the oswald interview

the retired assassin grimaced

as he tried to explain how he became

a spirit spent on a soul-less paradigm

he wore expensive glasses with both lens cracked

there were bird feathers

a string of baby saliva

and lord knows what else

that stood out on his junk-wire beard.

he had the face of a world

that gave birth to a still-born Africa

he spat that the only way to kill Ecclesiastes

was to write poetry from right to left on

parchment without lines

to change the flow of red rivers, he said.

with a mischievous grin and snicker he quickly added

that he stole the idea from one of his victims and

that he probably got the details mixed up, or left some out.

besides, he mumbled, the sun really doesn’t make a distinction

between whats old and whats new…

loop dance

they walk to and from their escapes

oblivious to all other escapes

until they are apprehended by the

screech and smoke.

they contemplate the rush

then snap back into their deity

their lesser heavens at each end

of an assembly line of plaster molds

that bob up and down

rock back and forth

wobble side to side

some are empty except for

the hollow

(ants carry their crumbs with more dignity as the ecology embraces them).

all ceilings are gray now

some praise their Michelangelo

many have no time for art

their flesh hanging on the thorns

for the butcherbirds

though out of sight, still circling overhead.

black clouds

are at waist level and rising

becoming wisps of another world

as escapees chase the color of summer leaves.

sermons

maybe the

inflections

are not

infinite/

the rising and falling of dubbed

messiah songs.

canals that open and close

like the gates to mythical domains/

rapture’s root stretched to the limit

laid out on nightclub floors

in spilled beer and blunt ashes.

the fire now. right now.

hymn-books made of sheets of

asbestos/

no binding hallelujahs.

just amen.

again and again…

corporate america

it’s during the post-mortem days

of january that it is really felt

when winter becomes the trifling sister

with her razored, cold stares

then there’s the white tongue of frost

stuck out in mockery, just after derision,

licking away the distinguishable features-

we become frozen in the unity of nothingness

we rise beneath tears heavy with ice

but we become no wiser during

this unseasoned storm

the weight of what we absorb

is all that identifies us

as we melt into the numbing mire…

room service

staring into the hell-house mirror

219 suddenly becomes a 187

another death by distortion

he can’t help but wonder

who allowed her eyes to enter

into the room

he dialed lust for murder

but the line went dead

as cold as the snow that speckled

the windshield like drops of love

frozen and fractured

during the long journey back

to the beginning…

he stared at it

wondering if it was as long as

the ones her friend whispered about…

back to the beginning-

blood trickles

down the side of his face

though he is surprised

that he has any left

the tears have sapped his veins

been on the rack for a long time

down deep where no one can see

brought up every now and then

and put on display-

today’s mannequin for madness

that reigns throughout the lonely castle

made from the plastic of

childhood toys molded and mangled

like memories that mold and mangle…

a staff made from cuervo gold

is the only thing that he can hold on to

his soul oozing through his fingers

like wax from a candle that can’t be

blown out

he stares at the gimmick in the mirror

and starts to cry…

back to the beginning-

issues of manhood and money

his face (from an old photo)

taped onto a counterfeit bill

small denomination

he knows that he’s worth more

but the bill-of-sale has faded

since 1619…

denomination

the caste of brethren

that he shares the room with

damned by paper-thin divinity

and devotees they pay love to…

last night in the vestibule

i was hoping that it was the wind again

pretending to be an old senile actor trying to

carry a message

a warning

between forgotten lines

wanting to be born again

but giving up and dying

in the form of this man

whose features i had often given

to the night

whose voice i had often given

to the darkness

who was at my door…at my door.

he rang the bell as if all of his blood

had surged into the one hand, the one finger

like the one that pokes our chests or our foreheads

after each utterance of why

after each scream of why

like the one that belongs to grandmama, to granddaddy

or their grandchildren who don’t know any better

the finger that seems to always separate the blood

into explanation

blood that was about to be set free

flowing like declared independence

after alley-crack dialogue

filling lies where rock and sand have failed

no, the wind’s freedom is not the same.

maybe his blood was Ashanti…as mine became Dogon…

there were shadows standing along the drawn-up boundary

hearts beating like hands against a hollow log

he was a wanderer seeking refuge from the shadows

like an unplanted seed needing one last embrace from the sun

not caring to take root beneath infertile rhetoric.

he was a stranger

seeking refuge in a vestibule…in a village

Senufo…Bateke…no…yes…no…we were both african

but he could be conquered

his hand fumbling through the boot-legged images

that could bring death from the shadows

that could conceal death

but he could be conquered.

hearts beating like hands against a hollow log

a shared dialect heard above the babble

of fading shadows

…Ibibio…Yoruba…no…we were both african

i could feel it in the wind.

Make It Plain

 Note: This interview of Malcolm X took place in 1965 on CBC-TV’s (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) “Front Page Challenge” just a few weeks before his assassination.

he

who was

red

really ain’t dead

because his tone colors

what flows through

many veins

and arteries

sometimes clotting

because slogans

are slurred

during drunkenness

from dreams

or when

arteriosclerosis

becomes a

code name

for

agents

that infiltrate

the purification plants

and poison

the life-giving

sustenance

that is injected into

streams that are

red.

rosa verses/outkast

 

For Rosa Parks, who sued the rap group OutKast for defaming her name. Today is the 55th anniversary of her historic act of protest.

they should have

been able to sit themselves

in her space

they should have

been able to see the look

on her face

as she sat at the

threshold of birth

as she reversed the

spinning of the earth

but…no connection/no direction

trivializing

the struggle to fit

the rhyme

careless chants

do not echo from her time

she felt

the wetness on her face again

the spit and the spew and the

frost hurled from frozen lakes of blue

the complexities of their profane homage

deriving analogy from a historical stoppage

when a nation began to see itself through

the windows of mass transit…

something large, often empty and hungry for profit.

funeral for a doll

so fragile it was

so fragile it is

a porcelain offering from

a man without false shine

alabama hardness that often hid wealth mined

from beneath the carnage he often

reached the bottom of, acting as if he had

discovered some new form of extinction

in a land he defended as if it was his alone…

but her smile always lit the exit tunnel

when he choose to suffer the surface of things:

he would rise from the bottom slowly

as if lifted on a scaffold of crud and circumstance.

she smiles and giggles, as she did back then

remembering the way he handled her firstborn

pulling it out of a greasy bag that was

as rippled as the wine it once held gently

the same way he would hold her

from time to time, his breath smelling like that church

on the corner- he said it was his church- where the

men and women preached funny when they came out…

he would preach funny sometimes too

but he didn’t preach at the funeral for her little baby

that broke after it fell off the kitchen table when

he slapped her sister, sending her flying underneath it

into one of the already rickety legs.

he said that he was sorry about what happened to her baby

he grinned and said he would try to buy her another one

she really didn’t believe that he bought that one

but his teeth shined just like her little baby did

so she just smiled back and giggled…

green tea fields

the daughter asked,

“What happened to them?’

the father answered,

“they were killed by Africans from another tribe”

the daughter replied,

“oh.”

they said that they had been waiting

since Byumba…

the reed mat is partially burned

from flames stomped out yet raging

it conceals everything and nothing

displaying the stilled feet of crossed legs

that could belong to someone who loved

to lay in the grass and look up at the sky.

they said that they had been waiting

since Cyangugu…

the head rests on red, lumpy clay

one hand covers the face

shielding it from the sun

that cannot be seen or felt.

they said that they had been waiting

since Butare…

the mouth hangs open

the way a baby brother’s would

while he naps during the late afternoon

of a hot and humid summer day

his spirit renewed when he awakens

to again go outside to play.

they said that they had been waiting

since Kibungo…

they were not present

at their colonial coronation

centuries ago

they may not have smiled

and said thank you

or felt honored.

they said that they had been waiting

since Kigali…

the blood of the children

is drying on the crown

that they may or may not

have believed was theirs

but never cared to wear

as they ran laughing

through the green tea fields.

voodoo

the echoes of men

crying out

screaming out

her name

can be heard in the tone

of her incantations

he watched her for a long time

before seeking the remedies of her science

before summoning her style of divination

so preliminary  so momentary

now there she was

chanting an erotic syllabus

of liberations

simple sighs between day-to-day breathing

her power comes from

the ways that she is worshipped

that which is desecrated and disposable

becomes astral

a priestess becomes a savior

her spell is synonymous with others

except for the eyes

they search

they sear

they solder souls together

she never senses the veil

that was placed upon her face

long before she appeared.

lost sketches

death was not so much final as it was finished

like a chalked profile slowly filled

with asphalt and aspirations

blackness as texture and tone

the mixture for pencils broken in desperation

upon the outlined emptiness

within the outstretched hands

(the grabbing and pulling back)…

we sometimes die like unfinished sketches.

I can see him sitting in the basement

in the darkness, for long periods of time

staring at the dusty, webbed, gray paper

(and the occasional unopenable window)

holding, caressing, the tinted skin

he had poured himself into

(brown like himself and just as fragile)

a prop for the art,

the partial depictions of the man

that he had run away from,

of the man he had become,

with each stroke that he didn’t make her

scream out his favorite portrait,

or simply appraise him as a man

within the walls of that gallery

(uneven alley of self-portraits bought and sold)

where each of their works were displayed

(it was her motions that often formed

the brush, if not her tongue)…

there is that portrait on the elder’s wall

confirming that he had compared sketches with the sun

and had exchanged notes with leaves that fell out of season

beauty both portrayed and betrayed, turned against,

within the walls of that gallery

(collections of reproduced conscience bought and sold)

where his profane works were the most celebrated…

we are sometimes forgotten like lost sketches.

the afterparty (…an interpretation featuring tupac…)

born of a panther

this rhythm cry will never end:

its volume is an eternal dance.

life-steps

that fall in time as

the soil inhales and exhales.

life-movements

that flow from the soil.

not to be mistaken for loose dirt

that swirls across vacant lots

during a changing wind’s last sigh. emulating

something natural, disastrous. exposing

tracks that lead to and from where panthers

give birth.

this rhythm cry cannot end, because

there is no end to be seen.

breathing life into a slowly dying

struggle. blasphemous to some, the

breathing is the religion, heresy is

the dance.

a manifesto is each motion.

see me. feel me. touch me. i am here.

this is my space. thumping, bumping

space. as narrow as a needle with no eye.

celebrating a moon that sits

in the sky of a hot july afternoon.

jumping up and down, pumping

fists into the air.

not moving.

mandingo

if she truly believed that a woman’s

words can kill a man

why wasn’t she more careful?

like the alarm that promises July’s radiance

but only delivers the narrow eyes of the blinds

searching through a shackled greyness

her moans often sound an empty dawn.

someone said

that the true test of a man

is the woman he loves…

she weeps this proverb

into the pillow that she hugs

as they make love facing her favorite painting

of an African woman carrying her manchild

on her back as she stands in the middle of a village

laughing with another woman.

he often rests his head upon that same pillow

struggling before he’s able to sleep

as he tries to recreate the same old dream:

that her old lovers were conquered in the moaning…

Breakfast at Christopher’s

…and I wonder if the whispers are for me…

(I see no one else here who looks like Joseph)

…heard like the rumbling of an approaching front

that has already grown far too cold

(when she took my order her eyes were like the

the lens of those old movie projectors from

the days of D.W. Griffith…)

my first bowl of authentic oatmeal

since…I really can’t recall…becomes

bitter from the lingering aftertaste

of spitting out things produced from

being struck and refraining from striking back

(I check for spit in the oatmeal, or even

mucus: she may have signaled the cook with

a wink)

the whispers tighten around my neck

burning and causing upheaval of the flesh

(I see no one else here who looks like Ezell)

the snowflakes seen through the window have been allowed

to come inside this place where they will surely

maintain their form

a menstrual-induced climate? Maybe…

the loss of blood can begin and end

cycles of change

but I note the way she scrapes the burnt toast

and then angrily brushes the black crumbs

from the white counter top onto the dirty floor

de facto…de jure…de facto…de jure…

I begin to weigh this counsel, like a medium

and my eyes become the steamed mirror

that she styled her hair in this morning

(I see no one else here who looks like David)

a fight with her boyfriend last night? Maybe…

the sound of eggs and hash browns on the grill

brings back the cries of that Birmingham Sunday

as like dew I try to blend the confrontation

of night with the conscience of morning

(some say that this is our inheritance, to

emulate nature while others exploit it…)

any kind of dialogue could begin to spin

like the black stool that I sit on:

wobbly and discolored, on a hollow spindle

(I see no one else here that looks like Franklin)

but, this is my first bowl of authentic oatmeal since…