mine, too late for this to be made better.
Take me to a nunnery where canticles
lull me into a stupor and the Super
wants nothing more than for me
to kneel before his raised overall.
Where my entire wardrobe is one
change of frayed hand-me-downs,
whose mirror tells me the same little
white lie as the day before I died.
Utilitarian
I knew a secretary
filed everything
carried a screwdriver
kept every screw
lined horizontal
wiped her office door
handle every morning
flicked off light
at day’s end with her tongue
scraped squeaky clean
I knew her in the catholic sense
which comes as no news
is good news to no good boyo
she used me like her screwdriver
us two horizontal most times together
she called her privates her office door
I had to knock as if testing wood for luck
in our world one thing doubled as another
useful thing – stamen and proboscis
lights on for work off for a loosey goosey
Marx
South-East London surplus store,
near the Cutty Sark long gone now,
where I found my pukka army fatigues
for a mountain hike on my red mountain
bike on a mountainous city rubbish dump
surplus store closed after a strike-turned-demo
led to a riot complete with Molotov cocktails
that made headway higgledy through the front
door letterboxes and fell plop on doormats
as plops turned into plots turned unseen
like milk into whoosh and the whole
story up in a flaming nest that climbed
ladders not for pulling up
to block followers but ladders
in stockings cut by a careless fingernail
Sojourner Truth
Pronounced artery in your thigh
you hang upside down as men cut
little trenches with penknives
cut until they open you up and I pour
from you by crawling over your body
turned upside down I pool under
your astonished head as some fool asks
what’s happening they cut you loose
run from a disused warehouse
you pass out before you think tourniquet
I gather around you and try to soak back
inside your skin for clothing
you lie stock still for me but I congeal
with you in my arms our embrace across
two time frames rolled into one
for a measure no tailor can tape
Bergson
Ho, ho, ho,
ha, ha, ha, waving or drowning ho, ho, ho,
ha, ha, ha.
I look through the wrong end of a straw dipped in water,
a straw that bends in this light.
This is no laughing matter.
I look up the skirt of water when I should breathe.
My choice happens to be breathe or see.
I pick without thinking how light behaves
in the company of water, how
a flowing skirt allows me to see more than it wishes to hide.
Ho, ho, ho,
ha, ha, ha, waving or drowning ho, ho, ho,
ha, ha, ha.
Therapy for belly, ribs, jawbone, face, eyes
Narrowed by it, teeth bared for good.
Marie Curie
What is the language of rain?
Braille with a drum of fingertips
On my idling car as I wait for my son.
Rain excludes everything but tin-opener
Thunder, flexing all around.
All that’s missing is lightning
For this posse to form, mount-up, head
Out, blaze a trail, sweep my car
Away with me unbuckled inside
Wondering what my son will think
When his yellow bus rumbles up.
But I am nowhere to be seen,
Not through this screening rain
Adorned with strokes of light,
Chased by cannon from a parade.
Douglass
Hair means something,
A conductor of charm,
Channels brain power,
Makes words static,
Bristle, charge, electrify.
Nose means a lot too,
For sniffing out
Change in unlikely places,
In the middle of a famine
In triplicate: eyes, tongue, ears.
Mouth moves according to body,
His four children,
His unschooled wife,
Feed his mouth.
His hair whitens, stands on end.
The man dances as well
Plays the fiddle, arm-wrestles.
History has no idea what to do with him.
He falls into so many categories,
He fits into none.
But the one with his name.
So praise him: His hair,
His nose, His mouth. Eyes
Thrown in for good measure.
Ears on the fella tuned all the time.
Tagore
Our driver sang Iqbal
As we wound up hill after
Muzaffarabad hill, until
Hired car sailed above cloud,
Into Kashmir, young men,
Salwar kameez flowing,
Ambling to the frontline,
Kalashnikovs slung on backs.
Flowers lined potholed roads.
Poppies blanketed fields.
Children raced after our car
Faces all teeth, saucer eyes.
Women swiveled, outsized
Bundles nested on their heads,
To follow our slow drive-by.
When we stopped, those hills
Turned some more, nothing
Like gyres, more a deep, planed
Blue cruised by cotton bales,
Occasional drones, rockets,
Kites at war, long tails, hint
Of razors. Our driver switched
To Tagore, love as earth axis,
Not hate, he intoned, yes, love,
Planted in every skull, Kashmir
Sun, so soft, people flock, stay.
Driver, sing us out of here or we
Never leave, Paradise, on earth.
Einstein
Epinephrine stick in my breast pocket
Nature in my face at my heels on my head
Stick above water not the same stick underwater
I wipe my shoes at front doors, hop over thresholds
Spirits follow in my wake into houses not homes
I mistake a hummingbird for a bee about to sting me
Same sharp pistons dice air with same velocity
This equation balanced on the stinking rose
Phenomenology
Being of sound mind and body
Doc’s hammer hits my knee
and I kick involuntarily
an image of a lawn ripples
breeze that makes that neat green double
as sea, waves lined up offshore
I invite my skulking spirit, crawl
from under my goosed up skin
soak in this morning crisp
light baths a world
made for nothing until now
the furthest thing a mountain
range that keeps its brooding bulk
sixth sense that a wall braces sea
the fastest eagle rides currents
before it dips black and white helmet
towards me as I crane at this raft
all feathers and hollow bones adrift
&nb
sp; smallest thing is a hammer,
aimed at my knocked knees
that give without warning
Levi-Strauss
Lego or plasticene? Lego and plasticene.
Onion or oyster? Onion and oyster.
Mirror or lamp? Mirror and lamp.
Mirror, polished or cracked?
Polished and cracked.
Genie in lamp or genie out for good?
Lamp in that beast.
Light that shows ways
There for the take.
Fanon
The colonial throws up
his hands, walks away
from you, me, one, all,
leaves behind, nothing,
but that colony of mind,
which happens to be man,
woman, child, just like those
dearly departed, but without
matter, and therefore no
backbone. They treat
my skull like a house.
They look at me, see
a dog, without a home,
minus a leash or micro
chip origin tracker.
Those same colonials
retire from my head
or I evict them, only
to see an aspect of me
legging it away from me,
as they take me with them,
the me I wish to parse from
myself for a purer version,
all this without me being
there, if such a move can be
pictured, in the colony
of my mind, without
calling in medics who
chase after me brandishing
my plantation name.
Barthes
Magazine shoots pot-bellied child, clad in flies,
wells for eyes, pained stare at my lens.
On the facing page, jump to ad of woman and man
scant clothes, nostrils flared, no luxury spared,
topless car for man, bonus young woman
for car upholstery, car more a four-poster bed.
In an ideal world where I want for nothing
there is not one thing for sale, no price for want,
no need for price, no top down, trickle clown
alms race, no streets overrun by rifles for cut flowers.
Though armed with the three P’s, try as I might,
I cannot shake that starved child from my head.
W.E.B. DuBois
If ever we needed a relay to be run on behalf of a people
With the baton passed efficiently from hand to mouth
No cockups, no missing the receiving palm or dropping
Of said wisdom of history into oblivion, then this would be
My ideal lineup on lane two or three; not one, for that
Leads to complacency and invites crosshairs on the chest,
Leaves our man no option but to run out of the stadium
Far from the reach of sodium lights, beyond the noise
Of generators, to this other kingdom full of republics
Where hammocks suggest another measure for time,
Where sunsets resemble lavish holiday drinks
And a pillow means rice, equals a good night’s sleep.
Malcolm
Second in line to DuBois, handover smooth,
Run more a glide of syllables at the Oxford Union,
Prayer just as liquid as his magnifying specs.
All the things he becomes step in to help him.
He grows old in front of his children and wife,
So old when he speaks we know what he will say,
Before he says it, and we agree wholeheartedly,
Without his assent. There comes a time when all
He needs to do is show up for good to break out.
MLK Intro
Homestretch forty years after felled on that balcony,
our unofficial president now on The Mall,
giant in stone, finish this race on a nonstop treadmill
bound for glory, if a safety cord exists, pull for engine stop
before we all trip and fall under strain, running on empty,
from fast asleep to wary wakeful, we juggle, while we eat
fire for three meals. You know that tape you breast is no end
just a false start, a new race, the same race by another name,
that’s why I pick you, Malcolm, and DuBois, to run, who else
but you three on a comeback despite a violent finish, in a race
with no finish line, no end in sight, trusting someone will be there
without your need to say, take my outstretched hand before
both of us tumble and fail not just ourselves but all who follow us.
The Sirens’ Song by Romare Bearden
Nikki’s in the picture as I stand beside her
In the museum down the road from Maya’s place
And see us two reflected in the glass over the frame
Or in the lights bouncing off the ‘big men’s colors’*
Of the rendition of Odysseus bypassing a port.
The black stick figures chiaroscuro à la L. S. Lowry
Except for the heraldic in the ordinary of black folk’s
Extraordinary heraldry, our hero lashed to the mainmast
Sees and hears all and can do nothing about any of it
While his deafened crew rows away from temptation.
That is the story of our history if truth be told,
That we live and take struggle in our stride,
That the color of our lives may pass us by
If we obey forces besides love because want
Is our only compass and love our constant loss.
* ’Big men’s colors‘ is how Bearden described the bold colors of his paintings.
Wilson Harris
Gone now, the way of mist
Over Kaiteur, falls above,
Cloud below, eye-twist,
Head-spin, death as love.
Gone from our skin school,
Wake chiseled on stone
We barefoot for its cool,
Flute carved from bone,
We pick up with our eyes
Lift, tilt, fill our skulls
For keeps, wonder why
Else but this push and pull?
Peacock tail spread…
Ladder waterfalls…
The pull of knowledge
The push of questions
We walked Georgetown,
Trench divided roads,
Seawall mud head frown,
Sombrero-sized toads,
Kite nosedive breeze
Flip cotton hem dress
Above bruised knees
Scrub floors or bless.
There is no time left,
Our talk just run out,
You gone, I am bereft,
Your words in my mouth
Jumpstart once more
Come back through
Turnstiles, take the floor,
I won’t let go of you.
Dante
Not circles but squares drawn in sand.
A dry mango seed and barefoot hop
On one foot from square to square,
Kicking that seed from one to the next,
Keeping mango in the borders of squares
Until the legs burn from covering
So much ground on one foot,
Advancing one square at a time,
From the bottom up.
Pushkin Redux
Two lives for you,
A second chance,
Show your hand.
All you need do
Is par-tay; you dig?
In a time not yours
Far from your land.
The questions remains,
Is one life plenty
For us?
Anna Akhmatova
Stands in winter outside a prison.
Her son looks her way through bars.
His small
window on winter;
Her dark figure against snow.
One among many mothers,
Wives who keep winter vigil,
She squeezes in her poetry between.
Her fingers numb, sight failing,
Son jailed for something she wrote,
Writing she could not help doing.
Lighthouse
Slick
Stretched
Waver
Over
Rock
My shadow harder than me
Walks on water
Vertical diver
Joins self
Fingertips first
Beacon call
Heartbeat summons
Cut deep
Dark pitched
Pegged to horizon
Land
End
Tower
Signals
Ships
My shadow swims away from me
Breaststroke breaks liquid skin
Bones scatter
Underwater
Road harvest
Translations from Memory Page 4
