Sweet Soul Music
―A Found Poem for Gerald Levert
A singer of thunderous power, mimicking dance steps
he watched from backstage; borrowing
vocal dives and climbs, barrel rolls
from his father's playbook
imagine what it must be like
to lose a son
Remember when black music was about soul
and soul was about truth and truth
promised the moon and stars to a woman, and truth
pleaded with breaking voice and teary eyes for another chance, and truth
made you hear echoes of soul that came before, echoes--
Cherish women. Baby, please; is becoming a lost art
but imagine what it must be like
to lose a son
Sometimes, begging
is the best part. Sometimes make up justifies
break up. love requires vulnerability
more: baby, please
less: too proud to beg
we held one another and shelter each other from life
wrapped in a need deeper than sex
but imagine what it must be like
to lose a son
"Baby, hold on to me," he sang
because he knew what we were missing.
From a Leonard Pitts editorial(See the Article at www.miamiherald.com)
With Her Six Words Etched in My Skull...
She masks her love in sardonic laughter, diagrams
her breaking point with chalk, maps of boundaries.
She says, “We don’t mix well, I’m oil, you’re vinegar
or water; I’m no chef, I just blow smoke.”
It’s too scary for love to be written in cursive on her spine and her heart
is too fragile a package. She says,
“I’m use to packaging other’s pain, it’s normal to hate
me.” Tries to mask the scent of fear in a strong stature, the unmarked change
in her spine. She stiffens
at the thought of weakness, chalk outlines of her tiny deaths
exhaling the smoke of burning funeral pyres
where tears are as good as oil.
Oil paint mosaics of lust have smeared with live creating
an unwanted package, a miserable masterpiece. Alone
she smokes long unlit cigarettes, leaning against life, wearing
a ceramic mask of cool confidence; feelings,
momentary butterflies, chalked up to indigestion—bad food—
she imagined tingles on her spine.
Sometimes, spines have been known to compress due to pressure, grinding axes
and bones make sharp edges, not body oils, unable to move without stabbing;
chalk-up inability to change to re-learning
history. She is packaged jade: smooth and hard. For years, she’s juggled
her handful of makeshift masks or she hid
underneath a thick screen, walls of smoke.
Through the smoke clouds, she watches a wounded back disappear, sees
her red handprints, a burden of proof, seared in her lover’s spine
time can’t mask the force of a shove, unwillingness
to oil a rusty heart, locked and lost
packaged to survive life, a war?
She never crossed the dividing chalk line, just sat
in her self-made cell marking off victims in chalk, comforting herself
with smoke, matching black lungs. She makes
perfect packages of heartaches, numbs
the tingles in her spine. Remembering to keep
her steel doors well-oiled and ever-revolving, someone has to perfect
wearing masks.
When love tries to ease the mask away, erase the chalk lines, she disappears
in the smoke of her oil-fire tears, off
to package her heart along with the awkward tingle in her spine.
After Sean Carswell....
The Moment you Know…
-After Sean Carswell
When you walk into your second period English Lit. class on tender
teenage legs with nothing but fifteen years of angst to live up to
and you take the blue plastic seat in the back near the row
of huge sun-filtering windows, you fix a decidedly nonchalant look
on your face (though English is your favorite class) then she
walks in, your friend (and more…?), and takes the seat next to you
and you realize since she arrived you’ve held
your breath.
When she grabs your sweaty palm, smiles at you mischievously and drags you
to the empty girls bathroom; you sit on top of the dirty fifty-year-old radiator
and act cool and collected when really you’re all bundled nerves.
She sits next to you, legs crossed and lights a thin cigarette, recounts
some story that you only half listen to, because her thigh is pressed
against yours and she leaning conspiratorially into you. Her voice
becomes indistinct echoes and all you want to do is swallow kisses
from her neck or brush your suddenly dry lips against her
still moving ones. She asks, through thin smoke trails, “Are you listening?”
the only answer you can give is an ever-reddening blush.
When your best friend asks you to deliver his hastily written love note
and you jealously do, not because you’re a great friend, but you’re curious
what did he write? what will she say? and why are you feeling this way?
After she reads it, she laughs and you laugh too, she shakes her head
and you shrug, walk back to him trying not to be a happy bearer of bad news.
When she’s got you alone in her boat of a car, outside your house
and you both stall for time and then she gently kisses you, instantly
you increase her momentary boldness, as you break moments later, breathless
her smile reaches her eyes and she knows and you know she knows
you know.
Karmic Cultivation
-“Tell me, who I have to be/to gain some reciprocity?”
-Lauryn Hill, “Ex-Factor”
I am the third reincarnation of myself; the daughter,
a woman, the holy spirit?
Malleability is the lack of formation, I’ve adopted—
she’s adapted to stone or she hasn’t developed at all
“Give me your heart…” Her long curved fingers grasp
at my chest, I hand it over still rapidly, beating;
she only showers ,me with steel flakes from her thick thirteenth skin
it’s bad luck or bad timing, she’s not shedding,
—I sew pieces of discarded layers with others; make myself: chainmail,
a shield, armor to sleep in.
Each day brings new cells a change in cytoplasm prisons that grow
not wiser, but weighed down by its own thickness, harder.
Mostly moisture making too big a show of cohesion, I can’t corrode anything,
lacking the acidity, too ph balanced…
So I replenish myself in myself, seventy-five percent water; submerged
I drown myself clean.
-For C.
Excerpts from a Life’s Survival Guide
If nothing else, I’m a survivor;
this is what I will tell you: I am that cat—
whether pushed or jumping—who lands
on her feet, licks her wounds, and saunters
away. Rule #5: Never react, when a reaction
is so clearly sought. See I know the game
I choose to play, nonchalant.
When the life plan you so carefully sketched, begins to burn, in
from the edges; gently blow out the flames
and make your life a phoenix: rise. Rule # 2:
Follow the flow of the river—not rushed, in the drive
towards a destined destination—but, be aware
of the ever apparent undercurrent.
Rule #4: Never tread where your footprints
are not welcome. My arms
are halfway open, my heart is protected, and my vision
has been cleared. Rule #8: Everyone from sinner
to saint; has the innate ability to be like nitrogen
both, enriching and explosive.
Is this what you needed to hear? What we
are all well aware of—how humans
are dichotomous? So am I…defying your desire
for clear explanations, perfect in my paradoxes. Rule #1:
Walk your path, avoiding the obvious obstacles; never intentional
in your injury, nor accepting of the intentional injury
of yourself. So saying this more simply:
I survive out of necessity, navigating the narrow
passageways allowed; so should we pass, closely
know that there is always solid, safe shelter
in me.
Stroking the Ego OR Faking for “Love'
I.
Who am I
to point out the blackness of truth? When I
have lied
in the darkness
with no proper responses
to an amorously awkward caress,
except the expected moan.
II.
At 19, he unknowingly initiated me
into the lair of liars. He grunted and I strained
a smile
behind my teeth hid the fear
of what the unspoken truth, meant.
III.
I have spent three years living
nothing, but my truth
and sometimes I’m the actress, still
putting on the pantomime
in the dark
I am laying and with a sigh, I lie.
This Poem is Not....(May 2006)
This Poem is Not an Anti-Smoking Ad
“…just take one puff.” Spencer entices me
mostly because she seems to mimic my first love, smoke spirals
whispering silent secrets to the air around her, not that she
is even a fuzzy mirror image of Denise; just the lithe cigarette, its burning face
glaring at me the limp ashes collecting in a pile on her thigh
are all resurfacing a memory:
I am sixteen, hair pulled back in one soft afro-puff, jeans fraying
at the ends, I am the picture of practiced nonchalance
teenage angst and ambiguity. She is my dream
or nightmare—at this point I haven’t decided
which—dark honey hair perpetually
in her eyes, six months my elder, an eternity
those were her words of wisdom, slouching
against the blue frame of the bathroom stall,
paint flakes caught in mid-wave; the school was in transition, transforming
“…just take one puff.” I was too static for this metamorphosis, swallowed
too many propaganda pills, could feel my lungs blackening
by just standing there letting her invitation hang
pregnant in the stagnant air
“No, I can’t.” I whispered, mad at myself, lacking
the need for peer approval, too involved
in sustaining the stature of self I’d created, too obedient
Now as Spencer’s eyes hold mine, daring me to say: no
she is really a figment of my regret; I am finally in transition, transforming
“No.” I sigh, because she is not who I want her to be, not
a three-year-late reflection, just another patron lost
in the fog of the twenty-four hour smoking section.
