BLKTONES

IMPERFECT EDEN- chpt 2

2008-08-10T10:01:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-18T22:10:00.000-07:00

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

2008-04-23T09:51:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-17T20:52:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-25T17:45:00.000-07:00

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

2007-02-25T15:29:00.000-08:00

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?

WAVE WOMEN

2007-02-23T16:53:00.000-08:00

The women
Of the waves
Will keep their
History in seashells,
Notch the generations
With red coral beads threaded
With quilted strips of colorful cloth
Hung down strong backs,
Round necks and
Across fertile bellies. They
Will feed babies sea-Cows milk,
Take lessons from Yemaja on
How to bend
The water into
Boat-sized baskets, and
Look for darker secrets that so often,
Come bouncing up from
Deeper depths.

My mama and her
Mama’s, mama’s, mama’s mama
Travel with the women- in
Groups like deities on parade. When
We leave this time for the
Journey. They will
Help unpack the bags, sooth
Raw, storm ravaged nerves, feed
The babies and wash the
Bodies clean of the
Stench of travel.

Then when rested,
They will, along
with the men, plant victory
Gardens, raise the babies,
shout down thunderous
Clouds with
Laughter and passion.

THE RIFT

2007-01-04T21:17:00.000-08:00

There

is a crack in the perfect stone

of my heart. I

have let east Africa in.

If I travel west

will the land there burst the seams,

tear out my spleen
leaving me hollow

ripe for infusion and invasion?

GALOSHES & UMBRELLAS

2006-10-08T09:41:00.000-07:00

he is blowing dust
sensually tickling- head
shoulders, knees and toes.
eastern summer heat
bartering breezes
with the west,
serving up gentle tornadoes
in exchange for
kisses.

like storm water
he has always been
here, then there
leaving,
to come back always ,
when the season
is right.

he is tempest,
but
i am no teapot
cannot contain his
passions, his whistling
steamy moments.

he breezes through
leaving me-
hot water marks across the lintel
of my back,
scalds on my sex.

when healed, i will
dream of him-
warm masseur rock hands,
touch myself,
linger
in the humidity of his memory.

TO LOVE A BLACK MAN

2006-08-27T09:13:00.000-07:00

AN UNTITLED SOLILOQUY

2006-07-28T00:17:00.000-07:00

surrounded by his own deafening quiet, he dived
off, took that step out
into nothingness-just like
he felt his life was, his
hopes were- he had
moments of brilliance, beauty, bliss, but
in the end they all turned to nothing- he
needed to be filled up
inundated with bright lights,heady words, love and loves, moments
so full he could not breathe, wound so
tight in camaraderie, they would not
let him go,

back into nothingness.

so he swam to the edge
swallowing the emptiness
gulping the hardness
forcing it deeper within
till it became him, he
became it and all he could do
was relinquish into its call
and fall and purge
he could not see through
the dank dark silences to the eyes
that watched unawares, yet implicit.

and i hold my nothingness close
like an enemy that i have bedded for years, refusing it
free reign, afraid it would cause me to stumble
and fall, slipping off the edge
i walk along, behind him.

UNTITLED WORK IN PROGRESS

2006-04-25T23:25:00.000-07:00

I am looking for someone to kiss,
longing for the intimacy
of tongue caressing tongue,
laying mine along the length of his
tasting first the sweetness
and then sour of his stippled tongue.

For the moment
I don't want to know his sex,
don't need to feel, taste
or see his manhood,
time the pulse of it
as it rises.

I long to converse
with that sacred spot
at the back of his throat
where speech lies,
where spirit sits
feeding words out,
turning speech into flesh-
into me, into us.

In the beginning
there was the WORD
and it was
Good and holy and sanctified.
Maybe the word was Love
or baby.
I am looking for his WORD.
Words that will make me smile
at his sound. This is so much deeper
than sex, and I am trying
to climb his family tree,
trying to
find a way into his ancestry,
read their stories embedded
on his tongue.

In my saliva
is held my genetic memory,
my genetic code for survival,
destruction, passion.
I want to kiss a man,
sharing this, want to
lick his stories out
then speak them back
to him
so he'll know
how he looks-
how he sounds to me.

I am looking for someone to kiss.

UNTITLED POEM FOR THE UNNAMED

2006-04-05T18:09:00.000-07:00

They never knew
living
beneath the poverty line meant
living
below the water table.

Down here red
mud seeps
into lungs to be
digested; clay
feeding cells, strengthening
wombs, growing
sperm already named
and allocated.

And they drift…
…along the Swanee River
remembering deities sometimes
bled and were bled,
like them, were
sometimes named
James, Audre, Fannie,
Christophe
like them,
baked bread and
had babies out
of nothing but love-
molded bricks of
delta mud,
like they did.

This
aint nothing new
they sing-
a song of the south- deep
and equatorial-
transplanted and transported
north and beyond, poverty
strung in every chord.

But memory
slips.
hard times get
soft and deceptively
smooth, leaving
the folk learning
to tread water
all over again.

CASTAWAYS

2006-03-28T12:48:00.000-08:00

THE MINNOW, QE2, ILE DE FRANCE, SS
UNITED STATES, THE AMISTAD
TAKING ON PASSENGERS, NO LIFE JACKETS OR
ESCAPE CONTINGENCY PLANS FOR THEM, NO MONEY BACK
GUARANTEES OR FUN FILLED SHORE EXCURSIONS.
TEN MILLION PASSENGERS SET SAIL,
THE FIRST ALL BLACK CRUISES.

SHIPS OF GHOSTS,
GHOSTS THAT EAT
SOULS, AND DRIVE THEM AWAY FROM
HOME.

IF THEY HAD KNOWN WOULD
PHYLLIS, KUNTA,
EQUIANO, CINQUE
HAD CHOSE TO STAY HOME AND RAISE
BABIES AND CROPS AND VOICES TO GOD?

2 SEASONS BECOME 4.
3 HOURS BECOME
LIFETIMES,
COTTON
AINT CASSAVA, OR PUMPKIN,
TOBACCO STAINS THE FINGERS WITH ITS JUICE AND
CAN’T BE EATEN, AND WORK PRODUCES NOTHING,
BUT MORE WORK.

OVERSEER’S WHIPS BRING ON DANCING, WORKHOUSE
AND FIELD SONGS, MOANS THAT TURN GOSPEL
AND SANCTIFIED, MASQUERADE AS ENTERTAINMENT.

CORN BREAD MASH, GREASY FAT BACK,
DANDELIONS GREENS FILL BELLIES
JUST ABOVE THE STARVATION LINE. 14
HOUR DAYS MAKE SLEEP ON BEDS OF PLANK AND STRAW
COME HARD BUT EASY.
WITH NO TALKING DRUM, GRIOTS, IT IS
HARD TO COMMUNICATE.
THEY COMBINE THEIR WORDS IN THE DARK
TO SOFTEN THE NEW GROUND THEY STAND ON

Like Robinson Crusoe
WHO DID RETURN HOME
it's primitive as can be.

Its
Primitive
as can
be.

DENSITY OF BONES

2006-01-23T21:42:00.000-08:00

What is it about bones that make them stay sunk and submerged after so many years? Rather than rise up; fly?
Did sharks, clamp jaws, buzz saws for teeth, circling round human cargo ships, digest their souls along with the flesh when they were thrown overboard by white hands getting rid of an non-productive milk cow or sterile steer, just more flotsam and jetsam for the waves, bait, training the sharks to follow their wake from sea to sea. Or did the bones leave their spirits and souls ship-bound with the chained and stained ancestry to tell stories of their passing.
The memory is fading---
And now the water is over our heads again, and
we tread on bones, stand on legs, pelvis’, shoulders and skulls; learn first hand the plaints of ancestors- the tones of our voices and cries are ancient, edged with sorrow and impatience and salt and barnacles that rip and eat into our throats.
History repeats, they
Are drowning
Again, we
Are drowning again. But
This time WE
have to
bury the dead, light
funeral pyres, torch mounds of
history texts, burn Sharazad Ali, Conrad, Beecher
Stowe, place
bic and
butane lighters to pages yellowed
and dated.
Let the
women ululate, keen-
lifting wails throughout nighttime skies;
holy nights with grief being
An invited dinner guest- the
only one eating.

Let the
men beat their chest-
posing strong and fierce, put
the babies to sleep with dreams of fulfilled
specters that kiss melting black, brown and tan cheeks.
And the water rises
again and we stand at the shores of our steps looking out of the 9th ward, the
Bayview, Deep East Oakland, Marin City, Richmond at
incoming waves. Outside
saviors leave favors
on porches, street corners, alley-
ways filled with voodoo hush and
jumbie wishes. Catacomb
dolls float by kicking chicken feet; flowers,
burning cigars trailing ash, family
pictures drift along on ripples.
Ears drunk on red
punch, Cisco and malt liquors, dande-
lion wine don’t hear judgment
coming on the crest of a wave, but
salvation.
Sailors of the SS. Black Continuum, sing
plantation lullabies, look down
into pools, lift our limbs,
wondering
at the density of bones

HE COMES BEARING FLOWERS

2005-11-19T23:21:00.000-08:00

1.
He is a man
too long in gardens overrun with
honeybees. His
taste is sweet
and smooth on the tongue.

His arms, large petals,
gauzy and
...Colorful blue and white
and orange... Georgia
Okeefe landscapes that open and tremble at
a touch to enfold me.

When
I enter, slipping
fences, changing
floral landscapes that smell nasturtium,
lily and apple blossom sweet, I
sing his giving- place open. Green
tendrils of pleasure seeking his center.

2.
I would like him
to come wearing nothing,
holding nothing between
opened hands, between
calloused fingers, between
us.

I would like him
to come naked,
fresh from morning ablutions, head
tangled and dreaded, dancing in
Heaven's sunlight, full
with thoughts of me, the
infiniteness of life together.

He comes bearing flowers wrapped
in nothing but skin-
black-eye Susans,
looking at me teasingly, Jack-
In-The-Pulpit inviting , me in to pray,
and gardenias that smell
precious, and of
surrender.

2005-10-24T22:36:00.000-07:00

AND WE FLOAT ON
since drowning
aint an option
we learn to swim,
dog-paddle, find wood
floats to hold us up,
grab hands and
PULL and
PULL and PULL
and PULL .

CopyrightÓ 2005 SS

2005-10-13T10:19:00.000-07:00

DESTINATION UNKOWN

I believe in
the laying on of
hands, speaking
in tongues, the
sexo-religiosity of
Jesus baptizing
little black boyz
that follow him like groupies, or
of Buddha holding court
under Bodhi trees
listening
to Nina
Simone sing about strange fruit.

we will rise together.

I throw shells, read
bones, chicken and other-wise, marks
in sands laid down by
flood waters and deft bony fingers. I
walk Dogon cliffs
searching stars for meaning.
this time we will be prepared.

a change gonna come-

and we all walk the
waters, this time
refusing to go down, this
time no
more long boat rides
-destinations unknown-
forcing us into
our own demise.

no more watery graves, this
time we
will bury our
dead, the ones left under the waves,
and the ones lost to
the tides. we will
propitiate Olokun with
rooster, gold, red
coral and deep blue cries
of hallelujahs.

and we walk
out of muddy
waters, hand-
in-hand, becoming
divinity,
walking ourselves
back home.

2005-09-01T15:51:00.000-07:00

MORE THAN ALL THE STARS
A GAY FATHER’S JOURNEY TO SELF

This aint no story, but the way circumstances actually unraveled and laid themselves out under my stammering feet.

This aint no story, I wouldn’t even know how to fictionalize this if my life depended on it. Maybe if I turned my life over to a real writer, someone more capable at creating beauty from pain, manufacturing hope from despair, they would make me brave, strong and noble, rather than the hiding and crying man I showed myself to be. From someone else’s pen I’d be tall and manly not the scared little boy playing house in a house of cards that I was that Sunday.
"What’s out that window that you keep looking at, you looking for somebody?" I stood in my mama’s living, the family home, staring out the big window to the street. Mama stood beside me, all five foot nothing of her petite frame resting to my right against the window frame. I could smell the perfume that she wore, it was sweet, sticky, heady and the same scent that she wore every Sunday for family day. The scent made me wish for the days when I was younger and would look up at her as she stood and stared out the window; at what I never knew.
"Yeah, Leigh is bringing Corinne over; they should have been here by now. She told me when I left the house she would be right behind me."
"OOH,” she squealed in her unfettered girlish way, pleased to be seeing her grandbaby. A smile touched my lips in response to her obvious joy at seeing Corinne, her baby boy’s first and only child.
Alone again, I continued staring, continued thinking on the day to come, about all the things I didn’t or hadn’t yet told her. I didn’t have the words, or the spine, yet to tell her.
How could she know though that her baby boy, her second and youngest son, the one who just a few years earlier had surprisingly fallen in love and gotten married and who even more shockingly followed that with a child soon after. How could she know that this same son, the one she was smiling with and staring to the streets with, was gay.
I couldn’t tell her, not today, not anytime soon. She didn’t know that my then wife and I, although still living in the same house, were virtual strangers and rarely talked.
How could mama know that today when my wife finally did show up, with grandchild in tow, she was going to give her, and the rest of the gathered clan, her new address, her new phone number; she was going to take from me the one thing in life I had done right- my daughter. She was moving out, leaving me alone taking from my mother the possibility of seeing her newest grandchild weekly, but taking from me my heart and soul and up to that moment my true reason for being.
Even though she was just moving across town, it felt like she was moving to the moon, or back home to my wife’s familial home in Philadelphia. I felt the drama of the moment as I stood, stared and waited for them to drive up. I felt the preeminent mood of my inner moments, and knew I was about to lose the one thing that kept the knots of my life from fraying, untying and cascading down in a storm of a hundred useless pieces of string.
So we all gathered, laughed, smiled and ate like black folks do on a Sunday, when the vibes are good, the spirit high and we gather to fellowship. I listened to my family talking, laughing, telling tales on each other and said nothing. I wandered from room to room, only peripherally engaging anyone, my daughter hanging to my hip; an extension, a new growth of bone.
Later, I went home to an empty apartment for the first time in years, and said nothing- my tears would speak volumes, but I refused them license to share my soul with others. But I cried and cried to myself, while listening to old records, the kind best listened to in the dark and while sitting on the hard floor pondering the weave of carpet patterns.
When my daughter was born, she recreated me, made me change, grow and see sides of me I never knew I had. She made me see and loving in a whole different light. UNCONDITIONAL LOVE now became real and manifest to me; the principles of agape versus familial or erotic loves all became clear and I flourished under such a spirit of love and blessings that a child brings.
Feeling, full of myself, and in a moment of hubris and parental bliss, one day I told a lesbian colleague “You can’t know what true and unconditional love is until you have a child.”
Now I know I was wrong, I should have said- “you can’t know what true and unconditional love is until you have a child that now lives three thousand miles away from you.”
Yeah, yeah, I know this is still an arrogant and insensitive thing to say, but it is the way I felt at the time, and sometimes still, do, and I really do hate always having to be PC every time I speak.
When I married, I also was recreated. Not because of my sexuality and being gay; no, I think I loved women too, maybe more at the time, but because I never thought that I would marry, had rarely had a girlfriend and was shocked to now find myself at this point.
Fatherhood brought on another stage of movement and growth. When my child was delivered, she remade the shallow life I had lived heretofore into a full blown, blossoming entity that I knew would never close.
Now, with the separation and my daughter and her mother moving across town to their own place, and not across the country or to another continent, as my emotions would have had someone believe, and my new-found, newly expressed sexuality, I found myself having to re-invent myself again; to find new places for me to inhabit and new languages to learn how to speak. I now found myself reestablishing old family ties, and creating and fostering new extended family networks.
Now, I was moving; moving into my own space literally and figuratively, moving into a new and unexplored self with new desires that although never active, had always lingered in the background causing my head to turn when he, whomever the he was, walked by, but had never been more than a ghost of a desire and never pressing or important. My male to male urges were now taking hold and center stage in my psycho-social leanings. I was moving into a self that was lonely and now in need of connections, and these male to male desires, now set free, sprung up in fiery waves, burning me, rising me out of the ashes of an old, outdated me.
One stage of my life was over, and another just beginning.
Slowly, I made my way into black gay life. I recognized instantly that I could not refer to my being gay as a “lifestyle”, a word which denotes choice and the ability to stop being who I was, but simply as my life. I began to meet men, men that were not ashamed of emotion, bereft of care and tactile sensibilities that spoke of love and joy. I slowly created a new family that I saw would be there for me, if no one else was. But I still had to build a bridge between my two worlds- the ex-husband and father, son, brother- straight male, over to single gay black man, over thirty and now trying to make his way into a new life and still holding onto to the old.
And now my daughter is three thousand miles away, and I am a gay man trying to raise a daughter in absentia. I am a father that now has to teach his child about his sexuality; about the politics of sexuality, societal norms and looking beyond and always keeping sight of the father she loves and who loves her dearly, regardless of the gender of the person on my arm.
At five she was already grounded in society’s male to female dynamics and way of thinking. She saw the world as black and white already- women had long hair, men’s were short. Women dressed in dresses and kissed a lot and girl dolls had teas. Whereas males were rough and careless and fun to play with in tangled ways that sometimes bumped shins and sent you skyward only to be caught again on the downward dip. She saw fathers and mothers, not dads and dads and moms and moms.
Good thing for me, from the moment of the separation, my ex-wife, Corinne’s day to day guardian, had been telling our daughter that-
“Corinne, sometimes a man can love a man, and a woman can love a woman in the same way a woman and a man love each other.” She was sincere in her attempt to indoctrinate our child into the world where one parent is same gender loving. But, and there is always a “but” in life, Corinne is now twelve and still lives over three thousand miles away and the topic of my sexuality rarely if ever comes up. I am no longer sure what she knows about me, or if she really cares. I leave it alone until it comes up, and when it does, she hears me, and moves on quickly. And I just smile at my child. I smile as she meets my friends and invites them into her world.
So we talk on the phone, converse through emails and IM’s. At the end of each encounter I tell her I love her more than the moon, we started this when she was just 5 and just moved away from me. She tells me she loves me more than all the stars, and I picture the immense expanse of her love enfolding me, and hang up the phone smiling safe and secure in her love.

2005-04-27T01:46:00.000-07:00

Tropical breezing

HOME BY SPRING

2005-04-27T00:41:00.000-07:00

On this cold, windy day in Brooklyn, I need to feel warm; cozy, cuddled, sitting by a fireplace two under a blanket made for one. I need to be warm, sit in the sun and let it toast my face a darker shade of brown. On these days, I need to know that someone loves me enough to warm my heart with three simple words; loves me enough to stroke me from belly to thigh as I slowly drift to sleep.

I look to the telephone and think up things to say when he calls. "Where you been my nigga, when you gonna get here?'' In my head words begin to swim around like a Roberta Flack song- "why don't you move in with me, we could start a family," segueing into an old torch singers' lament. In my deep voice I hear Ella, Billie or Sarah, I dont know whom, crying "lover man where can you be?"

I think that I should buy a cat, something small and warm to keep me company on these days when I have nothing to do but bide my time. I will name him Chuck, Joe, Henry or Otis, names of strong black working men with muscles and callused hands used to bending metal, but can be trained in the art of massage, tickling and deep-stroking; love-making.

On cold wintry days, far from home, family and feeding on my own inertia, I watch leaves fall to the ground like so many broken promises. I hold words of loss, contempt and hope in my mouth and spit them to into the air and watch them as they fall unto the page.

The cold is leaving me dry inside.

Last week while in the laundromat, a brother, tall, fair-skinned and fine as hell to my heart and eye, walked in leaving bags of laundry with the attendant to be washed and picked up later. As I stood against the tumbling dryer warming my backside, I watched as the bags were emptied, in my mind vicariously fingering the white underwear as they were placed in the machine, sniffing my fingers trying deperately to imagine the male scent of their owner.

This cold climate is leaving me desperate.

My dreams are becoming frostbitten; slowly being drained of their color. In a dream we kiss like two black waifs; dancing at dawn, our cheeks dusted with confectioners sugar, pollen or plant nectar, that we like love starved orphans voraciously lick off, leaving our bellies full, our tongues sticky white and coated.

On these cold, brisk days in Brooklyn, I wake up feeling more alone than ever. So I write names on scraps of paper and tape them to windows throughout the house in hopes that somebody will read them and find their way home by spring.

NIGGA PSYCHOSIS, NEUROSIS & GHETTO HALITOSIS or THIS CRAZY SHIT STANK

2005-02-22T23:00:00.000-08:00

Shaquan cant read
and Latoya feeds her greed
while Bubba, their southern cousin,
three
times removed, feels
green seed
growing and settling
between his knees
giving birth to little
black, crack addicted babies
with needs and needs-

HEH- can I get an AMEN!
BUT.....Robnisha can't read
cause DeMarco smokin weed
while Johnny with his gun
blazes trails through towns and trees
filled with baby mamas
mama's babies that cry and plead
and that nigga that
hides in the dark, DL'ing his jones
and lets you feed and feed.

WELL, WELL!

BUT...Pooky can't read
yet he's in the lead
pt. guard for save the
darkie day sucking on pacifier
or gin and juice- Please!
Slanging mad D, looking to do
another ghetto fabulous deed
Hilfigered down
fingering through Bibles
mouthing words sacred yet profane
he wont ever heed.

LET THE CHOIR SANG- HEH
NOW LET THE CHOIR SANG, LET
SOMEONE CRY
AMEN
for the haves and have-nots
for the
disenfranchised, un
enfranchised, unincorporated, for
all the dirty souf, ghetto
babies running
through Harlem, Bed Stuy, Cabrini
Green, North Philly, The LBC, Hunters
Pt. and East or North Oakland, all the while
sucking on gubment
cheese.

And...
Lil Shay Shay can't read
and Junebug starts to bleed
from Middle Passage cuts
stringing his wrist and back
causing his mama to scream,
daddy to concede-
"honkies aint shit"
while smoking weed
and Jovan the afrocentric spirit child
tries to fight fires with his tongue
spitting a different creed.
LET SOMEONE SAY AMEN!
say amen somebody- say
amen, amen.

2005-02-16T17:27:00.000-08:00

A HUNDRED MILLION VOICES
(a poem for spirit, a poem for flesh)

For me the
collective consciousness is not
a theoretical concept, and
cellular memory is a bitch
causing me to see faces of
black hued, blue
Atlantic cleansed
ancestors morphing into mine
every time
I pass a mirror. And
whenever I lick my lips
you are there
asleep on my tongue
your needs
and desires slipping
into my body
diffusing throughout, becoming
an integral part of every cell,
and every time I hear someone say "we
are one," I wonder is
this what they mean?
At times
I feel as if my body is not my own.
Everywhere I turn you
are there.
When I sleep,
I dream you
your hands that catch refusing to let me
fall.
When I wake you rise with me to create the new day.
When I eat is with your hands
that I nourish my body.
When
I write it is with
humble heart that I inform
and reform your spirit.

But
in those moments when
I cannot call you forth,
can't hear you,
can't feel you,
can't see you,
I am lonely and afraid,
feel set upon by those outside the village. So
I will you back,
I pray you back,
I ask you back
home.
I chant in a chorus of a hundred million voices.
Maferefun Eggun
Mojuba Eggun.
I Scream out loud,
"I can't do this alone,"
and run to where the silver
filigreed mirror hangs on the wall,
and patiently, await your arrival.

2005-02-01T13:41:00.000-08:00

THE DERVISH

Upon his entering the club, I notice that he has a walk that is big and looping, wide and open- inviting gazes to linger, imaginations to wander through his physical landscape, and dicks to quiver and harden at the thought of such a sweet taste. And I watch him dance, his gyrations dizzying, making me high, making the sweet spot in the center of my chest, rock-candy hard, and ready to enter him; ready to dance cha-cha, two-step, the freak with him. I read the side-to-side semaphore of his tight ass, seemingly motioning me over. His every movement is Morse Code calling out to me.

do, do
you, you
like it like
this, this?

“Oh, hell yes”, I scream out loud to the crowded and darkened room in affirmation of the beat that got my man all fired up, dancing by himself, like he’s the only lover he need, spinning faster and faster like some Hindi dervish, arms flying, fingers whipping, legs turning, and turning and turning. It’s like he is in Heaven, and is talking to God, and all his ancestors. The dance floor is his confessional, and everyone in the crowded room are all voyeurs staring past the most private edge of his soul.

Four times before I have witnessed his Phoenix act, watched him rise from the ashes of his day; burning away the madness of life with the sweat, and intensity of his desire. And I want to tell him that passion, my lust for him, can also burn hot, furnace blasting away his troubles.

Four times before I have watched him dance madly and alone for hours on end; staring and wondering how do you approach a saint; how do you dance with an archangel? And I know that to fuck him, would be like touching stars, the moon and sun but to make love with him, and to him, would be to hear harps, and Gabriels’ trumpet, and see Heaven.

As he dances in his own little isolated circle, to his own consecrated steps and rhythms, he becomes a flame that draws brothers from across the club to come dance beside him; hoping to be noticed, graced with a smile, a touch, an invitation home.
All of us are deep under the spell he stomps and pounds out on the dance floor- drum rhythms that call the village to pray or party. And the brothers fly around his flame like tiny moths, latch onto his scent of sandalwood or patchouli, sweat, pheromones that attract, and drive us wild.
In the midst of this, noise and smoke, he is quiet, his eyes settled like the soul of Buddha at rest.

We dance too close by him, looking to be anointed by the sweat flung from his face, to be whipped and lashed by his locks that range from his head, all the while thinking that if we never get chosen to be his partner, we will take him with us into our next wet-dream. I want to touch him to see if some of his stillness will rub off; I am desperately hoping for things from him; sex, love or salvation in any order he wishes to bestow them upon me.

And, when the music stops, I leave with unspent passion riding my back like a demon that needs to be exorcised, taking with me a guy with rippling and tight muscles, a wide smile and perfect teeth, that I met just moments before while in the drummers circle. When alone, we will dance our own dance, burn out our passion in thrusts, hollers and moans of monumental intimacies that rage like sun flares, and can only be housed under the stars in order not to burn innocent bystanders.
All the while, we still fantasize about Him dancing..

do, do
you, you
like it like
this, this.

2005-01-27T17:26:00.000-08:00

CIVIL WARS

1.
It has been said
brothers loving brothers
is a revolutionary idea.
I pack guns, ammunition
grenades, ground to air missiles,
I have enough to
share. Soon the
battle will be engaged
so brother kiss me again before
the fighting begins.

2.
Sometimes in battle
the casualties, our
enemies look like
us. Civil wars
are so wasteful
especially when we wish
to join, not secede.

3.
I have a bullet
lodged in my heart.
Only a brother’s
flicking tongue, probing
deeper, caressing
a Jones at times
more religious and
sanctified than Jesus,
can lick it out. At
moments like these
only his black hands holding me,
and a Meshell Ndegoecello soft-jam,
can save my corporeal
soul.