our elderly mothers

our elderly mothers

our elderly mothers come back
through the large tan doors
into the waiting room full of young mothers
who are frantic and green
erotic and with child again
and mama comes among them
searching the people for us
finds us in a quiet corner away from the kids
thumbing the gardening magazines
and we in turn watch her eyes
before she conjures her strong smile
watching for the diagnosis
it’s always in her eyes
the frank news
before her posture returns and she feigns
not needing her cane
educator, pastor, community mother
smiles for everyone
but a glance at you from darkness
she is witnessing her own destruction
and you are in orbit around her
interpreting silences

this year was short ether
cardiology clinics and the
immeasurable waits of the specialists
waiting in the business square atrium
among the roses
watching birds and counting cars
i have spent whole days hungry and sterile
stainless among the magazines
and slept and awoke and waited
until she came and said let’s go
usually to the pharmacy
then to eat

i was her best friend
and sometimes did not want to be
i was her son and needed her in that way
but when there was no one else to tell about
the hysterectomy to remove the dark thing
showing on the x rays
she asked myopinion
i simply wanted her alive
and told her i’d be there

but after a season of hospital halls
and nurses clicking and scuffling by
transfusions and the lilac quiet
she stopped going to her appointments
stopped driving
we missed the scheduled bloodwork
and the breathing treatments
each week was some private suffering
but no more doctors

she was in her night gown for 4 days
she couldn’t sleep laying down
hadn’t been to church in 2 months
when she was up to it
i’d take her to the store
she’d sit in the car and watch the people
and i’d take the long way home
past the new houses and her old school
open the windows to hear the children playing
when she was barely verbal
i’d sing with her
say funny things and rub her back
talk about africa and alabama
and how we’d go and go when she got better
oh the things we were going to eat
and the places
the poems we would collaborate on.

it was the pan of windless summer
and very hot
the crops were full of white light
and the dust was furious at the roadside
the air conditioning burned out
gave into the temper of the season
i kept trays of ice and would wrap them in a towel
lay the towel on her
we suggested she go to my sister’s to keep cool
she refused
and the heat settled in around the house
like a belligerent stranger

after two days of much wrangling
over the warranty of the air conditioner
they fixed it
she asked me to feel her belly
it was hard and dark like volcanic glass
her furosemide wasn’t working
wasn’t cutting her water
and her asthma began to betray her
kept her panting
everything came with so much effort
all that sky and no breath

she wanted to tell me who she paid the mortgage to
to show me the papers
but she started to cough
and needed her inhaler
i rubbed her back until she calmed

the morning was still and bright
i didn’t hear her up and around
so i let her sleep
went out into the yard
and to my car
after about 30 minutes
i eventually came to her bedroom door
to check on her

at the edge of her door i watched her shoulder
i noticed her feet were dark
i watched her shoulder further
it never moved
and i watched longer
and longer
it never moved

my mother would have loved obama
the idea of him
from apartheid in the south
where black men stood at the cusp of living
confounded by the lack of choices
from terror in alabama
to infinite territory
she would have driven to church in her silver cadillac
and testified to the greatness of god
and the mysteries therein
oh they would have holyghost danced
and shouted and claimed him
oh they would have preached
and been thrust back to youth
she would have eaten from the new hope
the sermon of it
and been sticky with the sweetness

i hope she knows
and i hope she is alright
and knows that i am moving toward being alright
that we continue on with dignity
in the limited knowledge of being here in this life
and have adjusted ourselves
to the loss of our flesh
now that we are without compass
or honing point
in the widest
emptiest country
in the world

the line is long

there are three kids waiting at home
disobedient and lazy
one who looks so much like his father
that you have dreamt he hit you
the meanness
the way he asks for things
or stands in the doorway waiting

there are the neighbors
who start their activity at 8pm
in and out a thousand times
and let the security gate fall shut
talking from the balcony
fighting
smoking shirtless on the steps
listening through the wall
and expanding expanding

and because of them
your kids can’t go out of the apartment
such a simple desire
they want to play
go down the street
run
but sometimes there is blood downstairs
and someone had broken the gate
so the dopeheads can enter
the grass is gone
the picnic table is a gang summit

downstairs someone has moved a girl in
she has no name
in january she had no jacket and a black eye
yet she followed him everywhere
you saw her lose half her body weight
her eyes have lost their color
yet the boys light on her back like vultures
some nights you hear them
each one taking his turn
next the slamming of the gate
then a sketch of radio in the brawling silence
and your little girl is sweet
just big eyes and smile
and an easy way of reaching to the world
this is her gift
and it is her hazard
one man looked at her
and she responded with her innocent love
his brown eyes were unsure at first
his pitted cheeks shook and settled
like a greasy spinning plum
and he smiled back at her
a hungry smile full of ashen teeth and desire

and there is a car every 10 minutes
with a planet subwoofer
a hemisphere of profanity
sideways in the street
calling to someone upstairs
and they call back down several times
and behind that car three other cars are waiting
but he won’t let them pass
nor will he pass on

and there is the neighbor
who thinks she is your friend
and talks of high school aged boys sexually
who goes to the night club 4 nights a week
despite her four children
she has money for marijuana
but none for ground beef
her hunger is criminal
you can feel it
she takes things
money items
space and time
and of course needs a ride everywhere
introduces you at the store
as her bitch
in a community kind of way
and if you say no
what happens?
she is a vehement enemy offended at the marrow
and if you say I can’t
i don’t have time
what happens?
what of the children?
what fragile peace will you have mortgaged?

and there’s the woman across the street
who doesn’t like you
who thinks you want her man
who has never spoken to you
and stares you down
who has tried to walk past you
and knock into your shoulder
and gets wide when you exit your car
her little ones are disrespectful now
she wants to fight you in front of the children
one night she was drunk
screaming
“a stuck up bitch drives this car
and she gonna get her ass beat”
so the screw driver in the cupboard
says carry me
the culling knife small enough to fit in the sleeve
sometimes in the mirror
the survivor in you practices stabbing her
and keeping cool
sometimes you cry thinking
what this place is creating in you
thinking of your children
them having to face this woman
and her eyeless brood

there is no money anywhere
just the dull allotments
the wage that
cancels itself out
confusion in a country of desire
dollar tree canned goods
and three liter sodas
the kids want everything
the candy
but you have come to think of meals
how to make the ground beef last
the dollar tree frozen waffles

the car has been knocking
this morning it started on the 8th try
a headlight is out
your eldest has been suspended from school
and down at the clinic
there are a thousand people
just sitting about
drowning in the terrible wait
the clinic wants 45 dollars you don’t have
your little girl’s fever has muted her with heat
and the women who work there are arrogant
they parade about among the trash
speaking in that diplomatic monotone
that veils their disgust
they wont touch you
they lay the forms on the counter
when you ask for a pen
they point to one on a chain
they hope you go away
the welfare dept hopes you go away
the cashier looking at your EBT card
the middle classed women who
mingle with you at the bank downtown
at the stop lights hope you go away
and take your children
your elderly
your bloated ankles and fevers
your scoliosis your impacted teeth
your bad skin your ringworm your obesity
the spider bites on your dirty arm
and die

thank you (for my homegirls)

today
where morning is vast
and absolute as the memory of love
green love in clear water
and earthen as adobe and the
alluvial new mexico in a blessing of rain
and i dare run again towards the sun
and breath
a beautiful heaviness like life
that takes the shoulders
tilts the head
filling the face with sun
miles of easy breath
here where the knees are fine
the body unlocks in rhythm
exclaims the early hour
the stretch and worship
oh, the body unburdened
i want to thank you
oh sistuhs thank you

saturday unfolds it canopies
like astronauts seeing
the world rotating into the
slow burn of sun
so bright the oceans glow and marble
the astronauts rejoice
some in worship
free and profuse at the edge of the unknown
it’s like that
loving you
oh, thank you
ferris wheels on fire
18 wheelers carrying flowers
marking the hour gear changes
ghosts in the pomegranate orchards
the shriek of starling the gulls
syncopating in harvested fields
lift into season and freckle across memory
i long to levitate into dawn
and thank you
oh, i want to thank you
just like that
as simple as saying red is red
or you are very beautiful and wise
in the plainest print
in a clarity so lucid
that even untruth is truth
the chant in the
procession of moments and
the heart in cadence
the composition of the man i am
oh thank you so much

every shadow that consumes me
and lets me pass
each day coming into day
and rejoicing in the acacias
and each night moving moon
through a thicket of walnut trees and universe
each house asleep and on fire with dreams
or each small hope anchoring our collective humanity
is like me being contingent to your love
relevant to your love
honed by your friendship
and introduced in kinship
thank you thank you sistuhs
as honestly as a quiet kiss
i want to thank you
for companionship for comfort
for recognizing me among the millions
of people seeking someone in the stillness
of their long lives
before i forget
before this beautiful moment passes
before i am confused and mix the metaphors
and lose what i am able to voice
before the tears flow from the ocean i have become
and i cannot say it
oh, thank you sistuhs
thank you

here behind the heart
at the marrow of new bone
where memory catalogues loss
and regret is a loneliness wandering an
empty country
this freedom laughing out loud
as simple and grand a joy as sleeping late
as easy an elation as greeting a friend
or wearing new shoes
oh, sistuhs
where we stand today
in the trepidation before traffic
before the city unhinges and the cargo ships
moan into port and populate the early bay
this nomad exclaiming to the world
i am alive
and strong by love
and on my way
thank you

tuesday report to yedidiyah

your hair

a turbine

wild as a room of men

gambling eating

and laying about cursing

is the talk

because you are free woman

and it is saturday in the bright shine happiness

the gregarious frenzy of your locks

the ornate festival of your locks

the verb and salute of your locks

 

your eyes

july sun burnishing water

the gilded city healed and complete

laughing pistoning

licking the avenues to shine

under new sky

 

and fever

sistuh

makes me move

draw back my bitter face

james brown traversing a scream

and exclaim

 

(HEY!!!)

 

sistuh

your hair an october midnight

opaque with stars omens

is on your head like intellect

it churns conjures accuses

mimics winter in chicago

is full and forbidding among my pillows

sings and laments

 

i remember your locks

the brown of your cheeks

we were sitting in the aimless sermon

of the pontificating sunday 9 am

too early for the week

and too late to shake and jazz

you spoke in metaphors

angry about your job

the time away from life

missing your mother

and what the man demanded you be

     i almost got my gun

went down there

                          (i swear)

 

you lift your chin

when you don’t like something

a matriarch rejecting a lie

and your locks lay back

in sincere challenge

you aint having it

your hair says so

 

sometimes your locks invite me

strewn across your face

frames your left eye

maps your cheek and

points to your kiss

i move them away

so easy

they agree

and gather behind your beautiful ear

 

they don’t mind if i start there

where you are a child

stealing away late

listening to the 2 am city

then limp along to find the woman in your mouth

they don’t mind if i fall into the perfumed interim

between your breasts

and cry to you about love

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simple beauty

I think nuns are beautiful. Pious women who have grappled with their eroticism and come to understand it, made it contextually human, and came to live in penance, the austere understanding of divinity. They understand that people act out of need. And when the chaos of being frantic and desperate is done, the nuns bade us sleep. And not just nuns, but women who are in service to children, academia, whatever they give themselves to wholely, it’s on their face, the beautiful knowing and patience. Women who aid growth. Women who manage the silent aftermath

            I once knew a sistuh who I couldn’t lie to. Her eyes urged me to confide in her and mothered me toward saying truth. She was a healer. Some people are healers. They have a sense of things. And when I was stuck, ashamed or without understanding, she would touch me and create tactile community with me. Even with growing up a pastor’s kid, it was the closest thing I have ever done to true worship, other than making love or having such a sense of belonging to a woman that I felt brilliant.  

           This is to say my girl Liz is astoundingly beautiful, a lone yellow flower in a field of purple asters. She is not a nun, or anything like that. But she is clear and dedicated to something. Liz was a first grade teacher. She is like clarity in a mountain pass that comes suddenly with every sense of height and danger that makes the purpose of your journey irrelevant. Just when you swear the world has done away with beauty, and you have prepared yourself to live with your jaw tight, Liz if the rage against the pilfering of your joy. I am not sure if she knows. The best beauty is unaware and unconcerned. It is best framed by duty. You find it among the everyday chores at the stop lights, hurrying across a square of city sunlight.

           Beauty is simple, functional, and elegant. Say you travel to Monteray and pass unaware through Los Banos to find yourself driving and dreaming. A universe of incandescent sky and the rolling green hills in gentle expectation as if god was a woman who lay down to rest and pulled the earth over her hips and shoulders. A single tree that calls you to come is a single tear on the face of god, draws you toward it in solitary love. It knows what is beyond the horizon. It knows the secret and has grown to worship. Your heart begins to long for the horizon, to leave the car, the cats who are rolling with you, and go like Thoreau, the reward in the going, the transformation, the willing loss. Truly beautiful things hold loss, the whittling down to what is rich and absolute. Sometimes I am absolute as a lion. Sometimes I am chaffed down to fear and constituent to everything that seeks to destroy me. And I wear those things, sometimes.

            I am not sure how to finish this entry. Whatever I would say about Liz and real beauty would be redundant. Maybe beauty is like long division with a repeating remainder, like if you work the problem long enough you’ll find truth in the chant of numbers, that conscious place in you being honed, or the work will extend you beyond yourself towards an understanding of infinity, so far, so far that you can see John Burks Gillespie.

billdo

The man from the next building who pesters my ex drug addict, ex con neighbors for trite things such as cigarettes and beer and more cigarettes, all one at a time, maybe 5 times throughout the day, and exchanges acoustic guitar songs for BBQ and eats more than anyone, has been asked to find somewhere else to live.


"I have a potty mouth", he says. "Nothing racial or having to do with one's sexuality".


He looks at me and explains, no doubt becuz I am black, that we all share the same colored blood...cut each of us and we all bleed red bla bla bla bla bla.....you know, the standard white overcompensation for having been part and parcell to racial hatred, or the requisite apology for being white and superior and handing out inclusiveness like oranges to slaves. I digress.


He says he just says things, not quite torrets syndrome, but rather a manner of speaking. He'll call you a motherfucker as a term of endearment. He'll call you an asshole like calling a cute kid stinky. He once called a lady sweet pussyhole becuz she offered him a danish. He was thankful to the point of being profuse. He thought he had connected.


So yesterday someone in his building had a visitor named Bill. Our man was introduced to Bill, and later, upon seeing Bill in the courtyard, he blurted out..."Hey Billdo". The man was confused and felt put upon.


Now since our man is not a tennant there and is staying with a friend, he was asked to leave by the building manager. He had been warned several times to curb the way he talked to people. He had also been warned about running around shirtless and leaving peanut shells on the manicured lawn, as well as beer bottles. He had also been asked to move a chair he set in front of the buliding so he could greet anyone with a Led Zepplin tune who passed by or came to visit a tennant.


Come this weekend, our block will be one less heavy. This is sad.I kinda liked the guy. He was genuine...genuinely flawed in several egregious ways, but genuine nonetheless.


The 70 and 80's have passed. The world doesn't reach across the gulf of our lives anymore. The metal bands are gone into middle class memory and responsibility. And the cats who are left standing sing loudly, waiting to be destroyed.Here's to those guys who made the future by chance, not by choice.

One last "Rock On!" Romus Simpson

fretting in the fresh bread

i once wrote in a poem about spain, "silent as the prayer of mice/who worship in the empty dawn kitchen/who fret in the fresh bread and thank god."

         last night my homies called to lament over the lakers' loss to the celtics. earlier i had talked to two of my brothers about the same thing. and another friend had called to scream about the game. later my homegirl called to politic and laugh and hoped to see me soon. and i thought of all the people who move through our lives and the days made of moments that propell us on. maybe it's a green light that allows you to float and never break stride or the fruit punch being exact, beautifully cold, and fragrant. anything that allows us to fit easily.

         sometimes we are lonely or alone, restless and stationary in the late evening.  and through the soundless changes of the city evening the world comes to us. i think of the mice in my poem moving in the early dawn kitchen hoping to survive and finding more than ever hoped for and becoming profuse with praise at the bounty of fresh bread. not the normal crumbs, rinds, and rancid things beneath cabinet ledges, but  something so fundamental and affirming as fresh bread. the woman who baked the bread may be upset when she awakes to find the bread nibbled. she believes it belongs to her. but to the mice god used her to help them live, extended bread and the dawn unimpeeded to eat unhurried (if a mouse can do such a thing) and come to worship in the reeds and shadows of the new day.

              mice are mice. but i subscribe to the ancient egyptian existentialist philosophy that god became all things. so in turn we live in a divine landscape, within and among the mass representation of god. all things being equal, "i believe above the storm every prayer is heard"...."and i believe that someone (some mouse, according to the mice) in the great somewhere hears every word...."

              all this is to say that today i came home in 100 degreeweather. hella hot! and as i exited my car i saw a cat come to the sidewalk and drink from the curb. down the street someone was watering the yard and the runoff reached down the block. the cat drank long and good, eyes closed. i know that thirst from many places. we all do. and even more than all of us, everything does. everything alive that has ever been desperate. welfare mothers with no foodstamps, young fathers paying $4.60 a gallon for gas, parched cats in the fresno summer to trees in a drought going dormant to make it. we all suffer. and we all hope to survive.

              this is about the redefinition of what is divine. when cortez came to the americas, he and his men embarked upon a campaign of murder. one indigenous person who lived in what we call current day arizona recalled that, "they threw down our bodies with no respect for our bodies, and no respect for the ground"

charles' death

 

charles’ death
should have been international news
a pebble in a rich man’s shoe
should have been a channel
dedicated to decay and decadence
should have been a whence of pain
in the president’s step
a stammer in his address
a stalemated interstate
an irregular stutter in neon
a button the meticulous forget
charles’ death should have been a loss of breath
in the collective city
a hem at half mass on sistuh so and so’s dress
a dull ache in the hustler’s chest
the tiny truth preachers profess
it should have been a little mess the custodians
leave in defiance of the oblivious world
should have been an understated caress
from the patient waitress
or the first step of a southerner heading west
charles’ death should have been a
reflective moment in the lives of the careless
wilshire blvd. all its traffic lights red
or a bandana around the homeless man’s head
should have been the first thing the neighbors said
this morning before their coffee and grievances
before they read the newspaper
should have been a cold spot in their beds
or the article of clothing the stripper refused to shed
charles’ death should have been an engine refusing to go
or the violent night some folks will never know
asthmatic rivers unable to flow
wetlands abandoned and low
tugboats in still water
letting ships stand refusing them tow
vacant track houses in a dark row
los angeles traffic heating at dusk
should have been something very very slow
mute moving across the horizon
a carnival closing the show
and the first fall of black snow

in the last winter of our urban memories

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he was very very upset

he was very very upset

lionlike and hungry

a redwood

threatening to fall

he moved against everything

was hot and indifferent

a rogue planet out of its ellipse

spinning wanting to knock the universe down

as indignant as a river quelled

then hurling houses and cars in the provincial lowlands

 

his intent was huge

a ration of hurricanes

he was all horrible weather and hell

we tried to calm his body

but it took a world to stop him

he was a mississippi now

lawless arrogant and seeking corpses

his anger was the heaviest humidity

it smothered speech and reason

he had broken instinct

and lost sight of the interim choices

 

he saw the knife

it made itself pretty

shone starbright among the blunt things

it boasted

stating what it could kill

it romanced him

told him of death work and glory

of rising from the starlit swamp of midnight in stealth

and becoming moon dust

told him of exorcising the heat consuming his flesh

cutting to bone then scraping there

feeling the core of that man splinter

told him of letting breath go with each strike

then falling back into his senses

the knife offered him sweet delirium

it offered relief

revenge and rhetoric

it lured him to handle it slow

and kiss its sharp luminescent watery edge

 

i begged him

said

“man, he’ll get his

       catch him someday when atrocities

       and the calling voices that chant in madness

       no longer tour the night gathering corpses”

 

i said

   “move into light brotha

     with the country seeking to kill you

     the city denying you work

     every billboard defaming you

  you brotha

    from a lifetime of disappearing brothas

    from the tumult of  blue addiction

    from the indecipherable messages

    of stuttering illiteracy

         move into light

  please

   black boy with huge hands

   wild in the moonlight

   walking strong on the pleading faces”

 

he ran out the door

knife in hand

the howling night watching him go

going to get whoever hurt him

crying with fever

 

i called

    “please

      you have been owned

      sold and replanted in metal gardens

      then left to rust

      you were once african and exotic

      then when modern art was

      discovered to be a farce

      they looked to tear you down”

 

i follwed him

the cadence of his breath a locomotive

his skin was screaming

 

i said

      “brotha

       i know what it is

       the cultural loneliness

       to be the antithesis of beauty

       to feign oblivion to scars

       to be the formal joke of the city

       to be alien and advertised as such

    brotha

       each step tonight shrinks possibility

       only deeper night ahead

       laughing death shirtless in the broad avenues”

 

i tried to use anything to turn him

people were stopping

watching him rant and run

mothers in shock remembering losing sons

men suddenly thrust back to injury

whole skies of infinite thunder rising and coming closer

minutes working down his life like acid

but he was fast looking for that man

it was war distilled into lava

a chant carmeling anger into heat

his muscles and mouth were taut

there was nothing open about him now

 

he turned and looked

he didn’t see me

his face was gone

eyes abandoned

he was all instinct

swinging and oblivious

a series of tied screams

bigger now than anything real

 

i said

      “before you go into that place

       wherever he is on what corner or shadow

       before you call his name from the living

       and hover there

       cells spinning 

       the sky frenzied around you

       before that deep silence drifts in the from the wharf

       and dampens darkness and mutes the stars

       consider next year or your children

think think think think think think think

       brotha

            you cannot be such heady turbulence

      don’t be animal in sight of the available rhetoric

      come home and we’ll talk

      we’ll curse him together

      we’ll hit the walls

      then someday soon in the streets where he

      languishes waiting on his uncashed checks

      we’ll carry the day my friend

      we’ll call him a 

punk assed motherfucker

                  and move on”

 

black women are sweet

 

black women are sweet

will have your baby

and not ask to marry you

will put jordans on a credit card

celebrate your birthday in

in her section 8 basement apartment

bail you out of jail with 

cosmetology school tuition money

defend your habits 

your lack of commitment

lie to the police

 

 

black women are sweet

come to jailhouse visitson buses

get her makeup together in the parking lot

put welfare money on your books

and deliver messages from your homeboys

tattoo you on her breast

then hear some other chick speak you name

and swallow that hurt

claim you on these streets

call you strong and beautiful

kiss you through industrial glass

 

 

and because black women are sweet

and patient

with sweet names like cinnamon

peaches honey and chocolate

and have watched so many brothas

hurry toward death

for you are her son and her lover

and often her burden

when her late window lit

is the only exit from infinite night

and the last inbound train

harbors assassins who chant your name

when you arrive frightened and fractured

thank god sistuhs see past game

and read eyes and stars

loitering cars

and fresh scars