10 pm from houston

10 pm from houston

 

10 pm

you called

from houston

i was looking out on night

its stars

wondering if they were lonely

wondering how many blues

compound across memory to

blacken night and create a universe

or how many stars know there are

other stars

and are they alone like me or you?

 

the hours lay around me

tinting softly into shadows

the radio

a lone voice singing

in a million square miles of

deep still night

 

10 pm

your hello almost a dream

you reclining against our

tall still silences

against distance and the auburn dark

landscape of a tuesday night loneliness

 

sistuh

i know you so well

your locks

your ginger and curry smile

your books

your malcolm  and bell hooks quotes

african statues and your late window lit

 

10 pm

from houston

there were such blues in your dreds

a sky inverting around you

and a sea of stars like the ones slaves saw

on the black warrior when they leaned from

confusion into the boundless night eye of freedom

i could see you

in the infinite theater of the world

its navy velvets pulled closed

you speaking in soliloquy

the country behind you

kept in darkness

taut and voiceless

a panorama of fluctuating blues

 

city turning from the day

you were philosophical

resigned

easy whichever way

in love

and pain

exhaling stars

while being crippled

finding voice over miles of

silences ribboning then disappearing

you said you were ok

that you just needed to talk

you sifted that dark sky

hemisphere by hemisphere

you found yourself

 

“romus” you said

“i am different

believe me

mortal

bluer than any evening of

a lover’s leaving”

 

i listened

the jazz slow

you speaking on long beach

poems

linguistics

then returning to the pain

of having loved

and had your laughter given back

in plain packages anonymously

on your doorstep

 

we always laugh

we are that way

sneak a smile into your pocket

12 am

we say goodbye

you say you’ll be back soon

i say

the city has not changed

that i have seen a few of the cats lately

and that the movement here misses you

in closing

you militantly call me “my brotha”

i say “black power”

my dear sistuh

my friend