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

losing marie paule

 

 

 

-downtown is thousands of

floors above us where

the sentinels meet at the cistern and

jigsaw blue

it is so new to you

everything here

even after a year of trains and bells

i still find you looking up

watching the scheduled squares of city sky

the partitioned sun falling down towers into sound

and being tired on busses

where common people stood still

in the clamor and dogma of the country’s machinery

refusing to create poems

and celebrate themselves

 

i love that about you

the way you feel about things

how jazz fascinates your fingers

george benson

the africanesque of his guitar and voice

made you come to my room

asking was he from senegal

you wanting to kiss me in the dining hall

but had been informed not

to be too forward with americans

you fall so easily

i love to catch you and

laugh strong in present tenses

and when you told me you loved me

the diplomat in you speaking for the

shy african girl

it was more real than pain

i was naked

like children in first sight of the elephants

 

but saturday

you are leaving

going home to your people and country

that news comes as

an errant voice in the loitering cacophony

an angry griot calling my sins

come here loud and dark

a tense face from famine

 

everywhere

the shirley horn trio is in slow blue samba

a stirring snare drum forecasting winter

expanding symbol like sheer rain

i cannot escape it

men are sad

women overworked and pious

children shoeless in rain

yet this small bit of denial has sustained me

i eat it slowly and stay with you

each night i listen to you breathe

each breath a small cloud gathering in coming winter

winter will be a lonely hand in an empty pocket

a season of ornate absences

a conversation ending in silences and snow flurries

 

three days until saturday

my journal is full of blue poems

on one page

i drew my own eyes

they tell me to catalog each moment

to linger everywhere we are together

rush to you and keep you

on the next page a sonnet

but i have never been good at metered verse

everything is against us

            even literature

each car horn bellows it out

each door click letting go a notch wound to my wrist

but there are always planes somewhere leaving

always someone in a new liturgy of blues

returning to the city alone

walking into winter where the birds change color

the connections change

it’s the new vacancy in apartment # 12

it’s in the lone pot screaming from the neighbor’s stove

it’s in the empty busses at 1 am transferring spirits

it’s in the windows like night

and in the whites of my eyes

 

his cigarette lights

 

his cigarette lights

morning comes across his hands

and he lingers at the light like a wildflower

long enough to be absent and abstract

someone three cars back

in the pell-mell hour

screams honks twice

jerks so hard the car whines and jostles

traffic finally moves

the 2nd car makes a right west

toward the sea and early sun

the sea is billowy and young

and not yet green

inflates the morning with sound

seagull struggles in the tempest

dives through the emptiness  

a woman watching him go

that fast loses him in the loud blue

she secures her hat her dress

straining against her thighs and breasts

finds herself exposed

adjusts her mouth to see what the

next breath holds

the next breath stirs the young man

who meets the girl whose laughter is

as easy an elation as wearing new shoes

kisses her behind the oleanders at the pier

the cats catch him definitionless in the half sun

the cats are a spectrum of sun

and the pier is 12 miles long

a group of resolute men are going to the end

but won’t wait for me

i have so many things to gather

strewn about on the ground

and i am blinking blue  

straining in the rising flashes of light

now citizen with no antecedent  no story

coming into the wide port morning

my small cargo of wilting words

like static when the city rises

the transmissions etch incoherent

the translucent randomness

an echo of laughter

two strong seconds of song

one minute of tuning whine

and somewhere in a quarter hour of haze

an announcement in tagalog

the people have appeared

the people have appeared

even the lovers who have made this their place

for she attends cosmetology academy

and he is a young custodian at the school district

she moves his hair back over his ears

he cleans her face with his kisses

                                                            

 

and each day where the

scheduled squares of city sky

framework the afternoon

and change reference as

the sun slants the bright loud hour

they arrive in the legislated garden

of the bank building atrium

and sit on the dark watersheen marble

 

outside the blvd veers right at them

down a short hill to the plaza

people come and go

a meter maid moves between the parked cars

and a push of starling volleys into air

up the mathematics of windows

toward the partitioned sky

 

 

she has cut her hair

she turns to let him see her neckline

it would be perfect to kiss the swallow of it

the movement into her earthen shoulder

over her right breastand watch the red lights stammer

the UPS truck ease into shadow

her knee begin to shine

 

they leave

and noon darkens into afternoon

the meter clicks and skyscrapers begin to piston

the atrium sprinklers tuft and spray

for 5 allotted minutes on a pruned hedge

and the small leaves grow wet and black green

like love

for joy

(i marginal
 i omitted
 i incongruent and

 off center square)

 

joy
those people who bark at you
who make gutteral noises
and imitate your heaviness
who find their hipness
standing square on your's
don't know that
your mother may wish you were different
and that when you come home on christmas break
she takes exception to your short hair

and your dark skin

and never asks if you have romance

never the pretty conversations of

how to coo no’s in a suitor’s ear

just the oblivion of your sexless body

the large plaid nothingness of you

and your father explains to company

during his genteel moments

when he conjures his big words
that you are ugly but sweet

and calls you from the den to say hello

invites the guests to touch the ugliness
and your mother challenges you for wearing red
and that maybe you hanging your head
is a hundred yrs old

why should you show your eyes

who would respond to the longing

or catch the first flash of winter in your silent tear?
they will not know

that your mother was made at the
expense of a fair skinned world

and beaten away from her beauty

and they said mutilate yourself to be pretty

and she did

and they said corrupt your children to be pretty

and she did

and when she saw herself eligible to be american woman

you arrived in her life

like a curse growing ever blacker at her tit