remember that night

remember that night

my small place

that limping starlit open july

the ever changing moon

through the night hand canopy

in river sky

universe lowered until the

acacias fondled stars

remember the half light

after eating the last chocolates

you were almost asleep

one eye closed and gold

looking inward at the moon

and my questions brought you back

for slow moments only

stars traversed the hour

silent comet

a cat lingered

struck across the courtyard wall

his shadow grew a god hand toward the ceiling

and in the wash of sky and night

you smiled

moved closer to me

al jarreau sang "i will be there for you"

and mentioned monteray

we had been there before

you hummed along

there

watching the night country

ofyour skin border light and the

sheets shore against your breasts

remember what i said in the

flowering cinnamon and breeches of your kiss?

something crazy

of all the crazy things i say

just to see you smile

turning and arching

you found my shoulder

my whole body welcomed you

said your homeland was loud sometimes

in the negotiations of the city and markets

yet soundless green traveling east into the continent

open busses sifting people to sleep

you missed the morning noises

the shoeless children

remember, i rubbed your back

searching your belly for your breath

until i found your nipple

said “let me kiss kilamajaro

it was funny then and soft

report to mama

 

(Evelyn Maddix Simpson- Febuary 27, 1934-July 25, 2006)

 

today the open spaces billow

and the ornate silences break in cane

the roads unused lay like sleep

between this year’s tall seasons

 

sunrise was nothing more than birds

a scatter of crows at the sun’s early edge

then gone as an hour moves across a road

the cornfields inarticulate with beauty

 

we have not lost what makes the world beautiful

this valley harvested by the beautiful workers

but we have lost who made us beautiful

our mother and the incantation of her laughter

 

it’s the mystery of the almond fields

those dark vistas deep as memory flecked with dreams

the absences in the farmers fields

my mother’s still bed at the unused hour

 

thousands of miles of daylit world ahead

whole seas of breath blooming on still water

traveling without compass or honing point

in the widest emptiest country in the world

 

city in all directions

look here

look there

spin and look everywhere

there is

city

in

all directions

 

ask him

ask her

ask the delivery man

he knows for sure

there is

city

in

all directions

 

there's one

there's two

thousands of buildings

staring at you

there is

city

in

all directions

 

giant metal

giant stones

power wires singing

in electric tones

there is

city

in

all directions

 

roaring buses

fast trains

shiny streets

when it rains

there is

city

in

all directions

 

loud helicopters

loud planes

light spectrum

in the window pane

there is

city

in

all directions

 

peek in

peek out

everywhere you go

if you travel about

there is

city

in

all directions

 

people run

people walk

on the corner

people gather and talk

there is

city

in

all directions

 

lights green

lights red

even when you go to bed

there is

city

in

all directions

 

open wide

(report from morning in morro bay)

 

we were so early

single car at the universe day

before the bay booned blue glass

and exchanged moon for morning windows

flashing stars away intermittent blindness

the flashes brightened incipient light to shine

and worked fire across the pan of sea

and once

after breakfast

outside a small clear cafe

sentinel seagulls dragging the first hour sound

diving pulsing in cathedral morning

expressing what cannot be said

the immeasurable ecstasy of being here free

afloat in the million mile communal morning

first measured chant where the seagulls strove

we surfaced

at the cool beginnings of light

 

motoring in the morning shine

us, an undefined bright object

cast into the world of seagulls

a single flute as the first vowel

in the first ave maria opens the belly to pray

to sing from hurt and such joy

somewhere the din of those new birds

we drove looking to leave this little civilization

until we ascended the holy mountain

past sound into the signing high pines

 

unannounced

more light above in wilderness

an opening so clear that the timber

of the engine changed

a going toward the sun today

thrust pell-mell sudden bright world

forest flecked as sleep with eyes and dreams

hemispheres colliding in sky

spreading behind us like memory on fire

 

through morning

early bells cadenced

we chanced upon a mission marking the hour

austere tolling so god could hear the

country rise and fall in penance

swelling into the hemisphere apologetically

for the sin of each hour’s want

changing wind and high weather

the tenor and stretch of day like

god’s wild limitless heart

i turned off the radio to listen

until the small highway west

came to rifle through the primeval forest

showed a cool shot into clear ocean

 

left to forest

to settle and bloom

you are sleeping again

your breast almost out your white shirt

your collar fretting

your palm like snow

invite me into your small dream

a collage of blue images perhaps?

do you know the people who greet you?

are you at the tree line watching us motor by?

are you a child in your dream at

the coastal village ahead?

and are there horses?

in the occasional meeting of the roads

does women’s hair stream from the cars?

that man loved that little militant woman

that man loved that

little militant woman

every word she said

he examined and approved

she was mean and carrying their 6th child

she cut no corners

spat at the world and claimed the foul

she talked of burning los angeles down….

 

and he smiled

at the way she preached

at the way the late evening fell like water around her

her sharp eyes

her clear mouth her small hands

and in the interim of her rants

her breath marking the minutes of his life

he loved her for being alive

 

she said the white man was the devil

and that she didn’t trust foreign blacks

that crips were soldiers

and all negros in prison should be freed

he nodded

fixed her scarf

smoothed her hair

asked her if she needed anything

and she continued about the truth 

the teeth of it and not compromising your blackness

or your message 

he agreed wholeheartedly

 

they scared me

scared me like an angry brotha jumping out of

the bushes breathing through his nostrils

 

then he told me

while she attended one of the children

that she was at the spoken word festival

and when she entered wearing a golden wrap

pushing a stroller with her chin high

pulling africa behind her

separating the unholy waters of america

that the whole place stopped and gasped

they had never seen such beauty

nor had they seen a woman so sure and strong

he said i should have seen it

everybody holding their breath as she brought the truth

and on that note we studied her

shared a moment of silence in that parking lot

looking at her

and i looked at him dreaming of her

and i looked at him arming himself with her words

i looked at him hoping his daughters will be like her

i looked at him pushing the incipient dark away from her face

and placing early stars in strategic positions around her

i looked at him quickened and constrained

on the verge of speaking in tongues

i watched him still blind and wandering in the amazement

that he had her

and belonged to her

and that she was so close to him

 

and yes

they scared me

scared me like a group of brothas 

lifting their shirts

comparing bullet wounds

 

so we let the conversation fall after a while

let the jazz take its place

watched a window go dark and the crowds thin

and walking away down that well lit street

i thought of what i would  one day like in my life

and the odd magnificent way the universe sometimes

reveals itself and arranges its stars

and tells me to hold on

5:47pm yesterday

yesterday

in the swirling maze of the tall city

on avenues that harnessed shadows

and let me walk unencumbered by memory

                 i saw you

i had forgotten your face

the women between here and there

the browns of their cheeks

the beauty of their shoulders

sometimes so muddled in my memory

who was i loving then?

what midnight did darkness surround us in?

was it you who once left before i could touch you?

and the amazing machine city

the daytime carousel of events and traffic

      time

and the shadows of clocks

the vinyl sounds of bright pigeons

     lifting

                off

                    into weather

i saw you

you were looking at me

and memory        fast as vision

hurtling gazes

                      one face     to      another

in that fragrant recognition of

shared breath                                                           and silence

intimacy cooled my mouth

      (our kisses still exist somewhere behind my tongue)

we smiled

and greeted

held hands a second too long

                                             i almost kissed you i swear

                                almost

               held you too close

                               almost

              tasted your ear and left

an indigo invitation in the small of your back

                                                                        but i let you go

and watched you in the crowds

watched you

looking back at me

calling and

disappearing

moving into

the infinite fanning

of the alluvial

future

until i

lost you

in the

sheer

number

of faces

calico

shadows

and

echo

i  n  g

s    o    u    n    d    s

standing in her section 8 kitchen

(a poem for didi)

yahweh is in love watching her
standing in her section 8 kitchen
first earth hips
he remembers and thumbs a sea of clouds

each soft east
windows slowly agasp where the sea curtains chant
exhaling the morning breadwork aria
yahweh's memory is rain
hills rise and green in his belly like laughter
luminous warm eye of morning laughter
rinsing clear in the river eddy where his smile bends

yahweh changes the trees from arabic to english
rotates morning in his awesome eye
bathing in the new sun gift of fruit and aqua tile
he forgets who he is
fantasy wide as an august of clear midnights
sends him spinning around the universe in joy

she is tall with soft heels he sees
tall enough to kiss his chest if he willed it

that would slow him in the 6 am stars

elbows at work polishing the morning drift
her dress is the early tide
yahweh made her while watching the sea come and go
mother sister lover wife
extract of mahogany
archipelago of beautiful silences
eloquent austere hymn

the country pours itself over her mother eye
she prepares the day’s linen for each poor preacher
each white shirt she hung on each clothesline
a flag of surrender to the million mile morning sky

and the sky from yahweh a day hung dawning
lean woman fresh in his dawn moves pots like
small ships stirring work in the bay
he watches her make her way
sits in her kitchen dreaming
one window frames jamaica
the other extending to africa
a prayer and apples for haiti
a bird dances 300 quick steps
yahweh laughs and becomes the bird
in his folly
struggles with a small rock
syncopates his small body then shrills away

sound blooms
comes from a country of night to this beautiful bright place
things have begun
in mali marketplaces have been negotiating for hours
international airspace and yams
fish and foreign policy
tankers full of shoes in the pacific current
a ugandan insurance man shines against the bank windows

and you are yahweh
in the ovation of the rising continent
love this woman for whoever she is to you
even if she is an equatorial dream
a song under a sketch of african trees
the first beautiful woman you saw vending in grenada
a mother you never had
a neighbor who lived beside you for only a brief time
or part lust naked beneath her morning clothes
hide your hope in her locks under her headwrap
coax the first conversation from her unclear throat
when she is done with things that must be done
cleaning the indefinite face of morning
say something
turn her face to you
now now woman
woman woman
woman
black woman
how are you?

libation for tyson kuumba

i dreamt of you in red

the city casting red shadows

painting the surreal narrow windowless
streets of last year's violent summer
funeral processions clotted in my veins

my body a map of every grave in the world

and i had lost yours in my melanin

i showed you each pore

each shape
individual as a mother’s

pronunciation of a son's common name

you were so round

verbose

so much to tell me about the next world

you had been healed

how you had grown

then the river came to take you back

and you walked out on the water

eager to continue into mystery

 

a photograph bears neither of our faces

it is your future and past

where an eyeless child awaits in
the unspoiled velvet of your

warehoused tomorrows

 

and it is what was ahead of you
that fell into memory
delirium in colossal vacancies

cacophony of hysterical
blue laughing death
what you leave behind
a small pool of water

fallen back into stillness

tyson

our country is ten thousand miles ago

used and desolate

without ether
weathered tin
a mute thudding heart in a nuclear dreamscape

 

and what i must say
20 years beyond your murder
20 years into that crystal ever-growing silence
20 years into the empty brightness like clear
breath for thousands of miles upon water

into dreams where you come among thousands

seeking connection

 

it’s in the whites of your mother’s eyes

that hunger

and in her step

the adjustment around the loss of her flesh

 

each winter night against the skin of the city

under the frozen stars and moon

the sphere of each tired streetlamp

hurries a negro through

the clockhand change

into darkness

 

where do the brothas go?

what consumes the laughter?

 

something private

that stops or falters finally

and hides

and belongs to the used portion of the season

tyson kuumba
i am calling your name
tyson kuumba
tyson kuumba
tyson kuumba

man is god

 

man is god

and silent like god

all weather and weatherless

crescent moon and dying eye

this side of the world and that

he creates and destroys

comes from night with a new secret

ages and dies

 

mother cooks

hassles and sends

the children like affirmations into dawn

the tufts of children

the wonderwork

 

father calls from work

never anything deep

just a stern hello

and a hurrying back to toil

 

he eats  sleeps

and loses friends

waters the yard

 

father knows everyone

his eyes say so

all things accessed

friend or foe

 

cancer is a curse word

like wishing it so

never say it

never bring it into our house