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

 

thank you

thank you

(to my homegirls)

 

today
where morning is vast
and the ground cool beneath my
bare feet and i dare run again
                 and breath

a beautiful heaviness like life
that takes the shoulders
tilts the head
filling the face with sun
here where the knees are fine
and saturday unfolds it canopies
calling working men outside into
the sweep and song of a morning beautiful
and blossom filled everywhere
        i want to thank you
just like that
as simple as saying red is red
or you are very beautiful
                thank you
in the plainest print
in a clarity so lucid
that even untruth is truth
                thank you
in a place sudden as children smiling
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
                thank you
before i forget
before this quiet moment passes
before i am confused and mix the metaphors
and lose what i am able to voice
before the tears come and i cannot say it
oh, thank you

                     thank you

                                     thank you

here behind the heart
where memory catalogues loss
and regret is a loneliness wandering an
empty country
                          thank you

today in the bright pools of water
and the thousand mile sky
in a freedom laughing out loud
in as explicit a joy as sleeping late
in as easy an elation as greeting a
friend or wearing new shoes
thank you

            thank you

                        thank you

                                    thank you
simple as that
                     thank you so much
honestly

where we stand today
like exclaiming to the world

              i am alive
and on my way
                        thank you

leaving long beach

leaving long beach

 

i am leaving today

my place is full of boxes

the mornings have come full circle

the dishes given away

i kept all the blue things

abstract paintings

poems

the beads and beautiful glasses

strange statues

i am leaving the futon here

like love

 

there is sunlight everywhere

the blinds are in disarray

here on the second floor

where i spent a year watching the city

breathe clouds against still nights

each evening in from the shore dreaming

among the tall buildings downtown

this is my final day among the people i have never met

a year on the faces of school children whose

youth is so beautiful and sad

and the men

who live in the alley shooting heroin

the students

in the infancy of their politics

praising fanon

 

amid the morning sounds

the yelping of blue dogs and the

clear hush of women falling back into sleep

a final honesty

on this earth after the early rush

this secret business of disappearing in increments

out to the truck

the lonely blue subtraction

and the earth one less heavy

very green and vacant

 

and i know this ritual of leaving

of counting down days

preparing one day to come again here

and not belong

i know the corners whose

inheritance and lottery i forfeit

beautiful sleep in the humming afternoons

narrow streets with names like stanley

and orizaba

blue dawns and blue alleys

roses pressing into chain link fences

longing to be noticed

even the ports in the 7 am fog

unhinging and echoing out to bay

clocks shadows

and the elongated dreaming body

before the wet busses begin their early changes

 

even the distilled conjecture of my neighbors

who never had a phone

who fought everyone

and cursed one another from the second floor railing

they will mourn my vacancy

for he will come

she will have latched the top lock

and turned up the TV to a blare

at the end he’ll think of me 

the placid place in the calamity

i am always the last kind face

and lean against my door

insistent as rent

 

i leave this key in this silence

the scheduled noises come

each day offering its small sorrows

synchronized sky and the 11 am etch of sun

the nothingness of clouds

in concaved noon through

the empty belly of sky

i was the early business of god

languishing in the quiet window of the catholic parrish

half turned away from me

to record the pulse and drone of the 405

to admire the faith and duty of tugboats

and to count the washes of city sparrows

 

 

stay all morning

stay all morning

stay all morning
in the first light fretting
miles it's eye open and clear
raises the day
the obligation to come and
juxtapose the starling blue
and scatter starling to the waking world

but stay past that incipient light
beyond the unhinging morning
after concrete settles
long past instinct

after  clocks have stopped screaming
in the clear hour past transit
stay

in the small cool fire hush
secret and  loved in my arms
move back against me
find your place in shadow
on my easy earth

for hours changing positions
like the clockhand change finds a new number
chimes in joy the hour come like birth
on the wall loving in strict language
or the morning doorway rotates its view
we'll find each other each minute
shifting carelessly far away from the planet

and your breasts
casual in their gait
you offer them
you walk with them
introduce them….
lay with me naked singing
until i want you

and your eyes
what can be said?
you belong to me here
are requisite as breath

and needed
my marrow churns
sun burns bright in the floating window

big strong brotha like me says yes
to everything the morning suggests

sistuh furiously
if you can lean
if you possibly can
sistuh sistuh sistuh
stay

but the man things fall away
this poem not from my chest
but is from the smallness in my belly
but is from the longing in my honest hands

no war today

and the torrent of morning
disheveled in the cool bed
your errant hand breathing in bed
an ellipse of air and rhythm
your beautiful damp thumb
a small brown bird
a snow of sheets around you
your crazy hair the residue night
beautiful early citizen…..