Dead Portraits in a Living Room

By Gregory Wilson

All the poems between My Momma Did Say I Would Meet A
Girl Like You and Untitled are observations, reminiscences, and
insights stories within a story.
Using the river motif and oral tradition in Untitled the poet
underscores certain thematic and analogous paradigms within a
socio-cultural, geo-political landscape. This landscape is America.
Why America? Well, Long Creek runs from the back of our
house into the Roaring River. Moreover, all the diverse rivers of
the world run into the great rivers of America. Similarly, peoples
from across the globe stream into America the land of
opportunity. America then, has become an inter-cultural, intracultural
dynamic; framework a cauldron that brews an alchemy
of ideas that is characteristic of a renewed people called
Americans.
Many of the poems, their titles and the images within them,
find a connection, a culmination even, in the last poem of this
collection, the revelation Untitled.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 9, 2011
• ISBN: 9781469131689

Gregory Wilson

Gregory Wilson is Jamaican. He is a graduate from the University of the West Indies, at Mona, Jamaica. Mr. Wilson has been teaching for almost all of his adult life. In addition, he has been writing poems since high school. If Gregory has a love for teaching, he has a passion for writing—poems. He has been to several workshops and international poetry competitions. In 2005, he was second place winner at a convention of poets held in Reno, Nevada, by the Famous Poets Society. The kids whom he teaches, as well as his colleagues, and diverse audiences always enjoy listening to him read and recite his poems. Presently, Mr. Wilson teaches English language and literature at a prestigious high school in the Bahamas.

Book preview

Copyright © 2011 by Gregory Wilson.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2011961891

ISBN:         Hardcover                               978-1-4691-3167-2

                   Softcover                                 978-1-4691-3166-5

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4691-3168-9

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

106162

To America and to all Americans.

God bless America.

106162-WILS-layout-low.pdf

CONTENTS

Foreword

Introduction

My Momma Did Say I Would Meet a Girl Like You

The River, My Mother, and Me

The River Runs Through My Veins

Suicide

The Last Time I Saw You

Our Flower Called June

Passion Painting

Dead Portraits in a Living Room

The Thimble Islands

Inside the Wardrobe of a Word

The Meeting—Part 1

The Child Is Father of the Man

Nicole

Peace—Be Still

Two Schools of Thought on Teaching

Dis Is Di Man

Hello, Carrol

Butterfly Butterfly

Abraham Woodrow Washington

To All the Soldiers Fighting, Dying—That We May Live

Frank McCartney

The Calling Tree

Standpipe Fight

Playing Marbles

The National Dessert (Revised)

Wangchi Kulachi

Long Creek

Long Creek Revisited

School

Tribute to Blue Jay Teachers

A Dumb Blind Seer Speaks

My Grandmother Could See

At the End of a Rainbow

Smile

Have a Delicious Day

A Black Angel

Fertilization

Bloodline

Identity

Good Evening, Mother

Tombstone

Teatime

The Master

The Man Who Broke into My House

My Two Pens

To All Students Who Fail (to Settle Down)

Christmas Illusions

Love: Sweet Cruelty

Christine (1)

Christine (2)

Christine (3)

Let Us Be Men

On Being Bad or Good or in Between

Change

Jamaica—Jubilee—Full Free

Untitled

Foreword

When I first met the author, Gregory Wilson, he exuded a joy of life and a passion for poetry and teaching.

This collection of poems reveals a cornucopia of the poet’s moods, feelings, concerns, attitudes, sense of belonging, patriotism, spirituality—consciousness. Joy of living is oftentimes quickly contrasted with images of the death of loved ones or thoughts of suicide. Rivers, people, places, relationships, freedom, history, identity, remembrance, teaching, obeah, and so much more make up the array of subjects. The gamut of emotions surfaces at varying levels. There is joy, sadness, cynicism, passion.

The human spirit is encapsulated in Wilson’s eclectic collection. What emerges confirms to the reader that literature is indeed life!

In The National Dessert (Revised), I can hear the voices of Jamaican politics through the ages. There are remnants or remembrances of Bennet in the dialect poems and Hughes in the rivers; Angelou’s voice echoes in the inescapable unless the caged bird sings, and Wordsworth is relived in the child is father of the man. There are voices of familiarity, reflections on bloodline. There are ponderous questions and statements or questions as statements: What business have you in these waters, I am history. There is childishness and glee in the slip-adee-doodaa-day as boy, man, poet, son, friend, sibling, teacher, guru, advisor, and sundry are interwoven to complete the vision.

Readers of all ages, backgrounds, and cultures will gain practical insight from these poems while being transported by the sheer beauty of their varied and literary quality.

The overarching message is clear: There is hope for solutions to our economic and social problems; there is hope for unity of cultures, countries, dreams, and all that we hold dear. There is hope for our