POEM: TIME IS A FUNNY THING

photo by Alex Lear

 

 

 

 

time is a funny thing

 

there have been times when i found myself with literally nothing i could do like when i would sit at a stop sign for what seemed hours trying to figure out how to straighten out the mess i'd made of my marriage, tayari alone with our five young people & me alone at a stop sign, & eventually i just crawled on--it's not like i was the only man who had ever stumbled at that specific crossroads but when i was there the sun shone all night & i saw no one's shadow but my own forlorn form tangled in the rocks & weeds of my emotional life, & although then was years ago, occasionally i am still shook by an invisible hand, it could be when i pause in mid-embrace as i hold a comrade from back in the days i haven't seen in quite a while & they hurl me into a time machine when they innocently ask with a sincerity so certain "how are tayari & the kids, they must be grown now?"

 

 

there have been times when i felt i was drawing my last breath & about to bankrupt the bank, especially that sunday morning we went to face down the klan & the night before those hooded ones goose-stepping around garish flame cross light had shot at police in algiers without being arrested which we knew meant targets were pinned on all our chests but we had to go to high noon, such poot or get off the pot days give men & women no choice, & then there was the helpless waiting to exhale of the pulse pounding pause on the unforgettable creaking bus stuck to a motionless stop like a lamb patiently awaiting a slaughter somewhere in the middle of nica. libre between rama and managua, the u.s. armed contras on the other side of the hill, hard working people softly mumbling spanish prayers & attempting to hide anything that might call attention to themselves at the bottom a half mile or so from the peak & no sandanista soldier rescuing cavalry anywhere in sight, & me frankly more worried about the photos & taped interviews i might loose than about whether i would die & yet at the same time after having heard gunfire in the nights i was acutely aware, as fred sanford was fond of seriously joking, that this could be the big one, the one where the bullet singes your skin without a so much as an excuse me

 

there have been times i paused to count the endless ripples on a lake, to note the shape of each leaf on a tree so tall my myopic eyes could not clearly see the top, to merge my being with the azure luminosity of a spring sky, raise my closed eyes to sun warmth & be clearly seen by any passerby as i stand swaying in the breeze mindlessly enjoying the great goodness of nature's beauty

 

there have been times i have been so harried with details & overwhelmed by minutiae i must have looked like rockerfeller's accountant around tax time, dragging myself home mentally exhausted, nia reminds me i started to snore during the month we crammed in a half year's worth of work within six weeks when we did the jazzfest posters in 1993 & have not been able since to shake that sleeping disorder

 

there have been times i've shared with people events which are now noted in history, our names engraved into the consciousness of both friends & foes so audacious was our doing, we were the flesh levers which moved social mountains, the meaningful moments whose significance sometimes can only be read in hindsight because at the time we were just going with the flow doing what we did & such doing just seemed as right as warm rain & inevitable as darkness following sundown

 

there have been times when i have made statements so stupid there must have been a poltergeist in my mouth misguiding my tongue, i remember one utterance & each time i remember the cruelty of those words i pause & apologize, a friend was going for her phd at the same time she was dating this man she hoped to make her husband, a hope most of us recognized as a longer shot that a three legged horse beating secretariat in a derby run, but still she was proud of both & in one twisted indiscreet swoop i flung assassin words across a room: "yeah, then"--meaning when she got her phd--"then, you can buy a husband," oh the demons of disorder danced that night i'm sure, my only consolation is that i have not unconsciously done anything as callous as that since, & though i know each of us has been awarded an asshole of the month award for some act whose erasure is fervently desired, knowledge of others fucking up does nothing to dim the blemishes on the resume of my own heart

 

likewise, there have been times when i've made my ancestors proud, particularly my enslaved african ancestors who courageously & creatively figured ways to squeeze banquets from mustard seeds, times i've proved to be worthy of the sacrifices, guidance, love & understanding showered on me by the union of degreeless first black lab tech at va hospital-new orleans, big val ferdinand, whom friends lovingly called "ferd" with the preacher's daughter, quintessential third grade school teacher, inola, my physical & spiritual earth parents, & most significantly times i've caused a child, i've both fathered & inspired, to stick their chest out or cry joy tears to know that their flesh was connected to mine

 

but that's the way of the world, one day the weight of my big body will be light as dust, blood gone to rain, spirit gone to ghost, then the meaning of my life will be only in the quality & effects of what i did while traveling through, what creations i birthed, what constructs i destroyed or transformed, i will be measured by what i have meant to others & to the overall health of the earth, those nodes are not just mine but indeed are the arc of each generation & every individual, no matter how each of us consumes our time allotment, chewing cautiously deep in rational thought or wolfing the chow down, savoring the taste of each moment or swallowing several mouthfuls as swiftly as we can, fasting or being gluttonous, focused or totally random, the reality is our matter is only a mere morsel in the mouth of galactic motion, what does the sun care what we do with our little piece so small, so overall futile a wrestling with fate & destiny attempting to shape something significant from the brief ticket we purchase in this crazy lottery of living, only people care & that is the sole true way to identify one's humanness, do we care about being here & care about everyone & everything we encounter in time

 

time is such a funny thing, whether you think about it or not, whether exciting as tongue kissing an exquisite taboo or boring as olive drab painting of army equipment for the 300th repetition, regardless of what we don't or do, the funny thing is that time is a changing that is constantly the same, is both totally silly & movingly profound, is the depth of blue & the velocity of red, the density of black, the blankness of white & the spectrum scale of all the grays in between, no matter how big a ripple we cause plopping into the cosmic pond eventually the lake's face recomposes into smooth placidity, whether we spill piss or perfume, deposit tears or blood, no matter, the planet receives them all just the same because in the end, just as in the beginning, they all & we all, everything big, little, short & tall, equally slip right on away, ain't if funny?

 

—kalamu ya salaam

AUDIO: NEGROIDAL NOISE SUITE

 

 

 

KALAMU YA SALAAM &

THE IMPROVISATIONAL

ARTS ENSEMBLE

[New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival - we walked on stage. no rehearsals. no discussion about what we were going to do. Kidd said "hit" and we took off: flying. every sound you hear was improvised in the moment. the cuts below represent about a third of the total concert. peoples was screaming and hollering, i.e. audience and musicians too.]

Intro

 

The whole history

 

Negoidal noise

 

Waving at Ra

 

Landing


POEM + AUDIO: RAINBOWS COME AFTER THE RAIN

photo by Alex Lear

 

 

 

 

 

Rainbows Come After The Rain

(featuring Tim Green on soprano saxophone)

 

Rainbows come after the rain

If I don't touch you in the flesh

I'll see you in the dreamtime

 

If I can't hold you in the present

The future will know our kiss

 

Everything that keeps us apart

Just makes our coming together stronger

 

And all the hard hassels of today

Will be sung as funny lyrics tomorrow

In the rainbow sweetness

Of our love song

 

—kalamu ya salaam

POEM + AUDIO: HARD NEWS FOR HIP HARRY

photo by Alex Lear

 

 

 

 

HARD NEWS FOR HIP HARRY

(for Nefertiti, new word journalist)

 

it was like

cowboys & Indians

and he was the whole

10th cavalry

diving down

into her ravine

raising dust

in a surprise

swoop attack

that left her laying

there bent back

her thighs all aquiver

with convulsive

love spasms

 

and when

the big guns

went off, his

coming was like

a gattling

tearing her little

target apart

 

each time

they got down

it was always the

same, a rerun in 3-D

the kid riding

rough and ready

into town

turning it out

at high noon

taking swift

car of business

 

ah, they should

of ought to

have made a movie

out of his moves

 

til the day

she wouldn’t roll

with his punches, didn’t

feel like faking it

anymore, refused to

be the stunt man

taking dives

and doing what

she didn’t do

 

she knew

there was no easy way

to release it to romeo

without putting his

love lights out,

so she simply said

“Harry, this is no way

to make love”

 

like a silent star

in the age of talkies

unable to learn new lines,

like a sky diver

whose parachute

was shot, falling over

committed to a point

of no return,

Harry didn’t know

what to do

 

so he called her

“frigid”

 

but it was finis

for his toy balloons

the film had rolled

to the end of the reel,

Harry’s hard humping

had become a fantasy

that no one would

any longer pay

to see

 

yet Harry sat

nonetheless

incredulously

contemplating

a blank screen,

unable to figure

out why the show

wasn’t going on

(he had always

thought sex

was like what

he saw in the pictures)

 

“Harry, talk to me”

 

—kalamu ya salaam

___________________________

THE WORD BAND

Kalamu ya Salaam - poet

Ginger Tanner - lead vocals

Anua Nantambu - backing vocals

Kenyatta Simon - percussion


POEM + AUDIO: UNFINISHED BLUES

photo by Cfreedom

 

 

 


 

 

UNFINISHED BLUES

(featuring Walter "Wolfman" Washington - guitar)

 

sometimes i never

think of you

other times seems

like i never get through

 

seasons pass, rain falls

i never think of you

some recorded singer sighs

i wonder how you do

 

the ache in my heart

got a key

to my mind’s back door

comes and goes

as it please

 

i don’t miss you all

a the time

just

sometimes

 

—kalamu ya salaam


POEM + AUDIO: CONGO SQUARE

photo by Alex Lear

 

 

 

 

 

 

CONGO SQUARE

 

the oumas indians prepared this place for us

centuries before our arrival

a sacred spot where corn festivals

were celebrated & as the colonializers came

they pushed aside our hosts

& introduced us in chains

& by the late 1700s we somehow

recognizing the sacredness of le place de congo,

we somehow, and the how of our persuasive methodologies

is not clear at this moment, but nevertheless,

even as slaves we crafted and created a space

where we could be free to be we

and thusly we countered the sacriligousness of the french

giving great homage to our ancestors as well as

giving praise & thanx to our red blooded brothers & sisters

 

this is an oral libational toast

to congo square

to native americans

to our ancestors

who made a circle in a square

and gave us a way to stay ourselves save ourselves

from the transformatory ugliness of america

which refuses to recognize the spirituality of life

and celebrates death with crosses & crosses, double

& triple crosses, the middle passage the first cross,

christianity the double cross and capitalism

the ultimate triple coup de grace cross of our captivity

 

but the terror of crosses notwithstanding

we sang, we beat, we be, we was & is

hail, congo square

our african gods have not been obliterated

they have merely retreated inside

the beat of us until we are ready

to release them into a world that we

re-create, a world heralded by the beat

be, beat being, beating being

of black heart drums

 

heart beat heart beat heart be/at this place

at this place be heart beat be we

beating place in new world space

beating being in place

in new world preserving our ancient pace

our dance is the god walk

our music, the god talk

 

first thing we do, let's get together

circle ourselves into community

no beginning no end connected together

and singing ringing singing

in a ring

 

second let's be original

aboriginal / be what we were before

we became what we are, be bamboula

dance, be banza music, and sing song words

which have no english translation

 

third let us remember

never to forget even when we can't remember

the specifics we must retain the essentials

the bounce the blood flow the feel the spirit

grow energy, must retain and pass on

the essential us-ness that

others want to dissipate whip out of us

but no matter how much of us they prohibit

deep inside us is us

remains us inside

& needs only

the beat

to set

us free

 

the beat to free us

 

it is morning, a sun day, a field w/out shade but dark

with the people black of us in various shades

eclipsing the sun with our elegance

 

we are centuries later now

and still this sacred ground calls us

to remember / to beat / to be

 

beat CONGO SQUARE be CONGO SQUARE

beat be beat be

remember

 

—kalamu ya salaam

POEM + AUDIO: SOON ONE MORNING, I'LL FLY AWAY

photo by Gason Ayisyin

 

 

Soon One Morning, I'll Fly Away

 

Where does heart rest, breath originate

where is buried afterbirth, what world is flavored

with the sweetness of mother milk, spiced by a jigger

of father essence unmercifully purifying, trellissed

by the communal touch of kind and kin heat tough

as the sun spear of cloudless august noon

 

While we trod life's tribulation bridge and seek to craft

some small sweet space from the loam of this bitter earth

whether in shit storm or sun shade there is but one certain

fuel to animate our keeping on, and that be our deep

belief tear-crystal clear, regardless of which exploiter

we labor beneath, the end of our existence is that we black

 

Weary travelers, being not from here, must death rise & return

to the spirit space wherein we dwelled before we were birthed

 

—kalamu ya salaam

 

------------------------------  

Kalamu ya Salaam – vocals

Stephan Richter – clarinet

Wolfi Schlick – reeds

Frank Bruckner – guitar

Roland HH Biswurm - drums

 

Recorded: May 31, 1998 – Munich, Germany