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

letter to a fugitive sistuh

i wanted to call you

but i was dishonest

so lacking sanctuary

in the clear river of an infant democracy

i wrote poems about spain

clouds drawing dreams

and the multitude of invitations

to cry all morning long

 

the high spiderless panes of downtown sky

moved clouds across morning

and under the marquee of the theater

in a wind hinting rain in the eyes

my muddled reflection released me

let me move unencumbered by shadow to canaan

 

i am ok

if you need to know

somewhere traveling across your moonlit face

this astronaut you love glinting in the galaxy

somewhere where you don't admit it

small interstellar fire

you care love

i am just sad

but sadness is no sickness

no ripeness or shine

no moon leaning against the universe

not naples with beautiful boats in transit

it's just the condition of the world on tuesday

 

i loved you

like finding meaning in kenya

measuring myself in clay

rising from a month of prayer

fluent and citizen in mombasa

and dar es salaam

i was

i rose

i loved you in a new language

wandered a ripe continent healing people

my blackness declared at every border

new night following me across the mudstone country

the limpopo steering lumber through night

moon siren spilled on the river night

 

my new africa

its infant pan faced diplomats

their heartfelt constitutions

their hopeful words

your love making people believe

and the freedom the triumph we felt

as we passed into tanzania singing

where the people were voting

at the marrow of africa

the drone of your kiss in my chest

 

this year

the children are older

november was especially hard

because of their faces

all their faces like drops of oil

fingertip bright faces

you would be proud of the students

we send them

the starling

the children each cool morning

 

and some mornings

i could not see your face

and sat looking east back into memory

and was ashamed

i panicked

waiting for you to move from darkness

to call with your politics

to form against my ready mouth

yet with all the windows open

no you ever ever

no you ever no you

 

war blooms on the windows

like when we traveled at the edge of a monsoon

and caught the fringe rain

all the african sky behind us suddenly heavy coal

dark mozambique exhaling and flooding

threatening the caravan of peace workers

and the soldiers draped in plastic

who did everything at gunpoint

could be brought with american cigarettes

its like that here love

in this america i am trying to change

this arrogant bantu homeland

this sky i am trying to stay ahead of

the policemen with guns

 

we have missed the islamic sudan

and the women come wandering in somalia

covered appropriate cultural and lean

grinning like fruit

like so  many young girls there come to learn

last year we planned to empower women there

your sisters needed you

and i was going with you on a slow egyptian freighter

it was to be our time between continents

drifting in blue love

informally without speeches

 

but that was to be last year

trekking through chad disguised as muslims

now the students are my africa

each an infant democracy

i tell them about you

this woman who came to me from an international urgency

they pronounce your name and smile

they are beautiful errors in the autumn sky

our little freedom fighters

i have taught them african freedom songs

i sing to you on the way home in swahili

though a hemisphere voices a million concerns between us

 

i see them each day on my commute

countless men and women who can toil no further

something is afoot here

each day a machine aches to a stop

each day a worker changes his mind

there will be freedom coming here too

our work will begin in watts

my fugitive

my secret flower

my love

letter from upstate

letter from upstate

 

you once fought

over five dollars

beside the train tracks

you carried that scar

on your cheek forever

crescent moon in the

universe of your black skin

a thing on your face

that wouldn't smile

 

and when he went to stick you

foolish as i was loving you

i got it deep in my shoulder

 

i missed that season

and was useless for a winter

 

i tell the new cats about you

those who squat in the clock tower's shadow

but they move on

....no heart

keep it

keep it

 

keep it

if you need it

if it fits you well

and some sistuh smiles at you

 

and eat it

if you are hungry

you've come a long way here

 

curse it

if it keeps you

from making a mistake

out there

 

name it

if you want it

aint got no money

just heart

 

cry  it out

i aint gonna tell anyone

blue is a working man's color

i miss louis too