is meant to take readers along on a reflective odyssey through a web of lived-experiences. The idea of the self is the foundational thought and accordingly becomes the core preoccupation of Part One of the text. What is there about personal identity that captivates our imagination to such a degree that we want to talk about ourselves? We aren't solitary souls wandering this earth. Part Two sets its sights upon the presence of others within the zones of our activities. We are a global family of thinking, connected living human beings. In a sort of paradoxical sense, we can come to know ourselves better when we are self-consciously aware of how we are gazed upon by others. Part Three turns to a vertical gaze heavenward. The author seeks to place into the foreground the believer's earthly pilgrimage. What exactly is the point of this spiritual conversion that persuades us of an ultimate other-worldly citizenship? The writer is a practicing professional philosopher. He confirms his love for philosophy by sharing pearls of his familiarity with wisdom's terrains -the multi-faceted adventures of the life of the mind. He does, however, reckon with the limitations of a thoroughgoing naturalistic philosophical temperament. His consciousness of the human condition and of the life world at large is informed
Speak My Soul
Poems on Migrations and Returns of a Native SonBy Rudolph V. VanterpoolAuthorHouse
Copyright © 2011 Rudolph V. Vanterpool
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4634-3740-4Contents
Preface...............................................................................................................iIntroduction: Odysseys through Time and Circumstance..................................................................1Part One: In the Folds of Nativity—Of Origins and Passages......................................................11Part Two: My Inquisitions—Between Migrations and Returns........................................................95Part Four: A Philosopher's Visionary World—Friendships Among the Company of Sages...............................271Endnotes..............................................................................................................339Reference of Photos and Print Images..................................................................................347
Chapter One
Meet Me in the Colors of the
Rainbow The red blood of the Bronze Arawaks
runs like crimson through my veins /
I can still feel their invisible presence here.
I'm the tanned son of a Purple mother
of these islands' coral reefs /
I can still hear her muted voice echoing near.
This mixed child of Continental Ivory peoples
belongs to no-one in particular /
I still see traces of my father's body appear.
To know me is to see my face
in the very colors of the rainbow
The mind of the First Carib Islanders
has left its imprints upon my thoughts /
I'm a thinking consciousness of Stoic style.
The warm passions of diasporal African tribes
invigorate every fiber of my psyche /
My senses strive to flow with Nature's vibes.
There are influences of the foreigner's ways
that seamlessly trail my destined paths /
Such symphony of selves my character inscribes.
To understand the workings of my conscience
consult the varied colors of the rainbow.
My fondest Dreams and spiritual strivings
have befriended the Blue sky high above /
I have fixed my aspirations to capture the prize.
My deep ambivalent desires can be as subtly shaded
as the Reddish hues to which sunsets give rise.
There's a Scarlet Veil that guards my immortal soul,
preserving the blended attributes of my island-ness /
At high noon the Sun its unveiling light supplies.
For all my days I'll be known by the stripes I wear,
proud of the bloodlines that we cannot disguise:
my birthright's in the colors of the rainbow.
Chapter Two
The Spirits of the Ancestors Are
Watching You
The folkways of the ancestors are distant memories;
Our current generation hardly knows the treasured stories—
the arduous ordeals the elders struggled with to just survive.
Their lot, told to us in fragments, keeps faint images alive /
As we walk these smoothly paved streets of the present
our feet in ignorance tread upon their shadowy remnant.
O God of our fathers help me, I pray, to see through the veil;
permit my eyes to open wide to the light like spring in scale.
To my wayward younger kin I cry out, teardrops splatter /
I'm worried for these offspring whose dreams daily shatter.
When they go astray, thinking only about today, I'm pained:
when wisdom is traded for follies, rarely is anything gained.
Children of the seafaring mariners, you are not here alone;
the spirits of the departed founders still sit upon the throne;
invisibly they hover above, aware of everything you do:
heed my plea I caution, the ancestors are watching you.
Island ancestors are not known for pious religious offerings:
at least, my wise old grandmother never told us such things.
Rituals of libation must have ceased over time / yes, slowly,
for no doubt the alienated bonds-people extolled the Holy.
In the New World setting the ancients faced the unknown;
they needed coping patterns, fresh and inventively grown /
The serving of palm wine, poured out in honor of the gods,
wasn't plentiful enough to appease deities and thirsty squads.
Under harsh open elements the predecessors did sundry labors
soon after joined by ebon hued brethren, foreign neighbors.
Think hard about these exploits: cruel wages of exploitation;
those acts of perseverance were tasks of the slave plantation.
We sit underneath colorful shady flamboyant trees, dreaming,
mindless of ancestors in bondage, hopes of freedom gleaming.
Brothers of the Uprooted Ones, there's yet much to do;
claim the legacy, for the ancestors' spirits are watching you
The night comes when we must retreat from daily enterprise;
At the feet of our beds we kneel, petitioning another sunrise.
Perhaps tonight I'll dream of living in a hut deep in the interior.
Would I abhor my lowly station or transcend that bleak exterior?
I often ponder what it felt like before the rise of modernity,
of how the common folk fared, enduring hell-like eternity /
Today we face foes of quite different pedigrees and powers—
addictive idols of hallucinatory drugs and tainted flowers.
What tragedies flow from poison needles recklessly injected /
Not even the icy hands of looming death deter the infected—
the highs indulged must feel sweeter than the body's purity:
away the...
