IMPERFECT EDEN- chpt 2

THE DREAM

Reverend Darling, he is dreaming again. In bed, in the darkened room that is cooled by an open window just feet from where he lays caught up in a dream he has been keeping company with for more years than he wants to count.
His skin is soft and sweaty yet cold and clammy to the touch. If someone were to touch him, their hand would sink deep, go inside past dark skin once taut and drum like now slack and flat; go past bone that relents to all sensation, to spleen, past the heart and liver that for a man his age still functions well enough to move him his through days. Whomever that person was that would be so bold as to touch the sleeping man now, their hand would go straight to the spine which appears solid but would be quick to crumble and disintegrate at the slightest touch. He has been weakened by age, fear and loathing both of which have taken away his free-will until all he knows how to do is react to life and to dream.
His normally silent sleep is twisted and stormy, his restless feet quietly tap out patterns underneath the sheets, his every move telegraphs his thoughts through the covers, through the springs of the bed over to his wife. Mother Darling she feels the dream come again. It has been away for a long while this time, but it has come as she knew it would to take her husband somewhere forbidden and out of her grasp.
In her own restless half sleep, Mother Darling avoids her husband’s side of the bed, curls up tightly just across the imaginary line they have, over the many years, lain out together and which she has learned through the test of time, to walk, even in her unconscious.
For fear of disturbing his reverie, His wife dares not roll over off of her side and touch him. She lies alone and bodiless clinging like a ghost to her edge of the bed, her lace and gauzy gown laying coolly between her crossed legs, caressing her curves and folds deeper than any lover. Mother Darling feels nothing. She wills her breathing down, her senses that cascade down her brain silent, in an attempt to find a deadening slumber that has so far eluded her. Reverend Darling or Deakin, his first name, a name which she rarely calls him by, lies alone bound to his side of the bed by a phantom she is not supposed to know about, but his fear and urge for freedom she has felt for many years now.
He was sixteen when he first had the dream, when it first overtook his youthful and bucolic sensibilities turning them sharp and lustfully giddy. At sixteen upon waking that morning, he held his burgeoning teenage dick in his left hand while his right lay flat upon his chest as in salute or a prayer. He felt the stirrings brought on by the dream, starting somewhere deep in his body, shaking him and causing him to stir emotionally as his loins woke and rose. He had heard other boys talking about touching themselves down there and knew the feelings, but he had always thought it wrong and the only thing his dick was meant for was peeing and eventually, when the time was right and the mood was sufficiently dark and hallowed, maybe for making a baby or two.
He had heard his brothers telling about the feeling messing with themselves or pounding their meat as they called it most often, brought on and he wanted to avoid such frightful temptations. He wanted to follow what Pastor Meshach Keep always preached about and stay pure and in God’s light. Often while swimming with the other boys down in the hollow back over on his grandfather’s farm, he had felt the stirrings, at the slightest touch from one or other of the boys his dick would rise on its own forcing him to hide under the water, allowing his impetuous body a chance to relax and retreat back into itself. He would hear the preacher’s words “Be led not into temptation, sodomy and fornication out of marriage is wrong and the Devil’s path.”
During sleepovers out in the barn and after his sister and her friends left to retreat back into the house and to their giggles and primping, slowly the talk would turn to girls and sex and as boys were wont to do dicks came out and a “my dick is bigger than yours” contest would start up. Most nights once this started Deakin or Deek as the others called him back then, would quietly slip off into the darkness only returning once the others were well asleep. Some nights he stayed and watched. So he always opted out of such boyish sexual pastimes, because he was afraid of the carnal thoughts he had, black thoughts he knew were wrong and would get him into trouble in his small town and which needed to be hidden and squelched. So he did so. Locked up his youthful desires behind walls of sun-toughened skin and muscle and bone both toughened to steel hardness by hours and hours of from sun-up to sun-down, back-breaking hard labor. Six days a week he worked his young body to fatigue. On the seventh day, he followed the pattern of all the old folks in the small town of Haven, Missouri and gave his mind and body over to God fully and without reservations. Once again from sun-up to sun-down he found himself busy, too busy for lax moments and mind-wandering.
Then the dream came, sweeping through his life like fire, not the fire of the Old Testament, the fire and brimstone of Reverend Pryor to his flock on any given Sunday; not cleansing but a destructive, damning fire burning through boundaries, weakening the foundation of sobriety his young self had so meticulously constructed. Once the dream came he lost his tight-fisted grip on his urges, his bones collapsed under the new-found weight of his desires and he threw caution away like the Bible that now lay tossed to the back of the bedroom closet he shared with his brothers.
At sixteen his life could be marked in two phases- before dream and after.
After the dream hit, early evenings would find him resting up for his next assault on the town two miles away. None of the old folks expected him to be around and not off running the hills with his brothers and the other boys and definitely not somewhere secretly listening in on their sacrosanct conversations, he would hear the old folks in the house, or sitting on the front porch speaking on him. Kids, and even at sixteen he was still considered a kid, were not supposed to be privy and intimately involved in the affairs of grown folks.
THAT BOY DONE GOT A SNIFF OF SOMETHING AND NOW HE CHASING OFF AFTER IT ALL DAY AND NIGHT. AINT SAINTLY. HE AINT NEVER BEEN THE BEST KID, THOUGH HE ALWAYS MADE IT TO CHURCH EVERY SUNDAY OUT FAIL, BUT HERE LATELY HE BEEN SLIPPING TOWARDS THE DEVIL. Deakin’s grandfather Lou who was deaf in one ear and the other one for was mostly just decoration now as well, always started off the conversations. As elder of the family it was his right.
Lou, somebody gotta talk to that boy. He always down in town now carousing. Mr. Farmer said he saw Deakin hanging outside of one of those bars. No telling what kinda trouble that chile getting hisself into. Lawd. That boy aint the same old Deakin no more. He could hear his grandmother, the care and fear in her voice. Next somebody more than likely his aunt Niecy would pipe up.
Well if you ask me somebody should take a good green hickory stick to that boy’s backside. He might be filled out but he aint too grown to get Jesus whipped into him. Daddy, you useta whip us something fierce when we acted up. Mal still got a few scars to prove it.
GIRL
Niecy!
You know ya right on that Niecy. HAHAHAH
Uh huh- too late for whipping.
GIRL I AINT NOBODY ASKED YO ‘PINION. YOU BETTA LOOK OUT FOR THOSE HARD HEADED KIDS OF YOUR OWN. BESIDES I AINT YOUNG NO MORE- AINT GOT THE ENERGY TO BE BEATING ON NO OLD TAIL KIDS LIKE DEAKIN.
Then, all sad and slow, he would hear his mother speak. Her words were always slow to come now even years after her stroke. The doctor said nothing appeared wrong with her muscles in her face but still she talked slow and deliberate taking her time to push the words out.
…if his dad was still round he would put him to rights. my Deak still a good boy, i just don’t know what happened, but he gonna come back to God. i know i’m right, he will be right with God soon. i know my boy. now its niecy boys and them other two fools of mine we should be worrying bout. they some hardheaded rambunctious negroes now that can try a person’s patience with all they foolishness. Lord.
With that laughter and the topic would change from him to crops or church or town gossip which even the men momentarily added to.
Deakin knew, even if no one else did, what had happened to him, it was the dream.
It is this the dream of the village that stirs him again tonight from his deep slumber. After hours of working in his study under a dim bulb too weak for his old eyes, on a Sunday sermon that refused him sanction into its holy moments, he thought sleep would take him down just one step before death and not relinquish him until he had sucked from it all of its nourishment. But here he was stirring and restlessly turning, coming up from under the weight of the dream. He was caught unawares, half-sleep and bearing his soul under a thin coating of slumber for anyone to see and divine if they so wished.
As he knew it would eventually, it had come back to him again this dream of dirt and sun; this dream of unbridled spirit and passion that after all this time was still unspent. This dream, It felt sanctified, light on his spirit;
But unlike other hot and sweaty nights spent entangled in the dream, he is chilled tonight, his black cast-iron skin is not holding the warmth of the dream sun inside of its every cell. Half awake, he shivers a shake that feels like possession, or a throwing off of something bad; a thing he can only hold for moments at a time without getting burned.
He doesn’t remember how he knows it is a dream of ancient Africa, doesn’t remember when he first claimed this land as the land of his forebears. He does remember though how he felt the first time that he had the dream and the naked native, black and shiny with sun and sweat, beaming like new money in the copper sun, walked into his vision; he remembers the flush of heat his then boy body felt, the bristling tingle in his loins the dream left behind. He remembers looking for the dream many nights afterward to no avail. Later he realized it would return, it always did, but in its own slow time.
In his waking hours he can still picture the young native girl, her breast small and ripening- not the temporary sensuous ripening of fruit, lime, mango, papaya, alligator apple, but that of youth coming into itself whole and full with a knowledge of its power and beauty and the spell that both cast. But it has always been her companion, the half-naked man standing tall and dark against the horizon; the man chest muscled and taut, every sinew ready to burst like glory, ready for action and to pick up the girl and her new heaviness off the ground that moves him to tears. His smile is broader than his shoulders which are as wide as the African vista spreading out around them, it is to big for his face, too big for the space of the dream. The dreaming Reverend watches the man, his thighs, dense and mountain hard, his penis flaccid and drained of its life yet still large and straining at the confines of the dream air which caress it. He stares and yearns to embed his body along with his spirit into the dream
Tonight he remembers the feeling again with elation and sadness. The room is still, the air stalking around the bed waiting for something to happen. Reverend Darling, temporarily more awake than sleep, lies staring up at the darkness not really seeing anything just blank space. He doesn’t know what the dream means or why every seven or eight years it revisits him like an old friend, a lover, warming his blood, re-invigorating his every step. But now instead of sending the blood racing like stallions to his loins like it used to do when he was younger, the dream of African passions leave him lukewarm but passive and distantly moody. He lies alone sad and perplexed drifting back into a deep sleep.
Tonight there is no warmth, no charge or tingle for him; he finds no solace in his nocturnal transmissions. Tonight, for the first time, the dream has changed; there is still the town layered in the brittle harsh yellow sun, a tropical Virginia of the 1800’s, still gabled houses frosted white in the glow of the late afternoon sun, still could be seen ladies and gentlemen, somewhere off in the distance yet palpable, strolling along dusty streets, twirling parasols, holding hands as if going to an ice cream social. Again, somewhere to his left stands a small building, unadorned except for the carved woodwork over the lintel, intricate patterns reminiscent of what he now knows are the markings over a high priest or chiefs door. The markings like dissatisfied snakes, writhe, undulating and shape shifting one second then still the next.
Out of the door first comes the girl- still young and pretty, but now her breast are the fullness of too ripe youth, a youth not wasted and sequestered away from the light, but lived to its fullest. Her breast are sweet he can tell, filled with cane juice that is much too sweet and potent for anyone person to bear; much too tropical and sweet for his pallid and urban taste buds.
The naked man is the same as he ever was, if not stronger and more ready than ever to enter into the Reverend’s waking world from the dream. The sun still pervades the quickly approaching shadows, but still he knows there is something different tonight. There is a third person here, his dream self slowly registers his presence and knows he has never been there before- he is the anomaly.
This person stares and watches the two lovers. Off to the left of the hut, just feet from the naked man, hidden behind a bush, stands the short and stocky, jet skinned man radiating an inky sheen in the harsh sun. Somehow he is hidden from view. His shirtless muscles striped with sweat and dust make him look more native and primal than the other two or what the serene setting suggests is proper. The new man wears three quarter length sack cloth pants, his thigh muscles flexing and popping in restless agitation.
The young girl walks away from the cabin away from the scene as the third man just watches his eyes trained only on the other young man.
He doesn’t belong here, bringing into the scene a strong sense ill-will and doom. The reverend tosses roughly in his semi-sleep as if he is trying to shake this new person out of the scene, dispel the newcomer and the malice he brings so he can get back to watching the man and the girl. He feels hate towards the stranger, a hate and anger driver by fear and something that he has not felt or visited since he was a teen back home.
Reverend Darling loves the dream, he loves the feel and taste as it fills his head, his mouth with its warm honey tropical sweetness. He loves the dream like nothing he has allowed himself to feel since, since he was tucked away in the mountains of West Virginia as a boy before he forsook the country life never to look back on its terrible memories. He loves the dream like nothing he has allowed himself to feel since running free as a child a teen and would never ever feel again.
This dream is all he has of pleasure and when it comes, infrequent and softly, as he lies in bed next to his wife, who is cocooned in her own world, he allows it total possession of him. The dream is all his, his beauteous shame not meant for prying eyes, especially not his wife’s who would not understand the soft glow of sun catching the repose of skin, glinting off the hard-edged angles of unfettered lust thick in the dream. Rolling over he hunkers further under the covers, sags deeper into the mattress, into sleep in an attempt to become one again with his dream. But tonight it is wrong, it is not his same dream.
Normally at these times of dream-fall, Mother Darling, never used to an over active sex-life with the Reverend, would retreat into her own self, cradling her own body to sleep; hold her own counsel. The dream would make him more distant sexually, taking her husband further away from her. But now she is too old and settled to worry about such. She also lies half awake listening to her husband tumble around, his breathing the low quiet pace of half-wakefulness. Her skin sweaty and warm to the touch belies his chill. Her thoughts like her skin are sweaty and damp. She smiles unconsciously; she touches herself instinctively, slowly and without disturbing the bed. Mother Darling languishes in her thoughts; stolen thoughts that fill her with hunger.
They lie separately, both half dreaming, he waiting for morning, the light of day to come and excise his new-found unease, she for a chance to leave the bed, shower off her night-sweats, head to the kitchen so she can cook to feed her man.

A LOVE POEM

He
loves love harder than he does his self,

beautifully flawed, his
words, heralding new realities, creating
new consensus’ of what love
should look like.

He
runs from place to place
picking up blk boy’s hearts,
housing them in a nesting chest,
cracked hearts , scarred, battered-
some emptying cups unable
to hold much. At times he cries
over pieces.

He
desires a full one, whole
and stalwart;
no bling, a chalice simple and healing.
His dented heart has not cracked,
bled out,
Is still tough yet tender.

The picker of hearts,
has not left me,
or all the other blk boys
who hungrily
fight over bloody scraps,
still believe in love,
in hallowed dreams,
resurrection in a brotha’s arms
without
a champion.

IMPERFECT EDEN

The Baby-
chapter 1


WAAHHHHHHHHHH, UHHH, UHHHH, UHHH. WAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

It was taking too long. It was noisy in the room and it was hot and her head was throbbing and it was not even out yet. Lorraine’s mouth was dry, muscles bunched and taut like a too full balloon ready to burst at the slightest touch; her thighs tensed for pushing were tiring and there was the crying and crying and…

He could be heard crying before he came out. It was the cry of someone that had been crying for years; lungs now clouded and stained by mucous, lobes refusing to expand as quickly as hours before, so now they slip into periods of rest where all that can be heard is the rough, raspy huffing and the anticipation of the next breath, the next wail.

It was taking too long. It was noisy in the room, voices everywhere, orders being given, directions of push, breath pant flew around her; her own breathing, fell down fast and heavy and clipped over her sweaty body, and still it was not out. Her mouth was dry, her muscles tensed for pushing, were burning and feeling like there were ready to breach the boundaries of her skin and still there was the crying and crying. She felt dizzy and light, “I am losing myself, losing me.” She lightly mumbled, lightly touched tongues to roof or mouth, lips to force the words out. “What did you say dear?” A nurse, the black round faced one with the smile bent over her. “Yes it’s almost over, soon, soon. You can hear him crying already.”

It could have been the rush of cold air that came to meet him as he slid forcefully down between cringing muscles, frightening contractions pushing him out of the warm salty pool he had called home for so long, that brought on the barrage of wails this time. It could have been that he was afraid to see what waited him at the end of the slick tunnel all sticky and lined with round bony protuberances.

Reverend Darling, the babies grandfather, the father of the panting mother, was fond of laying hands on pregnant women’s stomachs and quoting Jeremiah chapter 1, verse 5: Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, before you came to birth, I consecrated you. It was his way, as he would say, of laying a sanctified greeting upon the baby before it was born and recognizing it as a soul within the nation of God.

The Reverend wasn’t there, was nowhere near the hospital, had not laid hands, a finger or even eyes on the belly that housed the squawking child, but Lorraine, lying on the table legs cocked open waiting and through the pain of contractions, could hear his raspy voice slicing through the din, cutting into her ears and she screamed louder because of this. The baby could have used such a prayer, a greeting of peace and blessing might have eased the journey between the there, that space where spirits wait to enter the here.

GODDAMMIT, DAMN IT TO HELL! GET IT OUT OF ME- NOW! It hurts, Oh my head hurts. It feels like its tryin’ to come out of my head. GET IT OUT OF MY HEAD NOW!

“Calm down Lorraine, breathe, breathe. Listen to the doctor and do what he says and it’ll be over as soon as possible.” The words echoed and were muddled, they were soft and gentle, too peaceful to be bursting cannon loud, shrapnel sharp on the rolling landscapes in her head. The words carried no weight here, all she could hear was crying; crying coming from somewhere and screaming coming from her raw throat. The hectic pace of the room, the chatter between the doctor and nurses, she ignored. Lorraine had always been adept at blocking out all but what she thought pertinent to her in the moment and at the moment her needs were stopping the pain.
Through all the confusion her father’s voice, coarse and demonstrative kept invading- “suffer the little children to come unto me and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of God.” It was slow and painful the words that marched through her head, tears flowed freely from her eyes, but now he was coming. He was coming.

While waiting in some ether-world, some place between blood and bone, earth and Heaven, a place where most souls that stopped through were giving instructions to love the light and the adventures that lie ahead, he was forgotten, overlooked and left on his own with his dreams; nascent and unformed dreams that never reached beyond the sounds that came to him from beyond his watery pallet- his buoyant semi dark room. He had no sub-planted clues to be forgotten and remembered again years later, nothing to tell him what to expect after he arrived at the end of his journey. He was alone here in this watery world, but he knew this harshness and wanted to stay. For him there was nothing before and an uncertain of what lay ahead.
While lying in wait he would dream sounds, hard-edged patterns that he made soft, turned melodic and filled with tastes that fed him when there was little or nothing else there. When the blood that flowed to him was choked of all nutrients he fed himself off of incoming musical sounds. For months and months he had cradled himself to sleep on nothing more than sounds that found there way to him from outside, he was bounced asleep by Latin and Reggae rhythms mixed with the occasional blues rift sent out into the universe from the fingers of some old and hardened down home guitarist that could never have fathomed that he, tucked away inside, not yet ready to see the world with rheumy eyes, could find solace in his licks. The Blues after all were for those that had lived and lost and were bound on living again, not one like himself who, tucked away, in between limb and heart, knew nothing of love and loss; just sleep and wake. His spirit found solace in the sounds, in them he heard things he knew, though he knew not how. He heard the cry of the muezzin, the spiked call of the cantor, he heard the Canticle of Canticles ringing in his head.

The sounds now, were the release and gush of water- crashing waves that left him shivering; the groaning and creaking of walls that in there harshest voices let him know that they wanted nothing more than to kick him out of his imperfect Eden. Screams and shouts of “GET IT OUT, GET THE DAMN THING OUT. FUCK, GET IT OUT!” assaulted his ears, settled in his bones, forced inside of him by the pains made by the red crushing walls.

The sounds now were discordant, baleful and he was afraid. He wanted to crawl backwards, scratch and finger his way backwards, back into his warm, wet world of a room. There was no other place he wanted to be, this was home, warm, close and cozy. But the space behind him was now derelict and barren, the shrinking walls, slick and contracting had closed off his way back, it was if they never wanted him there in the first place and now made it sure that he or no other soul, could ever inhabit that space.

“CUT IT OUT- GET THIS THING OUT- AHHHHHHHHH! DAMN, IT HURTS.”

****** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****

Staring across the room at her writhing and possessed sister, Desiree checked the time on the big, white, industrial clock on the wall. “Three a.m., what a God-awful time for a birthing,” she thought to herself. As a nurse she knew that this was that special hour that most critically ill patients choose to die…

There was nowhere else he wanted to be, he was in no hurry to leave now. He could feel something tugging, pulling, grasping and fingering through the thick hair that lined his head and forcing him closer and closer to the light. He could hear sounds; voices, softer and less strident, cooing at something in pampering tones that sounded like music, without the waves. But he was being pulled and the waves of noise came back, the rush of red came back, surging down the tunnel pounding his feet and stomach making him cry.

WAAHHHHHHHHHH
“DAMMIT DOCTOR, DO SOMETHING. I AM FINISHED, I CANT DO THIS, CANT DO IT. AHHHHH”

…and she marveled at the fact that early mornings were also the times that a large number of babies chose to make their first appearance into the world, chose to bust through the veil of here and there, that spatial dividing line between the yet to be born place her preacher father would call the “waiting place of souls,” and this world which all to frequently was cold and harsh. So she waited, and stared and thought.

Desiree knew that memory was misleading and at times false, colored by all that a person had went through and touched. She knew that by the time a memory was recalled, it could be filtered through and rearranged by hurt, pain, loss, and even redressed in different clothes to attest to ones new sense of contentment. Under the best of circumstances memories thought Desiree were iffy, but under stress like the moment she was standing in now, memory could turn on misty becoming only haints and shades of the truth; so much so that the truth became so see-through no one could tell what was real and what just shadows.

"GIRL, when you speak to me use a tone of respect. " She had asked why they had to be home so early on a Friday, stated that they were only minutes late. "Girl, don’t talk back to me, don’t talk at me, don’t smart mouth me! I’m not one of those hooligans, one of those thugs you and your sister are used to talking with out there in the streets when your mother and I are away, our backs turned doing something else. NO!"

Hooligans, did he just say hooligans, her brain burst with laughter. His voice slammed her, pinned her ears back, took her legs out from underneath her. She was tired from the walk home from the library with Lorraine. Yes, they had stopped off at a friends house down the street, but so what, it was still early. They were exhausted from the long day at school and now having to stand up under his Friday night tirade was more than she could handle. Always the same his words, his spittle flying through the air tracing their hairlines like watery darts, mother in the kitchen waiting dinner, fried chicken, brussel sprouts or succotash, mashed potatoes and homemade lemonade or sweet tea a throwback to his youthful days. It was always the same, she and Lorraine would stand around and wait for the storm to pass, stomachs growling, the smell of fresh baked bread wafting through the air causing their heads to spin from hunger. It had always been like this

His voice was the hammer and it hit and hit with the ferocity of a pile driver looking to force its way beneath the surface, drive its words so far inside they could never be shaken loose. After seventeen years of this, for it seemed the yelling and demands started the day she was born, either towards her, or her mother who would lean into the words acquiescing to their power or maybe just deflecting them with her calm and steadiness, she was well used to the constant barrage of noise her father put forth; the fire and brimstone sledgehammer monologues suffered daily by all in the household, had come complacent in the face of the pronouncements of damnation of her preacher father.

Her head was bedrock, hard and dense, eventually having only its top layer infiltrated and invaded by her father’s strong words, heavy-handed preaching; but the lower strata maintained its structural integrity. He could never reach her there. Lorraine‘s head though was soft and ethereal, it was like pounding through thin air or into water it felt the vibrations, but was impervious to their effects. Early on she had learned somewhere that instead of letting her head become harder to keep him out, make it lighter to let him pass right through. She refused her father’s wrath entry by not being present. She let the words ripple and vibrate through her being, allowing them just to get wider, less powerful and more dispersed only seconds after they were uttered.

After the age of ten his words no longer caused Lorraine to jump and dance like a puppet under his command; her eyes dimmed a bit upon his arrival and no longer held within the proper amount of fear he asked for as tithe. Reverend Darling being a man so used to being obeyed and given his lead saw this change instantly and refused to let his power slip away to a child, let alone one of his. As if he really had any choice. So he railed at the girls louder, giving specific attention to his youngest daughter. Desiree sat and watched the power play between her sister and their father, the show played out in front of her often, one flailing and spewing his Lord and Jesus laced rants as if the louder he spoke there was the possibility he could find God and or righteousness in the words. The other small, immovable, staring at the man with a look so beyond hate, a look of such pity and scorn that it burned deeper and brighter than anything Desiree had seen in her life. As the oldest, Desiree masked her feelings and continued to play along, obedient to the end.

Now she stood staring at her younger sister as she moaned like one possessed with a spirit and not a quickly coming child. It had only been less than an hour since Lorraine was wheeled into the room and already she could by her breathing and the frantic nature of the nurses and the doctor that the child would soon appear. Against the wall out of the fray, she wondered if things had really happened as she remembered them. If they really got to the place where they were now through the places of her memory. Now with her eyes refocused she tried to picture Lorraine as a young girl to see if she really was the one with the hollow look in her dark eyes that defied logic, she couldn’t remember if her father, although a harsh man, was really as bad as her memory painted him. They appeared like ghost now in her head, of herself she saw nothing. The baby was coming now.

He could feel the top of his head being forced out of an opening too small, yet begrudgingly accommodating to his size. With each push of the surrounding walls he slid further and further away from home- further and further into the light and sounds that he dreaded. He could feel his tiny chest rise and fall faster and with an urgency that frightened; the quickening pace in his center speeding up with each tightening push. The beeps and alarms and clangs, metal on metal, scared him and no one listened to him as he told them to be quiet. So he cried and cried, calling out in the universal language of tears.

‘DAMMIT, IS IT OUT YET, IS IT YET?”

Halfway out, his eyes glued shut with fear, through movements and sounds he read like a bat using sonar, he defined the noises into shapes that appeared to him disjointed and ragged. As he eased the rest of the way out, the sound shapes, standing all around, radiating heat rocked side to side, danced around the spot he was entering. They were waiting for him and with easy strides and jerks supported him gently into the outside away from his warm spaces filled with sound and liquid.

It was cold, the air in the room biting his tender flesh and the harsh lights bouncing off of his closed eyes invading his body. The sounds no longer rippled but bounced like stones off of his head and he cried, till there were no sounds left in him, nothing but gasps then silence.
He felt all alone.

Lorraine, her face flushed, eyes bloodshot and drooping, now laid silent; breathing shallow, arms akimbo, spiked hair that framed her face, wildly displayed across a pillow.
“Is it finished?” she mumbled. No longer feeling the aggressive pains of childbirth she relaxed. “It is finished,” she whispered and turned her head away from the commotion all around her.
“Mrs. Darling, it’s a boy and he is as gorgeous as a girl. Head full of jet black hair and soft features. He’s gonna be a heartbreaker when he grows up. Once we run a few quick tests and clean him up some , you want hold him?” The question was softly rhetorical and lovingly placed before her, the nurse smiling, Lorraine, grimacing. Tired and nonplussed, Lorraine stony and distant, looked at the words as they hung in the air.

‘NAH, I JUST WANNA SLEEP! Leave me alone now and let me rest take him away. Take him. Damn, its over.”

“Have you thought of a name for this darling little boy? A child like this gotta have a special name.”

Lorraine just stared in disbelief, tiredness; sunken eyes cutting around the room, taking it all in- the nurses working on the squirming child a few feet away, the doctor still fumbling between her legs, her sister, a nurse herself, used to being in the midst of the action but now forced against the wall by all the activity watched, happy yet stunned by the birth. Lorraine tried to think of names, but all that comes is silence and blank spaces. She had never thought this far ahead, this moment was never a reality until just now; he was never real until just now with his cries and mewling, the nurse fondling him, his aunt smiling sadly his direction. Through her tiredness she tried to gather up a name from somewhere, but nothing.

“He don’t have no name yet, call him baby. Call him what you want, just leave me alone and let me sleep. It feels like I ain’t slept in ages.”

Now cleaned, weighed and tested and found to be healthy and as normal looking as any baby could be, swaddled like Jesus in the manger, he laid quietly- resigned to his new surroundings. There was no longer any reason for him to cry, the fear of last few hours having left, dissipating under the harsh lights, stopping when the pain of birth ended. All his fear ceased when his young mind realized that there was no returning to the warm, wet place he had called home. He was dry now. He was warm and dry and he felt his past life and lives slipping away, he was slipping away into nothing except what was all around him in the stark white room. His past, that cord that linked him to his mother, to the ether that was spirit, lay wet and slick in a pan somewhere. He was calm and secure now, but it was dry and chafing.

Desiree stood back, neither comforting the baby or her sister. She thought about her parents, it was late, but she should call them soon. But not yet, there was no reason to wake them yet. No reason at all.

BLUESOSITY- a jazz poem for Da Mayor

BLUESOSITY
(A jazz poem for Da Mayor)

Song like fable
fable like prophecy
fable that’s lyrically able
to speak God.
10th Commandment
thou shall jam
and jump and
be-
BOP.

LET THE CHOIR SANG.


Have you heard
the Ella glide
and slide
pure and revelatory
high.
It’s a picture
for your asses,
tonal visions for
the masses.
4/4 time.


The church will rise.


Send ladder notes
down
to catch the stragglers
Lift us up.


Funky, funk-
Zero-calorie
Junk. Rhythms
Letting spirit ride-
Abandon flesh
For Jazz Heaven.


ROCK THIS CHU’CH.


Sleep in the eaves,
Monday blues, riffing
Building celestial ragtime momentum
For the next
Assault skyward.

LONGINGS: EXODUS PT 2

He is like a balloon to my eyes and heart. He is a balloon with helium or nitrous oxide, floating above my head, just out of reach of my grasping hands, outstretched fingers, needy palms. When I jump, leap, lunge upwards, every sinew straining into long lean strands of wanting, he bobs and weaves, dancing away, always just out of arms reach. But when I finally do grab hold of the string that ties him to the ground, I will slowly unwrap it from where it is attached to the protruding bottom, soft and flared like a baby’s belly button, place the little rubber tip gently between my waiting lips, and take in the precious, reality shattering air, letting it explode my lungs.

He is like a balloon shimmering in gauzy shades of gold and blues, dazzling the eye; reds and purples sliding across the dance floor with other, less colorful, less buoyant, earth-bound orbs. His laugh, that trickles through the door that opens and closes with the arrival or leaving of customers, is like blue raindrops falling upon my ears, soaking my senses with it's sound.
The room, through the big, wide glass window, glows with a preternatural rainbow radiance, and even from a distance, the shine of his pearly white teeth blinds. His hands, sleeping under a sheen of perspiration, sleepwalks, caressing the wood grain of the bar absentmindedly bumping into half empty glasses of gin, scotch and cheap wines. His body invites glances of would-be lovers and surreptitious touches that linger longer and longer, waiting for a further invitation to pleasure.
**** **** ****
A voice, jarring like the bullet train at midnight, cuts through the otherwise silence of the kitchen, sending him pinball whirling out of his reverie.
“What time you gonna be home tonight? Boy, you better be at Donnell’s house. I got half-a-mind to call and see if you’re really there tonight. Every weekend always the same thing, you over at that boys’ house. I bet his parents are wondering if you got a home, and why you ain't never there. I say again, what time you gonna be home tonight?”
His mama stood beside the stove turning hot water cornbread in a skillet of hot grease. He could see her body slightly rocking from side to side, her smooth, brown-skinned face shining like tigers-eye, crinkling and radiating in the kitchen’s heat as she waited for an answer.
“I’ll be home before midnight Mama. And don’t sweat it, D’s parents ain't tripping ‘bout my being over there so much. They cool.” His big giraffe eyes taking in the landscape of the kitchen, helplessly unable to focus on just one single image.
Mama stands, next to the stove, hands gently riding her fragile hips, all the while staring intently at her son who, in her eyes is beauty and peace and righteousness all swaddled together in white linen cloth and hung around her heart; her own sacred piece of heaven. The thought mamas’ baby, papas’ maybe suddenly crosses his mind and he flinches, his shoulders reaching upwards to comfort his ears jerking him away from her steady gaze.
The microwave clock flashes seven thirty, and she watches his feet to start to move in their now all too familiar, I-gotta-be-going-now, restless manner. “Lately,” she thinks to herself smiling worriedly, “that boy always looking to go somewhere.” A chuckle of concern slips harshly from her mouth.
He watches as his mother, now done cooking, drains the grease from the skillet into the grease can kept under the sink, and then runs cold water in it to cool it down. Laying the skillet in the sink, she turns to face him a smile gently playing across her easy demeanor.
“It’s been a while since I seen Donnell, what that boy up to? And stop all that fidgeting and tapping, that’s working my last nerve.”
He grunts out a unintelligible repsonse and she shrugs it away. Her own restless energy sends her through the kitchen wiping down counters and straightening fixtures and bric-a-brac. Suddenly she stops and turns to face him, her chin set with a determination he has never before seen, her mouth opens as if to issue forth words, but nothing comes out. The serious look that clouds her eyes scares him, he thinks to himself, “not tonight, any night but not tonight.”

“Well somebody gotta clean these dishes before your step-father comes home. I kind of recall that it’s your night since your sister did them yesterday. Better get to work if you plan on going anywhere tonight.”
With her speech made, she whisks around and heads for the kitchen door and out into the living room. He nods in her direction, his head bob hitting her back and releases the stale air from his lungs. The air as it rushes from his body, and falls to the floor in slow, ever shrinking spirals, he realizes he had trapped inside of himself causing his lungs to ache, and his heart pound.

Washing dishes was always his most hated chore, he is too tall for such work, “and I have to bend too far over to reach the sink”, he thinks to himself inside of his restless head, he grumbles quietly to himself, his hands fully immersed in hot sudsy water, and continues scrubbing out food-caked pans. “ I ain't but started and already I wanna sit my ass down and rest.” This time he complains loudly to the empty room.
Bending his long frame over the sink, and moving to a tune sequestered safely within his head, he rocks from foot to foot wetly tapping out time with the soapy sponge on the ceramic tile of the counter. His eye is drawn to the window over the sink, and his wandering thoughts catch the reflection of the headlights of a passing car somewhere in the distance. His mind hanging onto the rear bumper, zips him away from where he stands in the kitchen, until he can see Him superimposed with the face of his best friend, both floating effortlessly, vying for space, before his eyes.

**** **** ****

“D, man, stop tweaking. Ain't jack gonna happen to me. There’s a bunch of us hanging out, we just kick it for a while, then go home.”
Donnell’s hands swat at the air chasing away the fly that just buzzed him, his squat body bumping his friend’s, a friendly wake up gesture.

“Man, come on, you’re hanging outside of a club waiting for a dude twice your age and who don’t even know you alive. Shoot, he’s probably trade, a cheap, fine-ass whore, swapping jobs for a few quarters. Hell, he’s probably doing it for the thrill of it, you ever think of that? He ain't nothing but a hoe! Boy, if anybody comes up to you and asks you ‘what’s up,’ you better get your ass out of there.”

Donnell’s bed squeaks as he turns to face his friend where he lounges, resting on his elbows at the head of the bed. The friendly tension in the air coughs and breathes as it makes it way through the dusty air, across the pictures of Rap, Pop and R&B singers that line the walls. Lil’ Kim, Cisqo, DMX and Janet, stare down at the two boys as they stare into each other.
“Yeah, Donnell whatever.” He speaks haltingly at first, then in a more light and airy tone.
“And darn, monkey-boy, what you know about hanging out, and what type of guys I should avoid. You rarely ever leave this damn room. What, you tipping on the side or somethin’? And here I am thinking that I was schooling you about The Life. Tramp!”

**** **** ****
The blaring of a car horn breaks the reverie he was in, trapping it within a soap bubble, sending it floating away. Rinsing soap from the last plate, he racks it and quickly dries his hands. He walks across the kitchen and retrieves his jacket from where it hangs across the back of a metal dinette chair.
Passing through the door that separates the kitchen from the rest of the apartment, he looks towards the back room where the flickering of a television screen and occasional laughter, lets him know that his sister and mother are watching t.v. A grunt, a goodbye, or something like it is yelled to his mother as he passes through to the front door, and out into the night.

“His smile pulls in all directions, gathering tenderness, sucking it in from outside on the cold sidewalk where, the cars rushing by, paints me, and illuminates my thoughts with their headlights placed on high. He pulls me in through glass, and wood, and metal struts to where He stands amidst heated bodies that bump Him and each other, all the while smoking, talking, and dancing slow. And my heart; small, plain, covered with the pox-marks of an abandoned childhood, yearns to be in there smiling it’s own radiant, stunning glow. My heart that has only seen sixteen summers and winters, aches to be feeling the warmth, and looking at His long-distance love close-up, through nothing but the low illumination of the hazy club.”

“I pull back from the window, and rub my cold, numb fingers together, placing them firmly into my pants pockets where they sit cold and lifeless. I am a statue, one that nightly leaves lip-marks, red and dripping with heart’s blood, on the glass of the dance club.”

“Others watch me and roll, and bounce seductively into my legs wanting me to play with them; wanting me to join them in a game of one-on-one. I kick them away, afraid of their lustful panting, and desperate touches, instinctively knowing they cannot feed my hungers, only momentarily subdue them.”

“He is a balloon, and I think out loud to stares, whispers, and laughs, ‘I am a damned red rubber ball used for four square; a kick ball.’ And I roll away knowing that I will return once again tomorrow, and like every other night stare through the finger scarred window at Him, my circus balloon.”

RIDING DIRTY

Everything has a message
jumping turnstiles
can say poor, opportunist or
anarchist-
breathing is political -
mine can damn me.

If on the subway,
I breathe my name into his mouth,
flick my tongue
to remember the smell of his smile,
will my politics kill?

Light from dark
growls, glowers in the distance
chinks into armor
crawls upon secret moments
killing
not too kindly,
in between opportunities

clandestinely grabbed.

My face is not
painted rainbow,
does not wave and flourish
beneath harsh flickering lights,
eyes trained to see,
but not look.

Brown is not a stoic color.

But brown in brown
intertwined fingers
Space-less lips
speaks freedom, is
beatific.

War zones zoom past-
republic enclaves,
drug turfs, religious bastilles
hostile eyes. The grip
gets tighter, knuckles
grey like used charcoal
crumble.

Maybe spines can be
flagpoles. Every action
wind blown flags
telegraphing intent,
unorthodox desires.

Fools names and fools faces
are always seen in public places-
mama said. But
my name is hidden under his tongue, protected
between the clench of his jaw. My image
captured within the lens

of his eye.
Does this make us safe, or
political prisoners riding home
underground to sanctuary?