The Black Outside
Relying a little less on the odd language we’d been left inside
we turned back to feeling: —
more moan, more mumble.
Stuck in the soulless market, it’s debridement of language
from meaning, we still had soul: —
glory after we’d come to a place
without glory, tenderness after we’d been made symbol
of brutes. Sweet & soft mumbling: —
the language of antiquity, of gods
stretching toward other gods, pleading for the love that deserves
an organ, a horn section:—
Al’s whine connecting
our unrequited love to our unrequited history. Let him riff
there for as long as it takes: —
sound to cross the sea,
for the time it takes my grandmother, losing her memory, to talk
about the weather: —
as a way to slow down a little
& find our music, to echolocate as plant-humans, to feel our way
towards each other: —
in the Black Outside. Song
from the solar plex slipping past the tangle of tongues, soothing
the clockheart singing the end: —
my hands the only hands to touch
its hours. Let time wait on the band playing in a bar on Beale Street
with no concept of time: —
let it understand Black song
as ubiquitous. Blackness as ontological surrealism. Language as a thief
that has disappeared: —
souls only sound can restore:—
Dear beloved, when you
get right down to it, when
you’re feeling lonely: —
Outside Memphis
Even the fires
— :three along the highway: —
ignited by the right angle of wind,
a cigarette flicked thoughtless
as a gnat.
Knowing the small probability
of miracles,
I protect my serotonin, guard
my feelings, all summer, I eat
immaculately: — bright
berries and leaves, fish
the color of sunset: —
the audacity of it to open me: —
that stunning sunset outside Memphis: —
right before I entered the woods.
Those hidden towns
unincorporated in swamp, blips
whirring past like chances. Fear
washed over me as the light went maroon.
Where was I? Deep in a place
from which I might never emerge: —
until I saw the sign
Birthplace of Isaac Hayes
which I saw because I slowed down
because I’d been made willing
by that sunset to let whatever must happen happen: —
The sun and moon hung the same height
in the sky
I started to speak to you then
as if you were in the car, fumbled prayers.
You’d been helping me forget
my hopelessness, the atmosphere: — listen
to me, please: — was right for it.
I said something like addiction
is a coward’s place between
living and suicide. The bottle can seem
better than living in fear, a feel-good escape,
a white cape spread round
as a moon on a soul singer crooning
I’m never gonna give you up
to someone who isn’t there.
Eula gave birth to Isaac in a tin shack
and died within the year. She never made it out
of these lonely woods
Isaac sang his way out: —
In the windshield, just now, a star
falling. I follow it into the city
like a lover needing to be led
into belief, I let it pull me toward you
down this lonesome road: —
Sans Souci
Pèkari was the keeper of my loneliness.
I found her because she carried the musk
of a god, held my spirit outside
my body, trapped in the New World’s
strange time. Our grievous heartbeats,
their titanic tectonics, moved against
its infinite expansion. While she charged
through the forests, I held my body
like a stone. I sharpened ma machette.
I made the mountain & mud my home.
I killed 400 men before I followed my father
into the ocean. When I could not pass
back over the rupture, I stole down
the volcano road to Cristophe’s bayonet
with a precious smile. To be a man’s ghost,
his only company, is the final curse.
The missing body of the colonel, I hear
them say. But, no matter: — my spirit
is in the palace, its ruins. In the javelina
running through the forests of Haïti.
