Everyday Mojo Songs of Earth

by Yusef Komunyakaa

  Alan Watts, old guru of ghosts

  & folksingers, I can still two-step

  & do-si-do to Clifton Chenier.

  But, in no time, this philosopher

  will be going down the drain, baby.

  Look at how a finely honed razor works.

  I may be a taxi driver, but I know time

  opens an apple seed to find a worm.

  See, I told you, my word is gold,

  good as making a wager against

  the eternal hush. The older I get

  the quicker Christmas comes,

  but if I had to give up the heavenly

  taste of Guinness dark, I couldn’t

  live another goddamn day. Darling,

  you can chisel that into my headstone.

  FROM

  THE EMPEROR OF WATER CLOCKS

  THE LAND OF COCKAIGNE

  A drowned kingdom rises at daybreak

  & we keep trudging on. A silhouette rides

  the rope swing tied to a spruce limb,

  the loudest calm in the marsh. Look

  at the sinkholes, the sloped brokenness,

  a twinned rainbow straddling the rocks.

  See how forgiving—how brave nature is.

  She drags us through teeming reeds

  & turns day inside out, getting up

  under blame, gazing at the horizon

  as a throaty sparrow calls the raft home.

  A wavering landscape is our one foothold.

  Are we still moving? This old story

  behind stories turns an epic season

  a tangle of roses moved by night soil.

  The boar, congo snake, & earthworm

  eat into pigweed. The middle ground

  is a flotilla of stars, a peacock carousel

  & Ferris wheel spinning in the water

  as vines unstitch the leach-work of salt,

  thick mud sewn up like bodies fallen

  into a ditch, blooming, about to erupt.

  Water lily & spider fern. I see the tip

  of a purple mountain, but sweetheart,

  if it weren’t for your late April kisses

  I would have turned around days ago.

  THE WATER CLOCK

  A box of tooth wheels sits on an ebony hippopotamus

  made to count seasons. I show you a sketch of the float,

  how it steals wet kisses out of a mouth, the bulbous belly

  swollen with hours, my left hand at the hem of your skirt.

  How many fallen empires dwell here triggered by a sundial,

  revolutions & rebirths? I’m in a reverie again, my face

  pressed against the rounded glass wall of the city aquarium

  as hippopotami glide slowly through water, in sync to a tune

  on my headphones. Why can’t I stop intoning the alchemist

  who used the clock to go between worlds & turn lead to gold?

  A replica of this in a brothel in Athens once counted off

  minutes each client spent in a room. If this is a footnote

  to how one defines a day, no one knows this timepiece

  as well as the superintendent of water debiting farmers.

  The dark-green figs ripen under moonlight. Migratory

  birds lift from shoulders of scarecrows at sunrise & arrive

  in a new kingdom at sunset, true as the clock’s escapement

  mechanism. The bridge of zodiac signs moves across the top.

  A lifetime poises in my fingers on the silver clasp of your bra

  as spring’s rapaciousness nears. Your slip drops to the floor

  & ripples at our feet as a day-blooming cereus opens.

  All the sweet mechanics cleave heaven & earth,

  & a pinhole drips seconds through bronze.

  THE EMPEROR

  The tablet he inherited was encased

  in leather, & in sleep he whispered

  a decree to conquer the hermaphrodite

  on the throne. Acacias touched yellow

  to the night & peace reigned a decade.

  When he ordered his brother to serve

  as his double, his mother said, Son,

  your father would have banished you

  to the salt mines. The look in his eyes

  was what Grotowski tried to capture

  at La MaMa, a looped robe at his feet

  & baroque notes echoing in his head.

  The three double-jointed stuntmen

  & master of props were his friends,

  & he learned all the pressure points

  from the third guard. He was emperor

  before a script, a taste for honeycomb

  at birth, long before the abominable

  oath was tattooed on his forehead.

  His brother would face the throng

  mornings outside the marketplace

  across from the old sacred abattoir

  to sing bygones & lines of succession.

  This was a place of drawn daggers

  & acts of sedition, renown for blood

  on stones & laments scribed on air,

  & also for wheels drawing water

  up rocky inclines to his garden.

  He was born to claim his father’s

  flame trees & the white rhinoceros.

  In another life, he could have been

  an illustrious actor, a kind word

  even for dumb brutes of the forest.

  He mastered sublimity & decorum

  bathed in the glow of a leading lady,

  & the peach brandy & plum bread

  he loved was always first tasted

  by his double. Questions of fidelity

  & bloodline, honor & dishonor, all

  went back to Hagar & a gold scepter.

  His brother was forbidden a name.

  From his court he could see faces

  lined up to praise his terraced garden

  of shrubs, herbs, ornamental grasses,

  & hues to bribe the raven to his door.

  He said, Mother, time will forgive me

  because I have always loved beauty.

  THE FOOL

  C’mon, Your Majesty, her brother?

  I know the scent of belladonna

  can poison a mind, even a king’s,

  but would you dare to behead

  your own nightmares? Now,

  I hope you are more than pewter

  & pallor. Where is the early heart

  I gladly remember from the days

  I hailed as your father’s cutthroat?

  I know hearsay can undo a kingdom.

  I never cursed your tower guards

  & I dare translate their foofaraw.

  I double-swear on the good book

  though I could be our Shagspere

  or William Kempe paying his tab

  with a proud penny & a plug nickel.

  Your Highness, only a horsewhip

  could heal my unnatural tongue,

  that is, if you consent to be the first

  flogged up & down the castle steps.

  After the guillotine & a coronation,

  you would think a king too weak

  to properly father a son & heir,

  in the unholy days of the masque.

  My queen, today, my lovely queen

  singing wildly behind an iron door,

  her head ready for your oak block,

  holds now her lame bird in a box

  of twigs, a toy against eternity.

  THE KING’S SALT

  The miners dressed in monkish garb

  led horses deep into briny catacombs

  hewn by ancient rain. The horses crunched

  green apples while paced through a maze

  of looped ropes, & the huge wooden pulleys

  & winches began to groan, moving blocks

  & barrels of salt. The men were handpicked

  by the king, & the dark horses soon forgot

  the pastures, walking circl
es, never to know

  the horizon again, wet grass under hooves.

  If a miner died at home in bed beside his wife

  could another hand holding an apple or two

  draw the horse into the rote, winding circle,

  obedient & unthinking? The penitents

  held long poles with flame to burn off methane

  in the ceiling, the others pushed daylong

  squat carts called the Hungarian dog.

  Faces & shapes rose from the monolith.

  Here’s a gnome, the guardian of miners,

  & this St. Kinga’s Chapel, chandeliers

  hanging—carved from a threefold silence.

  Wooden gutters drained off centuries

  before shadows of German warplanes

  floated on the lakes of brine, hidden

  by imperial weather. Now one stands

  wondering if a king, for the hell of it,

  touched royal crystals with his tongue

  down in the dank half darkness,

  or gazed within, to have seen firsthand

  the moment when one carefully places

  a small lamp behind a bust of salt.

  TURNER’S GREAT TUSSLE WITH WATER

  As you can see, he first mastered light

  & shadow, faces moving between grass

  & stone, the beasts wading to the ark,

  & then The Decline of the Carthaginian

  Empire, before capturing volcanic reds,

  but one day while walking in windy rain

  on the Thames he felt he was descending

  a hemp ladder into the galley of a ship,

  down in the swollen belly of the beast

  with a curse, hook, & a bailing bucket,

  into whimper & howl, into piss & shit.

  He saw winds hurl sail & mast pole

  as the crewmen wrestled slaves dead

  & half dead into a darkened whirlpool.

  There it was, groaning. Then the water

  was stabbed & brushed till voluminous,

  & the bloody sharks were on their way.

  But you’re right, yes, there’s still light

  crossing the divide, seething around

  corners of the thick golden frame.

  SKULKING ACROSS SNOW

  The shadow knows. Okay. But what is this, the traveler’s tail curled like a question mark, a tribe on her back? Snow falls among the headstones. The fat flakes curtain three worlds. In Southern folklore, they exhume the old world before skulking out to a new frontier of city lights. They live by playing dead. Bounty of lunacy. Bounty of what it seems. No, I’m not talking about lines stolen into a rock ’n’ roll song. No, arch- sentimentalist, I’m not speaking of moonlight or a girl of wanderlust in a desert. But that’s not a bad guess. I’m lost in your obscure imagination. Speaking of the dead, you know, Yeats also knew a little something about the occult. Sleepwalking is another story. Yes, the blank space says, Wake up, knucklehead, & listen to this: You might be getting onto something here. If I had different skin, would you read me differently, would you see something in the snow that isn’t in the snow, something approaching genius? Would you press your nude body against the pages & try reading something into the life of the speaker? Would you nibble at the edges of my nightmares, & wake with the taste of death in your mouth, or would you open your eyes, lost in a field of hyacinth? Well, on a night like this, snow has fallen into my dreams. Lithium or horse could be a clue, but not necessarily so. Or, think of the two men aiming their dueling pistols—the years of silence between them— Alexander Pushkin falling into the January whiteness of history.

  SPRUNG RHYTHM OF A LANDSCAPE

  Charles, I’m also a magpie collecting every scrap

  of song, color, & prophecy beside the river

  in the lonesome valley, along the Trail of Tears,

  switchbacks, demarcation lines, & railroad tracks,

  over a ridge called the Devil’s Backbone,

  winding through the double-green of Appalachia

  down to shady dominion & Indian summer.

  I don’t remember how many times,

  caught between one divine spirit & the next

  detour, I wanted to fly home the old way,

  around contours of doubt, tailspins

  I’d learned to gauge so well, voices

  ahead, before, not yet born, & beyond,

  doubling back to the scent of magnolia.

  Whatever it was in the apparitional light

  held us to the road. But your early sky

  was different from mine, as I drifted up

  from bottomland, snagged by grab vines

  & bullfrog lingo in a bluesy grotto. One way

  or another, a rise & fall is a rise & fall, a way in

  & a way out, till we’re grass danced-down.

  I, too, know my Hopkins (Lightnin’ & Gerard Manley),

  gigging to this after-hours when all our little civil wars

  unheal in the body. I shake my head till snake eyes fall

  on the ground, as history climbs into the singing skull

  to ride shotgun. Our days shaped by unseen movement

  in the landscape, coldcocked by brightness coming

  over a hill, wild & steady as a palomino runagate

  spooked by something in the trees unsaid.

  The redbud followed us into starless cities

  & shook us out like dusty rags in a dizzy breeze.

  But we’re lucky we haven’t been shaken down

  to seed corn in a ragged sack, looped & cinched tight,

  lumps of dirt hidden in our coat pockets.

  Charles, we came as folk songs,

  blues, country & western, to bebop & rock ’n’ roll,

  our shadows hanging out bandaged-up & drawn

  on a wall easing into night melody of “Po’ Lazarus”

  at the top & the bottom of day. Each step taken,

  each phrase, every snapped string, fallen arch,

  & kiss on a forgotten street in Verona or Paris

  transported us back—back to hidden paths,

  abandoned eaves, & haylofts where a half century

  of starlings roosted, back to when we were lost

  in our dream-headed, separate eternities,

  searching till all the pieces fit together,

  till my sky is no bluer than your sky.

  ROCK ME, MERCY

  The river stones are listening

  because we have something to say.

  The trees lean closer today.

  The singing in the electrical woods

  has gone dumb. It looks like rain

  because it is too warm to snow.

  Guardian angels, wherever you’re hiding,

  we know you can’t be everywhere at once.

  Have you corralled all the pretty wild

  horses? The memory of ants asleep

  in daylilies, roses, holly, & larkspur.

  The magpies gaze at us, still

  waiting. River stones are listening.

  But all we can say now is,

  Mercy, please, rock me.

  ISLANDS

  An island is one great eye

  gazing out, a beckoning lighthouse,

  searchlight, a wishbone compass,

  or counterweight to the stars.

  When it comes to outlook & point

  of view, a figure stands on a rocky ledge

  peering out toward an archipelago

  of glass on the mainland, a seagull’s

  wings touching the tip of a high wave,

  out to where the brain may stumble.

  But when a mind climbs down

  from its lone craggy lookout

  we know it is truly a stubborn thing,

  & has to leaf through pages of dust

  & light, through pre-memory & folklore,

  remembering fires roared down there

  till they pushed up through the seafloor

  & plu
mes of ash covered the dead

  shaken awake worlds away, & silence

  filled up with centuries of waiting.

  Sea urchin, turtle, & crab

  came with earthly know-how,

  & one bird arrived with a sprig in its beak,

  before everything clouded with cries,

  a millennium of small deaths now topsoil

  & seasons of blossoms in a single seed.

  Light edged along salt-crusted stones,

  across a cataract of blue water,

  & lost sailors’ parrots spoke of sirens,

  the last words of men buried at sea.

  Someone could stand here

  contemplating the future, leafing

  through torn pages of St. Augustine

  or the prophecies by fishermen,

  translating spore & folly down to taproot.

  The dreamy-eyed boy still in the man,

  the girl in the woman, a sunny forecast

  behind today, but tomorrow’s beyond

  words. To behold a body of water

  is to know pig iron & mother wit.

  Whoever this figure is,

  he will soon return to dancing

  through the aroma of dagger’s log,

  ginger lily, & bougainvillea,

  between chants & strings struck

  till gourds rally the healing air,

  & the church-steeple birds

  fly sweet darkness home.

  Whoever this friend or lover is,

  he intones redemptive harmonies.

  To lie down in remembrance

  is to know each of us is a prodigal

  son or daughter, looking out beyond land

  & sky, the chemical & metaphysical

  beyond falling & turning waterwheels

  in the colossal brain of damnable gods,

  a Eureka held up to the sun’s blinding eye,

  born to gaze into fire. After conquering

  frontiers, the mind comes back to rest,

  stretching out over the white sand.

  LATITUDES

  If I am not Ulysses, I am

  his dear, ruthless half brother.

  Strap me to the mast

  so I may endure night sirens

  singing my birth when water

  broke into a thousand blossoms

  in a landlocked town of the South,

  before my name was heard

  in the womb-shaped world

  of deep sonorous waters.

  Storms ran my ship to the brink,