Soul Look Back in Wonder - A Tribute to Stevie Wonder

"I Wish" Written and Performed by Mr. Stevie Wonder from the album "Songs in the Key of Life" Copyright 1976

Climbed up on a poem
Sweetly shaped like a honeycomb
Are & Be
Rent free
Some see a House, I call it Home
Wasn’t no Jive
Rested my back on a Motown 45
Excited
I Recited
The Sistah Sonnets of Nikki G., and Zora
Candled in Word Wonder Aura
And the glow of a Spirit God Who cleared everything Before Her
I found my Self roofed on top of such Un/Imaginable Peace
Housed under Divine Light with an Eternity-Free Lease
Yes, Stevie, like your Music, “Magic can be Everlasting,”
‘Cause Poets conjure Miracles - a soft spoken sonic blasting
Like the Wonder of Stevie
My friends didn’t believe me
‘Said my Reality was slipping
Or maybe it’s just 
the slide
of the Ride
When your Ego Be Tripping.
- Nikki Williams

He touched me
Like a Dream
And I felt a scream
Ribbon me 
like a sky all over
His tongue a trumpet shout
Musically sweet in my mouth
Ribbons tingling my spine
Like a sky all over
A Wet 
Sweat
Winding ‘round my teeth
His back scratched with my screech
Exploding private desire into bursted stars
Satisfied screams will map you -  don’t care where you are
Splayed like a Rose
Exposed
like a sky all over
Blue Boogied and Beaded
His Locks Reggae’d me where needed
Ump, Lord, Lord,
Under, Around, Between, Behind, Above, and Over My Joy
Like a Ribboned Sky …
- Nikki Williams 

Well ain't that a .... That Young man played me!
Made me dance to his tune 
A song of December sung in June
Smilin' through teeth of pure gold;
Well, this here Sugah Mama done turn't sour
His minute was my hour
Was hobblin'  ' stead of dancin'
While he played at romancin'
One thang to be a fool ... another to be too old!
- Nikki Williams
Inner vision 
Allows you to see what other people don't
gives you the courage to image what other people won't
gives you the insight to create a 'do' from a 'don't'
A vision inner
Finds the compassion to love the saint as well as the sinner
and leaves it to God's Judgement to determine the winner
Seeing inside
Ain't always a Joy ride
it takes courage to leave the 'People's Path' and God Glide

Visualizing using the Spiritual Power of the Inward Eye
puts a pearl instead of a moon in the sky
dances you with the Force of Nature - setting your Soul free to fly!
- Nikki Williams 
The movement of wind ain't got nothing on stevie's sway
tree tops envy the movement of his rhythm and rhyme
The direction that Stevie's inner choreography takes his Soul
shows  Trust - it takes courage - to stand in your Truth - to let God and Let Go
To let your fingers tip the steady; to use Life's keys and release it's fluid flow
With a blow and a breeze
the wind eventually leaves
the sanctuary of the trees
and with an envious howl, surrenders and subsides
blowing hats off before it exits, giving  props to Stevie's Rhythm Ride.
- Nikki Williams


Blossom me into honeyed song

Lay me gently down like notes on a music sheet

Chord my satisfied sighs into tender trebled bursted bubbles

Swing me low/carry me home - a Night Chariot coming Sweet


Music me into humming like the sound of a well-tended garden

Free float me like sprouted seeds across a sea of sky

Radiant are the leaves that Light and Lift -

Wings of Wonder taking me Melodically High


Love is a timeless tune

From root to stem, you and I, harmonize

A Celestial Choiring between the sun and moon

Seductively urging our soaring Souls upward - an erotic rise


Lyric me back then lyric me forth

Liner Notes from head to toe

Tip your fingers and spill me over

Release my flowered flow


Spread me sweetly 

Travel your mouth in open Key

Round

My Sound

To the fit of your throat

Sing me to there ... 

                                                  Stevie

- Nikki Williams




Harlem LiT
As Good as it Git
Where Black Lives Fit

A Literary Renaissance
A Voracious Reader's Restaurant
Serious Syllables served on a Silver Platter
Hughes, Baldwin, Angelou, Morrison, filling us with 
Black Lives Matter

Booksellers lining Saint Nicholas down to Lenox
"Buy Black!, Buy Black!" - Sistahs, Brothers, SPEND US! 

Back in the Day 
Two Things held sway:
The Apollo 
With its Musical Swallow
The Liberation Bookstore 
For the Cultural Hungry needing more

Black Folk was Soul Satisfied
One People, One Culture - un/gentrified

Books and Music 'round our heads at the stroke of Midnight-
                   Harlem was Black and Close Knit
          Write On, Write on!  When I was a kid, the Streets was
                                         Harlem LiT!
       - Nikki Williams
 
"I wish those days could come back once more
Why did those days ever have to go?
I wish those days could come back once more
Why did those days ever have to go?
'Cause I love them so."
“I Wish” song and lyric excerpt Written by Stevie Wonder from the album “Songs in the Key of Life” Copyright 1976
Artwork by Nikki Williams
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