[USA] Mel C. Thompson
                                On The Search For God In Detroit

I found a heart
as easy to open
as a book of liquor store matches.

There was a bachelor's degree,
unframed, wrinkled,
one corner eaten by moths.

An untuned guitar lay
in an overstuffed closet
with one broken string.

I found a black-light poster
of a naked man and woman
locked in an orange and purple embrace.

Curious eyes looked out
from a weathered face
which served as a barricade.

There was a woman in tears,
a hard winter
and paperwork left unfinished.

I found a tape machine
playing an endless loop
of one chord that was honest.

A voice called out low and dark
with a child-like certainty
that felt like the arms of God.

Faith on this street
turns up like a joker.
It is in your hand already.

About the author:

          Mel C. Thompson, a famous poet in contemporary USA. He was born in 1959 in Downey, California, USA, a small suburb outside of Los Angeles.  He began writing in 1974 and was first published at that time in a high school poetry magazine.  He got his Bachelor's degree in Philosophy in 1982. In 1989 Mel C. Thompson moved to San Francisco and formed Cyborg Productions, a well-known underground press in the Bay Area in the early 1990s.  His own work has been published in many mainstream and small press magazines such as the Bay Area Guardian, The Chiron Review, The Haight Ashbury Literary Journal and Lynx Eye. Thompson’s civil rights work for free speech and his legal work for California workers resulted in worldwide publicity in such outlets as USA Today, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Sun Times, NPR Radio, Canadian Public Broadcasting and KRON Television.  He was later a radio personality and musical performer on KMEL and appeared on several other radio stations. In recent years his essays have been published in the East Bay Express, Salon.Com and the Tokyo Progressive, and his poetry has recently appeared in The Texas Poetry Calendar Anthology and The Poets From Hell Anthology of Bay Area Poets.