photo by Alex Lear

 

 

 

BUDDY BOLDEN

 

a bunch of us were astral traveling, pulsating on the flow of a wicked elvinesque polyrhythmic 6/8 groove. although our physical eyes had disappeared from our faces, we still had wry eyebrows arched like quarter moons or miniature ram's horns. every molecule of our thirsty skin was a sensitive ear drinking in the vibes. at each stroke of sweat-slicked drumstick on skins, our wings moved in syncopated grace. shimmering cymbal vibrations illuminated the night so green bright we could feel the trembling emerald through the soles of our feet. deep red pulsing bass sounds throbbed from our left brain lobes, lifting us and shooting us quickly across the eons. we moved swiftly as comets, quiet as singing starlight.

 

as we neared the motherwomb, firefly angels came out to escort us to the inner sanctum. with eager anticipation i smelled a banquet of hip, growling, intense quarter notes when we entered the compound. a hand carved, coconut shell bowl brimming with hot melodies radiating a tantalizing aroma sat steaming at each place setting, heralding our arrival. whenever i rode this deeply into the music, i would never want to return back to places of broken notes and no natural drums.

 

on my way here i heard nidia who was in a prison in el salvador. she had been shot, captured. her tormentors were torturing her with continuous questions, sleep deprivation, psychological cruelty, and assassination attempts against her family. she sang songs to stay strong. singing in prison, i dug that. 

 

once we made touchdown, we kissed the sweetearth (which tasted like three parts blackstrap molasses and one part chalky starch with a dash of sharply tart orange rind) and smeared red clay in our hair. then lay in the sun for a few days listening to duke ellington every morning before bathing. i was glad to see otis redding flashing his huge carefree smiles and splashing around in the blue lagoon. finally after hugging the baobab tree (the oldest existing life force) for twenty-four hours we were ready to glide inside and hang with the children again. whenever one returned from planet earth, we had to take a lot of precautions. you never know what kinds of human logic you might be infected with. since i had spent most of my last assignment checking out far flung galaxies, on my first examination i was able to dance through the scanner with nary a miscue. my soul was cool.

 

i only had ten centuries to recuperate before returning to active rotation so i was eager to eat. the house was a buzz with vibrations. a hefty-thighed cook came in and tongue kissed each of us seated at the mahogony table, male and female, young and old, whatever. that took about six centuries. she was moving on cp time and when i tasted her kiss i understood why.

 

up close her skin was deeper than a sunken slave ship and glowed with the glitter of golddust pressed across her brow and on the sides of her face just above her cheekline. she wore a plum-sized chunk of orangish-yellow amber as a pendant held in place by a chain braided from the mane of a four hundred pound lion. her head was divided into sixteen sectors each with a ball of threaded hair tied in nubian knots, each knot exactly the same size as the spherical amber perfectly poised in the hollow of her throat. i was so stunned by the beauty force of her haunting entrance, i had to chant to calm myself.

 

"drink deeply the water from an ancient well." was all she said as she spun in slow circles. tiny bells dangled between the top of the curvaceous protrudence of her posterior and the bottom of the concavity of the arch in the small of her back where it met her waist and flared outward to the expanse of her sturdy hips. suspended from a cord she wore around her waist, the hand carved, solid gold bells gave off a tiny but distinctive jingle which rose and fell with each step.

 

emanating a bluegreen aura of contentment, she didn't look like she had ever, in any of her many lifetimes, done anything compromising such as vote for a capitalist (of whatever color) or succumb to the expediency of accepting any system of domination. she didn't say a word, instead she hummed without disrupting the smiling fullness of her lips. she wasn't ashame of her big feet as she stepped flatfootedly around the table, a slender gold ring on the big toe of each foot.

 

her almond shaped, kola nut colored eyes sauntered up to each of our individualities, sight read our diverse memories and swam in the sea of whatever sorrows we had experienced. she silently drank all our bitter tears and became pregnant with our hopes. she looked like she had never ever worn clothes and instead had spent her whole life moving about in the glorious garment of a nudity so natural she seemed like a miracle you had to prepare yourself to witness as she innocently and righteously strode through the sun, moon and star light.

 

when she neared me she effortlessly slinked into a crouched, garden tending posture and, with sharp thrusting arm movements, choreographed an improvised welcome dance (how else, except by improvisation, could her movements mirror everything i was thinking?). placing my ear to her distended stomach, i guessed six months. she arched her back. a ring shout undulated out of her womb. i got so excited i had to sit on my wings to keep still.

 

when she stood up to her full six foot height with her lithe arms akimbo, i coudn't help responding. i got an erection when she placed her hand on the top of my head. she laughed at my arousal.

 

"drink your soup, silly" she teased me and then laughed again, while gently tracing her fingers across my face, down the side of my neck and swiftly brushing my upper torso, briefly petting the hummingbird rapidity of my chest muscle twitches. and then the program began.

 

a few years after monk danced in, coltrane said the blessing in his characteristic slow solemn tone. you know how coltrane talks. as usual, he didn't eat much. but we were filled with wonder anyway. then bob chrisman from the black scholar gave a short speech on one becomes two when the raindrop splits. everybody danced in appreciation of his insights.

 

when we resumed our places, the child next to me reflected aloud, "always remember you are a starchild. you will become any reality that you get with unless you influence that reality to become you. we have no power but osmosis and vibrations. as long as you don't forget your essence, it's alright to live inside something else." the child hugged me while extrapolating chrisman's message.

 

a voice on the intercom was calling for volunteers to help move the mountain. even though i wasn't through with my soup and still had a couple of centuries left, i rose immediately. i had drunk enough to imagine going up against the people who couldn't clap on two and four. "earth is very dangerous" the voice intoned. "the humans have the power to induce both amnesia and psychic dislocation."

 

the child smiled at me and sang "i'll wait for you where human eyes have never seen." we only had time to sing 7,685 choruses because i had to hurry to earth. our spirits there were up against some mighty powerful forces and the ngoma badly needed reinforcements. but i took a couple of months to thank the chef for sitting me next to the child.

 

"no thanx needed. i simply gave back to you what you gave to me." then in a divine gesture she lovingly touched each of my four sacred drums: head, heart, gut and groin. cupping them warmly in both her hands, she slow kissed an eternal rhythm into each. before i could say anything she was gone, humming the child's song "...where human eyes have never seen, i'll wait for you. i'll wait for you."

 

i got to earth shortly after 1947 started. people were still making music then. back in 1999 machines manufactured music. real singing was against the law.

 

walking down the street one day i saw what i assumed was a soul sister. she was humming a simple song. i sensed she was possibly one of us. she looked like a chef except with chemically altered hair on her mind instead of black puffs of natural nubianity. i spoke anyway. she walked right through me.

 

i turned around to see where she had gone. but she was gone. i looked up and i was on the bandstand. i was billie holiday. every pain i ever felt  was sobbing out of my throat. i looked at my black and blue face. the fist splotches from where my man had hit me.

 

"I'd rather

for my man

to hit me,

 

            then

            for him

 

to jump

            up

and quit me." i sang through the pain of a broken jaw.

 

"have you ever loved somebody who didn't know how to love you?" i asked the audience. in what must have been some kind of american ritual, everyone held up small, round hand mirrors and intently peered into their looking glass. the music stopped momentarily as if i had stumbled into a bucket of moonlit blood. my left leg started trembling. every word felt like it was ripped from my throat with pieces of my flesh hanging off each note. i almost fainted from the pain, but i couldn't stop singing because whenever i paused, even if only for a moment, the thought of suicide pressed me to the canvas. and you know i couldn't lay there waiting for the eight count, knocked out like some chump. i was stronger than these earthlings. i had to get up and keep on singing, but to keep on making music took so much energy. i was almost exhausted. and when i stopped the pain was deafening. exhausting to sing. painful to stop. this was a far heavier experience than i had foreseen.

 

i kept singing but i also felt myself growing weaker. drained. "i say have you ever given your love to a rascal that didn't give a damn about you?" this was insane. when would i be able to stop? there was so much money being exchanged that i was having a hard time breathing. i could feel my soul growing dimmer, the pain beginning to creep through even while i was singing. so this is what the angels meant by "hell is being silenced by commerce." legal tender was choking me.

 

for a moment i felt human, but luckily the band started playing again. some lame colored cat had crawled up on the stage and was thawing out frozen conservatory school cliches. made my bunions groan. but i guess when you're human you got to go through a lot of trial and error. especially when you're young in earth years. the whole time i was on that scene i felt sorry for the children. most of them had never seen their parents make love.

 

humans spend a lot of their early years playing all kinds of games to prepare themselves to play all kinds of games when they grow up. the childrearing atmosphere was so dense the only thing little people could do was lie awake naked under the covers and play with themselves but only whenever the adults weren't watching cause if those poor kids got caught touching each other, they were beaten. can you imagine that?

 

damn, i thought smelly horn wasn't ever going to stop, prez had to pull his coat, "hey shorty, don't take so long to say so little."

 

as soon as the cat paused, i jumped in "have you ever loved somebody..." yes, i had volunteered, but i had no idea making music on earth would be this taxing.

 

when our set ended, i stumbled from the stand totally disoriented. by now i almost needed to constantly make music in order to twirl my gyroscope and keep it spinning. after the set, i found it very difficult to act like a human and sit still while talking to the customers. i kept wanting to hover and hum. but i went through the changes, even did an interview.

 

"the only way out is to go through it all" i found myself saying to an english reporter who was looking at me with insane eyes.

 

he did his best to sing. "you've been hurt by white people in america and i want to let you know that there are white people who love and respect you." i could hear his eyes as clear as sid catlett's drum. i appreciated his attempts but those were some stiff-assed paradiddles he was beating. the youngster was still in his teens and offered me a handkerchief to wipe the pain off my face. i waved it away, that little bandana wouldn't even dry up so much as one teardrop of my sadness. at that moment what i really needed was a lift cause the scene was a drag.

 

"the only way to go through it all is to go through it all. yaknow. survive it and sing about it." i said holding the side of my head in the cup of my hand and speaking with my eyes half closed and focused on nothing in particular.

 

"why sing about it?" he said eager as a pig snouting around for truffles (even though he wasn't french, i could see he had sex on his mind).

 

"cause if you keep the pain within you'll explode." he reached for his wallet about to offer me money. for sure he was a hopeless case. once i dug he didn't understand creativity, i switched to sociology. "millions of people been molested as children." he had been there, done that. he was starting to catch my drift. "men been beating on women. you know i was a slave. that means i was violated. that means i was broke down. that means i would lay there and take it. in and out. lay there. still. i have heard reports that i was a prostitute. but i never sold myself just for money, i lay down because there was no room to stand up. in and out. in and out. til finally, they ejaculated. and finished. for the moment, for the night... til... whenever." i looked up and his mind was on the other side of the room; i had lost him again.

 

poor child doesn't have a clue. that's why he's looking all pitiful at me. i couldn't find a way to unfold the whole to him. i wanted to say more but their language couldn't make the changes. he will probably write a treatise on the downtrodden negro in tomorrow's paper.

 

sho-nuff, next day--quote:

 

 So-and-so is an incredibly gifted Black American animal. People were actually crying in the audience when she howled "No Body's Bizness" in the voice of a neutered dog. This reporter is a registered theorist on why White people are fascinated by listening to the sounds of their victims' pathetic crying. I had the rare opportunity to interview the jazzy chick.  Although she was not very familiar with the basic principles of grammar, I managed to get a few words from her illiterateness once she took some dope which I had been advised to offer her.

 I asked her what harmonic system she employed? My publisher had authorized me to offer her music lessons. I quote her answer verbatim.

 "I sing because, like the Funky Butt Brass Band used to holler, you got to open up the window and let the bad air out."

That was it. When I turned off my voice stealing machine, she said "I got a lot of s--t in me. If I don't get it out, I'll die."

If she doesn't die first, there will be a concert tonight. Cheeri-O. 

 

unquote.

 

i couldn't wait to get back to the motherwomb...

 

But, just as I was about to fly, I woke up. I was cuddled next to Nia's nakedness, her back to me, my arm embracing her breasts, and my leg thrown up in touch with the arc of her thighs.

 

I stared into the deep acorn brown of her braided hair. I couldn't see anything in the unlighted room except the contours of the coiled beautiful darkness of her braids. After a few seconds the sweet familar scent of the hair oil she used began lulling me back to sleep.

 

Unfortunately, I didn't have enough sleep time left to continue my flight dreams. And I spent the rest of the day trying to decide... no, not decide, but remember. I spent the rest of the day trying to remember whether I was a human who dreamed he was something else or was indeed something else doing a temporary duty assignment here on planet earth.

 

 —kalamu ya salaam

photo by Alex Lear

 

 

NINA SIMONE

 

Nina is song. Not just a vocalist or singer, but actual song. The physical vibration and the meaning too. A reflection and projection of a certain segment of our mesmerizing ethos. Culturally specific in attitude, in rhythm, in what she harmonizes with and what she clashes against, merges snugly into and hotly confronts in rage. All that she is. Especially the contradictions and contrarinesses. And why not. If Nina is song. Our song. She would have to be all that.

 

Nina is not her name. Nina is our name. Nina is how we call ourselves remade into an uprising. Eunice Waymon started out life as a precocious child prodigy -- amazingly gifted at piano. She went to church, sang, prayed and absorbed all the sweat of the saints: the sisters dropping like flies and rising like angels all around her. Big bosoms clad in white. Tambourine-playing, cotton-chopping, tobacco-picking, corn-shucking, floor-mopping, child-birthing, man-loving hands. The spray of sweat and other body secretions falling on young Eunice's face informing her music for decades to come with the fluid fire of quintessential Black musicking. But there was also the conservatory and the proper way to approach the high art of music. The curve of the hands above the keyboard. The ear to hear and mind to understand the modulations in and out of various keys. The notes contained in each chord. She aspired to be a concert pianist. But at root she was an obeah woman. With voice and drum she could hold court for days, dazzle multitudes, regale us with the splendor, enrapture us with the serpentine serendipity of her black magic womanistness articulated in improvised, conjured incantations. "My daughter said, mama, sometimes I don't understand these people. I told her I don't understand them either but I'm born of them, and I like it." Nina picked up Moses' writhing rod, swallowed it and now hisses back into us the stories of our souls on fire. Hear me now, on fire.

 

My first memory of Nina is twofold. One that music critics considered her ugly and openly said so. And two that she was on the Tonight show back in the late fifties/very early sixties singing "I Love You Porgy." Both those memories go hand in hand. Both those memories speak volumes about what a Black woman could and could not do in the Eisenhower era. They called her ugly because she was Black. Literally. Dark skinned. In the late fifties, somewhat like it is now, only a tad more adamant, couldn't no dark skinned woman be pretty. In commercial terms, the darker the uglier. Nina was dark. She sang "Porgy" darkly. Made you know that the love she sang about was the real sound of music, and that Julie Andrews didn't have a clue. Was something so deep, so strong that I as a teenager intuitively realized that Nina's sound was both way over my head and was also the water within which my soul was baptized. Which is probably why I liked it, and is certainly why my then just developing moth wings sent me shooting toward the brilliant flashes of diamond bright lightening which shot sparking cobalt blue and ferrous red out of the black well of her mouth. This was some elemental love. Some of the kind of stuff I would first read about in James Baldwin's Another Country, a book that America is still not ready to understand. Love like that is what Nina's sound is.

 

Her piano was always percussive. It hit you. Moved you. Socked it to you. She could hit one note and make you sit up straight. Do things to your anatomy. That was Nina. Made a lot of men wish their name was Porgy. That's the way she sang that song. I wanted to grow up and be Porgy. Really. Wanted to grow up and get loved like Nina was loving Porgy. For a long time, I never knew nobody else sang that song. Who else could possibly invest that song with such a serious message, serious meaning? Porgy was Nina's man. Nina's song. She loved him. And he was well loved.

 

In my youth, I didn't think she was ugly. Nor did I didn't think she was beautiful. She just looked like a dark Black woman. With a bunch of make-up on in the early days. Later, I realized what she really looked like was an African mask. Something to shock you into a realization that no matter how hard you tried, you would never ever master white beauty because that is not what you were. Fundamental Blackness. Severe lines. Severe, you hear me. I mean, you hear Nina. Dogonic, chiseled features. Bold eyes. Ancient eyes. Done seen and survived slavery eyes. A countenance so serious that only hand carved mahogany or ebony could convey the features.

 

The hip-notism of her. The powerful peer. Percussive piano. Pounding pelvis. The slow, unhurried sureness. An orgasm that starts in the toes and ends up zillions of long seconds later emanating as a wide-mouthed silent scream uttered in some sonic range between a sigh and a whimper. A coming so deep, you don't tremble, you quake. I feel Nina's song and think of snakes. Damballa undulations. Congolesian contractions. She is an ancient religion renewed. The starkness of resistance. And nothing Eurocentric civilization can totally contain. Dark scream. Be both the scream and the dark. A crusty fist shot straight up in the air, upraised head. Maroon. Runaway. No more auction block. The one who did not blink when their foot was cut off to keep them from running away. And they just left anyway. Could stand before the overseer and not be there. Could answer drunken requests to sing this or that love song and create a seance so strong you sobered up and afterwards reeled backward, pawing the air cause you needed a drink. You could not confuse Nina Simone with some moon/june, puritan love song. Nina was the sound that sent slave masters slipping out of four posted beds and roaming through slave quartered nights. Yes, Nina was. And was too the sound that sent them staggering back with faces and backs scratched, teeth marked cheeks, kneed groins, and other signs of resistance momentarily tattooed on their pale bodies. And despite her fighting spirit, or perhaps because of her fighting spirit, the strength and ultra high standard of femininity she established with her every breath, these men who would be her master would not sell her. Might whip her a little, but not maim her. Well, nothing beyond cutting the foot so she would stay. With Nina it could get ugly if you came at her wrong, and something in her song said any White man approaching with intentions of possessing me is wrong. Nina sounded like that. Which is why this anti-fascist German team wrote "Pirate Jenny" and it was a long, long time before I realized that the song wasn't even about Black people.

 

Nina Simone was/is something so potent, so fascinating. A fertile flame. A cobra stare. Once you heard her, you could not avoid her, avoid the implications of her sound, be ye Black, White or whatever. Her blackness embraced the humanity in all who heard her, who experienced being touched by her, whose eyes welled up with tears sometimes, feeling the panorama of sensations she routinely but not rotely evoked wherever, whenever she sat at the altar of her piano and proceeded to unfurl the spiritual history of her people. When Nina sang, sings, if you are alive, and hear her, really hear her, you become umbilicaled into the cosmic and primal soul of suffering and resurrection, despair and hope, slavery and freedom that all humans have, at one level or another, both individually and ethnically, experienced, even if only vicariously. After all, who knows better the range of reactions to the blade, than does the executioner who swings the axe?

 

Nina hit you in the head, in the heart, in the gut and in the groin. But she hit you with music, and thus her sonorous fusillades, even at their most furious, did you no harm. In fact, the resulting outpouring of passions was a healing. A lancing of sentimental sacs which held the poisons of oppressive tendencies, the biles of woe-filled self-pity. A draining from the body of those social toxicants which embitter one's soul. A removal of the excrescent warts of prejudice and chauvinism that blight one's civil make-up.

 

Sangoma Simone sang and her sound was salving and salubrious. Her concerts were healing circles. Her recordings medicinal potions. She gave so much. Partaking of her drained you of cloying mundanities. Poured loa-ed essentials into the life cup. You left her presence, filled to your capacity and aware of how much there was to achieve by being a communicative human being.

 

Nina Simone. Supper clubs could not hold her. Folk songs were not strong enough. Popular standards too inane. Even though she did them. Did them to death. Took plain soup, and when she finished adding her aural herbs, there you had gumbo. Nina hit her stride with the rebellious uprises of the sixties, and the fierce pride of the seventies. Became a Black queen, an African queen. Became beautiful. Remember, I am talking about a time when we really believed Black was beautiful. Not just ok, acceptable, nothing to be ashamed of, but beautiful. Proud. And out there. Not subdued. Not refined. Not well mannered. But out there. Way out. Like Four Women. Like Mississippi Goddamn. Like Young, Gifted And Black. Like Revolution. Like: "And I Mean Every Word Of It". This was Nina who did an album with only herself. Voice. Piano. And some songs that commented on the human condition in terms bolder than had ever been recorded in popular music before. Are we The Desperate Ones? Have We Lost The Human Touch?

 

My other memories of Nina have to do with the aftermath. I recall the aridness of counterrevolutionary America clamping down and shuttering the leading lights of the seventies. Nina's radiance was celestial, but oh my, how costly the burning. Seeking fuel she fled into exile. Who would be her well, where could she find a cool drink of water before she died?

 

Then, like indiscreet body odors, the rumors and gossip began floating back. The tempest. The turning in on the self. What happens when they catch you and bring you back. Reify and commodify you, relegate you back into slavery. You are forced to fight in little and sometimes strange ways. But the thrill is gone. Cause only freedom is thrilling, and ain't no thrill in being contained on anybody's plantation, chained to anybody's farm. Anybody's, be they man, woman or child. Nobody's. Nothing thrilling about not being liberated.

 

Nina, like most of us, went crazy so that she could stay sane. Just did it hard. Was a more purer crazy. Cause she had so much to be sane about. So much that leeches wanted to siphon, sip, suck.

 

How do you stay sane in America? You go crazy. In order to be.

 

To be proud. And beautiful. And woman. And dark. Black skinned. You have to go crazy to stay sane. You have to scream, just to make room for your whispers. You have to cry and cuss, so that you can kiss and love. You have to fight. Fight. Fight. Lord. Fight. I gets. Fight. So tired. Fight. Of. Fight. Fighting all the time. But ooohhh child things are gonna get easier.

 

Don't tell me about her deficiencies, or her screwed up business affairs, her temper tantrums, her lack of understanding, her bad luck with men, her walking off the stage on the audience. Don't tell me about nothing. None of that. Because all of that ain't Nina. Nina Simone is song. And all of that is just whatever she got to do. Like she said: Do What You Got To Do. Oh Lord, Please Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood.

 

I play Nina Simone. Yesterday. Today. Tomorrow. This morning. Tonight at noon. Under the hot sun of Amerikkka, merrily, merrily, merrily denigrating us. In those terrible midnights. I play Nina Simone. Just to stay sane. Stay Black. To remember that Black is beautiful, not pretty. Beautiful is more than pretty. Beautiful is deep. I play beautiful Nina Simone. Nina Song. I play Nina Simone. And whether Nina's song turns you off or Nina's song turns you on, whose problem, whose opportunity is that?

 

No. Let me correct the English. I don't play Nina Simone. I serious Nina Simone. Serious. Simone. Put on her recordings and Nzinga strut all night long. And even that is not long enough.

 

To be young, or ancient. Gifted, or ordinary. But definitely Black, definitely the terrible beauty of Blackness. Nina Simone. Nina Song. Nina. Nina. Nina.

 

Oh my god. I give thanx for Nina Simone.

 

—kalamu ya salaam

photo by Alex Lear

 

 

 

 

THE ROSES ARE BEAUTIFUL,

 

BUT THE THORNS ARE SO SHARP 

 

1.

 

         Blood didn't know why he wanted to kiss her private lips. Didn't know why the sharp energy of her smell made the large muscles on the inside of his thigh twitch.  Didn't smell like sex. Didn't even smell human.  Undomesticated, wild, maybe a pine-needle bed where a deer had rested.  A fragrance born by the wind from whence only the wind knows where.  Didn't know why, but he liked the memory of his slow kiss-rub-lick-suck of the cleaved dark of her.  And he liked that she liked it.

         Theodore sucked the caramel colored coke through a straw, drawing out gurgling sounds as the last of the liquid, mixed with air, cascaded upward through the crushed ice.  He shook the cup once, tore the plastic top off with the straw still in it and threw it into the litter receptacle; swirled the cup, tilted it upward shaking shards of ice into his mouth, sucked on the ice and thought of her moan as he nodded hello to a co-worker on his way back to his desk from his ten minute break.

 

***

 

         I close my eyes.  I am crazy.  I open my eyes.  I am crazy.  I do my work and when I finish working, every time, I am crazy. Obsession.  The need for every day to be night.  I tape the evening news using the timer on my VCR and later look at her over and over.  Her eyes.  I know looks that the tv camera never sees.  Sometimes I watch with the sound turned down.  Read her body language.  The motion of her jaw as she talks.  Count how many times I see her tongue on screen.  How often they show her hands.  The feel of her nails on my neck.  The rhythm of her voice reciting my three syllables: "The-o-dore" except she enunciates "Thee-I-ADORE."  "That's the news.  This is Ann Turner.  See you tomorrow."  SEE YOU TONIGHT.  BABY. TONIGHT!

 

***

 

         The bronze point of her breast cutting a curvature in his consciousness.  Why continue, he thought as he continued.  A man shouldn't be consumed by desire.  His imagination saw the inside of her thigh flash quick as the picture of the contents of a darkened room momentarily lit by five milliseconds of lightening flashing during a summer night storm when you are standing near the window sipping something mildly intoxicating and a "Quiet Storm" format radio station unfurls aural ribbons.

         He drank her features even when only his computer was in front of his eyes.  Drank and drank, and was never quenched.

         One day he refused to call her.  The whole day. Concentrated on not calling her.

***

 

         She doesn't own my fingers.  My feet are my feet.  I have business.  I wear a suit and tie.  I drive a car -- red, sleek. Here is my off-ramp. I like the feel of taking it at 40mph, leaning into the curve. It's like when I ease into her. I'm gripping the wheel firmly but lightly like I do her breasts, and I brake a little, back off the clutch, let the engine slow us down, and hit the accelerator slightly at the top of the curve, pushing through faster now. Through the steering wheel I can feel the car's power surging and responsive to my every expert move, like Ann.

         I smoke cigarettes.  I urinate at break time and wish, in the middle of the men's room, Joey to the right of me, Harold on my left, Amos at the sink talking shit about what he made his bitches do, I urinate and as I shake myself, wish it were her fingers shaking me.  I will not call.  The boys see me zipping my pants.  They don't sense her.  I look into the mirror at my reflection, scratch my jaw, dry my hands, and, leaning forward, balancing my weight between the sink ledge and the balls of my feet, careful to pretend I am examining my razor bumps, I search deep into my eyes: her profile.

         "The roses are very nice."

         Thirty-eight dollars is more than very nice.  Forty-one dollars, forty-two cents.

         "But, I can't accept them."

         I've bought corsages for proms.  I've bought flowers on mother's day.  I've even given my aunt a plant for her anniversary.  This is the first time, the first time I've ever bought roses.  And they are only "very nice."     

         What about when you kissed me?  What about that great dinner we cooked together in your kitchen trading culinary tips, and ate in the after glow; I fed you desert.  A fruit salad first from my fork, then the grapes from my hand, and that last strawberry we shared lip to lip as I kissed you with the succulent deep red meat poised between my teeth and letting it fall into your mouth as you sucked my lips and you slipped your fingers into the bowl and one by one inserted your fingers into my mouth and l sucked the juice off, cleaned each finger with the sweep of my tongue.  And the night we spent the night drinking coffee in the French Quarter, walking around waiting on the sun, delirious, delicious and crazy in each other's eyes?  The first time.  The second time.  That Saturday evening in the thunder storm with all the lights out and a very good bottle of moderately expensive wine.  My comforter on the carpeted floor, the sound of rain on the pane accompanied our rhythms.  The third, fourth.  Damn it, last Monday, two days ago.  "My legs are wide open," you said.  I almost cried in your arms I felt so happy.  I pick you up just about every day from work -- every day you allow me to.  We even sometimes make groceries together.  That linen jacket, the pink one.  The surprise manicure and facial treatment certificate.  The health spa six month membership.  "My legs are wide open."  That's more than nice.

 

***

 

         "I said, I can't accept them. I... No, don't come in.  Please."

 

***

 

         Then I forced myself past the three-quarters-opened door. I didn't mean to knock her down when I pushed my way inside. But she fell. And then something happened. Looking down at her I saw the shock on her face. "You see it doesn't feel good getting pushed around, does it?" is what I thought to myself. "Now you know how I feel sometimes the way you treat me," I continued thinking while silently observing her. The beginnings of a smirk unconsciously edging itself onto my face. It was as if I rose up above myself and was outside of my body watching myself stand there.  I could see everything.  I knew everything.  I knew she was surprised by how hard I shoved the door. Even so, I could see she wasn't hurt sprawled there on the floor. Embarrassed but not hurt. And afterwards when I left I knew when I slammed the door shut hard behind me, I knew the sound cut the silence.  She didn't know I had it in me. I knew.  The way she looked up at me.

 

***

 

         As she fell backward, slammed into the way and fell, he closed the door quickly. And then, as though she had misunderstood him the first time, he held out the roses to her again.  She had one knee slightly up. Her straight, woolen, beige skirt with the deep split in the front had ridden up high on her legs, falling away from above her knees.

         Anger and the beginnings of fear overpowered her perfume. She didn't smell pleasant anymore.

         The red, red roses swinging before her face.

         Nothing.

         "I am more than nice," he thought to himself.

         The phone rang.

         She covered her face with both hands. Then lowered one hand to the floor. Began pushing up, to stand.  Theodore stepped forward and planted himself, blocking what would have been her path of ascendancy.  She stopped.  He saw that she knew she would never make the phone.  Let her machine answer the intruding call. Four rings and the noisy interruption stopped.

         After the chirp of the phone stopped, he bent slightly and pushed the roses at her again.

         She batted them away. She does not want to be distracted. He pushed them forward again.

         Her hand moved slowly.  She pushed gently, tried to move the flowers out of her face.  Why was he insisting?  Why were the flowers thrust at her like a gun?

         What?

         He had unbuttoned his trousers. They slid down at his feet.  He stepped out of them. "My legs are wide open," she had said just two days ago. The goodness of his dick hadn't changed any in the time between the last time and now.  She wanted it then.  She gave it up then.  Now was then.  In his mind.  He eased his jockey briefs off.  Now, he still had his shirt and tie on. And his jacket.  And the roses in his hand.

         What?

         That was her only real reaction.  What?

         Sometimes shit be happening to you and it be so far out the box you can't believe it be happening. 

         Theodore was standing there with his penis erect.  His jacket on the floor now behind his trousers.  He knelt slowly. Placed the flowers down beside him.  Pushed her skirt up.  She closed her eyes.  Her flesh was cool beneath the nylon of the panty hose.  Then she moved, slightly.  Her head shook slowly from side to side.  She covered his hand with her left hand.  A momentary halt.

         She tried reasoning with an unreasonable man, "Are you going to use something?  I'm ovulating now."

         Theodore ignored her.  She saw him ignore her.  Theodore began pulling at her panty hose.

         "I'm not going to let you do this." 

         She started to struggle silently.  She surprised him with her strength as she tussled with him. The thrust of her arms rocked him backward. He admired that she didn't hit like a girl. Now she was on one knee. He pushed her again.  Harder.  She sprawled backward. Her shoe slipped and her legs flew from beneath her. As she lay disheveled on the floor trying to decide whether to kick him or to try and run from him, he pushed the roses aside and knelt resolutely in front of her. He looked between her legs which were awkwardly gapped open.  What was it "there" that had him crazed on the floor.  The reddest rose.  The petals of her vagina flower.  The thorns of her refusal to receive him. 

         Then suddenly she pushed him harder than he had pushed her.  He fell back on the flowers.  The thorns bit deeply into the palm of his left hand.

         He picked the flowers up and threw them at her.  Hurled them into her face.  Hard.  A thorn cut her cheek.  She felt a faint sting.  When her hand came down from her jaw, a long bloody smear had creased the light hand side like a crimson life line burnt into her palm.

         He expected her to cry. But she made no sound. Did not even whimper. But stared at him with an undisguised hatred. The force of her stare stunned him. He stood up. She bolted up without hesitation. Balled her fist and stood rigidly upright, silently daring him to touch her again. He backed off slowly. Retrieved his clothing. Dressed. Every time he glanced at her she was still glaring unblinking at him. Her blouse rose and fell as she took deep, soundless breathes. He turned and walked briskly out of the door, slamming it behind him. She stepped over the flowers and quickly locked the door behind him.

 

2.

 

         They were in a movie and he cheered when the hero smacked the actress portraying the wife.  Ann froze, intuitively knew for sure that Theodore Roosevelt Stevens, III was wrong for her.  All the little signs she had ignored because she was tired of searching for someone with whom to share her life and had settled for someone with whom to have a little fun.  After applauding the hero's response to his wife's cinematic betrayal with a short clap -- actually Theodore was celebrating the hero's refusal to be suckered more than applauding the guy for hitting the woman, it's much harder to see through how a woman is using you than it is to smack her once you figure out that you've been used, and Theodore admired anyone with insight into the feminine species -- his right hand had pawed the air seeking Ann's hand to hold again, but her arms were folded.

         "What's wrong?"

         "What's right?"

         "What you mean?"

         He caught the tone, the cut, the coldness.  The sharp point contained within all her soft curves.  Theodore knew this was fire he could not walk through with his bare feet.

         "What?"

         She bit her bottom lip but not to keep from talking, the biting was just a habit of preparation when she had to fight a battle which she did not choose, but which she would wage without quarter.

         Walking up the aisle after the movie's over, "Let's go for a drink; we need to talk."

         "Sure.  Where?"

         "Anywhere."  Clipped tone.  The claws were still showing.

         Anywhere was near by, but the silence riding over was long.  "What's up?"

         "This is the last, I mean I don't think..."  She swung her head quickly.  They were at a stop light.  Right before the turn onto Causeway Blvd.  He looked over during the pause for the light.  Her unblinking eyes focused directly on him.  She read him the news -- that's how it felt, all the emotion was calculated although unforced and rendered in well modulated tones, "I thought about your question about us living together, and the answer is no.  And I think we ought to break this off."

         The light was green.  Theodore pulled through the moment.  Said nothing.  While moving through the traffic.  He said nothing.  Circled onto the expressway.  She hates games. He heard her.  Into the expressway traffic.  Then he pulled over to the side.  Slowed.  Emergency lights flashing.  He looked over at her as the car coasted to an easy stop.  He turned the tape deck off.  He turned the key.  The engine stopped.  The stick shift loose in neutral, rocked back and forth beneath the easy side to side push of his hand.  Then he pulled the emergency brake handle.  She has not stopped looking at him.  This was Tuesday.

         Wednesday morning into the third mile her breathing is even and her stride is smooth.  She will kick the fourth mile.  She is ready.  Suddenly she stops.  A crow caws, breaking the silence of the morning cool.  Two cars pass along the generally deserted stretch of road.  The light is soft.  Her face is soft.  Her eyes are hard.  She begins walking and in a few seconds builds up to a trot and then is running again. 

         Thursday he will bring roses and apologize.

 

***

 

         Everybody thinks it's easy to be me.  To be the model of charm and poise on the weekday evening news.  A face recognized.  Gwendolyn Ann Turner.  Actually, Gwendolyn Ann Turner is me, and most of the world -- I shouldn't exaggerate, most of the city -- knows: "This is Ann Turner, your evening anchor, sharing the news of New Orleans with you."  Most of the world knows so small a part of my real persona and yet people think because they see a small part of me so frequently, they think they know "me."

         I was so fat as a child, so "Gwenie."  Overweight, intelligent, gifted with a lean, hard mind -- too hard.  Up to the middle of college I was always the "brain," never the beauty and even when my birthright beauty began to exert itself in college -- it's like it's hard to judge just how beautiful the flower will be when all you see is the beginning bud.  I had to run in P.E. and found myself liking the loneliness and the challenge of the long runs, figuring out how to run without wearing myself out, how to swing my arms, how to set my pace, how to breath, how to use my body, yes, how to use "my body" and I pushed it and enjoyed pushing it. The more I ran, the more the physical side of me came out, but it was all because I enjoyed the meditation part of running. At the same time I was trying to figure out how to meet the physical challenges rather than because I wanted to become "fine" or "thin" or something, but the more I ran and enjoyed running, the more I found beauty came within my reach and required just a little work to enhance it.  But the thorn on the flower was that becoming attractive just made being me more difficult, more demanding.  I split in two.  It became so easy to be pretty, to be wined and dined because my body shape was what it had become, or more accurately was what I had made it become, my skin color was what it was, my voice, my hair, my eyes, my slender fingers, my beige bottom firm, round and protruding.

 

***

 

         The thought stopped her: "I hated being fat and I'll never be fat again."  She stopped at the road side, put her hands atop her head, fingers interlaced, breathed deeply, looked up into the dawning sky and summoned strength -- she was beginning to resent the deference given to her for all the wrong reasons.  Well not so much "wrong reasons," for all the "Ann Turner reasons" and none of the Gwendolyn Ann Turner reasons.

 

***

 

         Here I am 28 years old, sexually active, so far away from any kind of serious relationship that it doesn't even hurt anymore. I'm never alone unless I want to be and I've never met anyone with whom I always want to be. Being so popular as a media personality just makes being alone as a private person inevitable.

 

***

 

         Ann took a deep breath.  She had volunteered the decision to drop "Gwendolyn" because Ann is so much easier to articulate cleanly into a lapel microphone or an overhead boom, no consonant blend obstacles to negotiate.

 

***

 

         If I hate being beautiful, why do I run everyday, stick to my diet, groom myself immaculately?  Wear complementary colors. Procures pedicures.  Manicures.  Facials.  Ann runs everyday and Gwen waits. Waits for what?

         Huh.

 

***

 

         Gwen waits in a desk drawer, in a diary, in five completed stories, 79 completed poems, and 34 incomplete sketches, outlines and ideas for stories.  And in the drawing pad.  The monthly self portraits drawn with soft lead pencil while looking into the dressing table mirror.  That had started in college. During the first week of every month Gwen sketched Ann, and afterwards Ann would stare at the drawing, looking for Gwen. Gwendolyn had gone to college certain that writing was her destiny but the motion of circumstances had sidetracked her. The path from Gwen to Ann had started not from her own volition but rather began because of her physical presence and personality; the transfiguration wasn't the result of will, but rather it was physiological and sociological chance. 

         As the new Gwen started to blossom, Gwen "hated" the attention even though some small part of her loved it, fed off it and grew more confident, stronger week after week.  That's how she had eased into broadcasting.  In college journalism even those who only wanted to write were "counseled" into taking at least two broadcast courses "in order to be well rounded," and, of course, even though she never sought the behind the mike position, of course once she was there, once people saw how effective she was (even if she was a little overweight), then her instructors steered her that way: "the camera loves you / your voice soothes and exudes sincerity / I know you want to write but I think it's apparent your future is in announcing." Meanwhile, Gwen the writer patiently waited for release.  Now, years later, a professional broadcasting career confidently established, writing as a career option is not possible, not to mention being economically unfeasible.  Gwen rarely spoke but when she did...

         "Ann you do television because it's easy for you.  There's no challenge staying in shape.  Reading news copy is so easy. We always liked to read.  Ann, you like to read, and I have to read; that's one of the only ways I can even exist.  All other times I'm shoved deep into the background."

 

***

 

         These two people in me.  Gwen wants to be a writer, a deep thinker, and Ann, well, Ann pays all the bills and acquires all the frills.  Or something.  What does Ann want?  Ann is not a want, Ann is a thing, a procurer.  Ann's ultimate job really ought to be to create a space for Gwen.

         Huh.

 

***

 

         She begins walking and in a few seconds builds up to a trot and then is running again.

 

3.

 

         I was already in the shower.  Theodore was behind me at the toilet, urinating and the "morning deep yellow" of his streaming urine refracting early daylight made it easy for me to see the splashes flying out of the bowl.  I hate it.  I hate the sloppiness of the way men piss.  I hate it.  I step out of the shower.

         "Theodore."

         "What?"

 

***

 

         He swung his head, tremendously pleased with himself. Happy about his manliness.  His sexiness and skill as a lover.  His good fortune: he was fucking Ann Turner and she was liking it. Everything was in order.  At the office his commissions were bounding upward.  When a client saw him, they were impressed by the smooth, articulate, fastidiously groomed, intelligent, business savvy, young Black man fashionably attired in tastefully muted burgundy suspenders over ice blue crisply starched dress shirt with a white collar -- these days Theodore was always impressive, so impressive that clients flocked to him the way those chickens used to do at his grandmother's farm in the summertimes when he was sent to spend a few weeks and would wake early, jump out of bed, get dress quickly and run into the back yard with a cap full of feed, throwing the kernels on the ground and calling out in his young baritone (he remembered that even as a teen-ager he had a heavy voice): "cluck-cluck cluckity-cluck, come here chickens, yall in luck, cluck-cluck cluckity cluck."  Because he was looking at himself, his external eyes focused on the stream of piss, the splash of water, the diffuse light from the skylight as well as the rainbow shimmering in the toilet bowl cast there by the prismed light of the cut glass mobile hanging from the skylight latch, in his head the beauty of her big round booty moved beneath the knead of his firm hands, because of all of that he neither saw the seriousness in her eyes nor heard the coldness in her voice as he perfunctorily answered, "What?"

         "I realize this might sound a bit strange to you but I've got a thing about hygiene.  When you use the toilet, please sit."

         "What?"

         "Put the seat down and sit.  Urinate sitting down.  When you stand, your urine splashes, and it's unhygenic."

 

***

 

         Much head as she gives, she's worried about a little urine on the toilet seat.  She swallows.  She loves it.  She licks me clean.  And she's worried about me standing up pissing.

 

***

 

         Theodore stood there, naked, his member held nimbly in his left hand.  He was just about to shake the drops off the tip with a vigorous motion.  How would he shake it if he were sitting on the toilet seat?  This was a trip.

 

***

 

         I knew he wouldn't understand.

 

***

 

         Theodore didn't understand what was going on.

         Ann turned back into the shower, almost regretting that she had brought it up.  Almost.  Gwen had decided long ago that Theodore was just a momentary thing, even before he overestimated himself and made the major faux pas of popping the question about living together.

         Ann was slower to decide.  There was a lot she liked about Theodore.  The lovemaking for one.  And, well, the lovemaking for two.  His humor, he was sort of witty.  No, really he was convenient.  Although right for a fling, he definitely was not living together material.  And unhygenic and far too possessive.

         "Theodore, I don't need you to pick me up after work. Yes, I know it's late when I get off, and I know I could save the cab fare, but it's easier.  I have two cab drivers who are regulars.  I call when I'm close to ready and they're outside the door waiting for me.  I get in, we come straight here, they wait until I'm inside and everything is safe.  Theo, I know you don't mind but you don't have to wait around for me.

         "I'm staying late.  ...  No.  I'm not sure exactly what time I'll be finished.  ...  I'll just catch a cab.  No, Theo, I won't call you.  I'll catch a cab, and I'll talk to you in the morning.  ... You'll be sleeping when I get in.  I'll call you in the morning.   ... Theodore don't call me at one a.m.  ...  What do you mean where will I be?  ...  What do you mean what do I mean?  I mean I can take care of myself.  ...  Obviously, you don't know it.

         Gwen had peeped all of that weeks ago.  The shower door opened.  Theodore stepped in.

         "You mean when I urinate, you want me to sit down like when I uh, defecate?"

 

4.

 

         "When I saw you bleeding, I knew I had messed up real bad.  I don't know what got into me.  I mean you know me, I'm not really like that.  I mean, I was crazy or something.  Ann?  I'm sorry.  I'm sorry.  You want me to beg?  You want me to crawl? What?  I've sent you letters, I've called every day.  This hurts me too.  I don't know what else to say.  I mean I know I did something really, really wrong.  And I know it will be hard for you to ever trust me again, but I love you.  I really love you.  I mean I'm serious.  You make me feel like a man..."

 

5.

 

         Ann didn't even listen to the whole tape.  He talked to her machine for twenty, sometimes thirty minutes or more, sometimes.  Sometimes he just said, "I'm gon keep calling until you talk to me."  This went on for over two weeks.

         Fortunately, the erase mechanism was fast.

 

6.

 

         This is about a year and a half later.  Theodore is married (yes, he sent Ann an invitation—she didn't go; he wasn't surprised).

         When Ann got the invitation she felt sad for Theodore's intended. He had wanted a wife but he wasn't prepared to deal with a woman.  She left the invitation in the hallway, on the table, the table that held the telephone / answering machine, beneath the mirror.  The invitation pushed half way back into the envelope.  Ann did not even wonder why it had been sent.  Gwen didn't care.  A casual toss and the invitation landed with a slight rustle atop a small stack of junk mail.  Ann didn't mean Theodore's invitation was junk mail, but she knew she wasn't going.

         Later that day she sat sketching herself. Clarity.  In the mirror was Gwendolyn Ann Turner, a thirty-year old, unmarried Black woman.  Ann didn't frown.  Ann didn't cry.  She knew, she knew she would never marry.  And she could live with that, was content to live with that. But Gwen smiled, she smiled because she appreciated that Ann Turner was becoming increasingly less interested in Ann Turner and more interested in developing Gwendolyn Ann Turner.

         Never marry.  God, what a thought.  But not really.  Even though she had been raised to marry. Even though it seemed like the whole world was wondering when she would marry. And have children. In a flash both Ann and Gwen realized -- neither one of them had every really wanted to be married--not once they were mature enough to honestly face themselves.  Ann just didn't want to be alone.  Although sharing board was just about out of the question, Ann could and would always find someone with whom to share bed.  Ann accepted the cost.  She could pay the bills.  No problem.  An inconvenience sometimes, but no problem.  And Gwen.  Gwen was happy, she gave thanks to be alive and thriving. And writing -- her new novel was almost finished.

         A spray of roses sat elangantly arranged in a bright black vase. "Our vase" -- Gwen had found it while wondering through the French Quarter. She was drawn to the pear-shaped container without even knowing why or how she would use it. As she walked along with the trendy shopping bag which held the vase swaddled in newspaper, she passed a florist. Roses were on sale: $9.99 a dozen, and thus began the floral addition to the sketching ritual. The fragrance of the flowers would radiate through the room while the young woman deftly drew her monthly self portrait. And as was usually the case within the last few months, Gwen would be smiling a generous smile. To her beautiful self. Clearer than she had ever been and glad that she understood the necessity of thorns on roses--everything beautiful must protect itself.

 

—kalamu ya salaam

photo by Alex Lear

 

 

 

TOUCH

(for Asinjae Monae Jackson)

 

we can live together / and still some crazy way

there be a certain wall of silence surrounding personal matters / usually

only a few intimacies and renegade thoughts, embarrassing ideas

too risque or too taboo / to share with others, even blood

close others, or friends who’ve known us since before we could read, not to mention also with intimate others with whom we share physical nakedness

 

there is an us that we decline to let others see

 

except when we honestly write

 

& even then we try to keep most of our deep interiors / under

the wraps of acceptable thoughts

 

but

 

still sometimes

 

we peek out / something serious escapes

 

and like a jolt of electricity, say from a toaster when we've stuck a butter knife inside trying to retrieve a small crust of bread / or even the static on a winter day when our woolen slippers on the carpet causes a little spark and we flinch, like that

 

we touch others and they are surprised / by the force of who we are / and we in turn are surreptitiously delighted

 

when they say to us: i never knew

 you felt like that

 

we should consider all of our writing is a kiss, a caress, or even a fist, but in any case, all cases, if we are true to

 

our selves our writing is us touching another

 

—kalamu ya salaam

photo by Alex Lear

 

 

HEAVEN?

 

When we got to heaven, we were surprised. God was slouched off to the side, unconcerned by the chaos swirling around him. Bored even. Would have been absent mindedly looking out of a window, but there was no window, only a horizonless expanse of conflict raging back and forth. We checked our cosmic map and guidebook: that was god, this was heaven.

The distant noise of battle: grunting, groans, screams, moans, drifted toward where we stood shocked with our mouths hanging open. Suddenly Jesus appears.

"Reinforcements. And not a moment too soon," he says, rushing up to us. "Come ye to the mountaintop and let us smite down Satan."

God groaned, "Ha. This madness will be going on for eternity. But he..." (pointing to Jesus) "...never listens. What makes him think he can control Satan. I created the little monster and even I can't do anything with him."

You looked at me out of the corner of your eye. I caught your vibe. Yes, it was just like kids on earth. Some yearning to burn, some yearning to save.

"Let's bounce," I said under my breath out of the side of my mouth without moving my lips much and not loud enough for Jesus to hear.

"I'm good to go," you replied in a whisper.

Jesus raised his hand to signal to us the direction to where the quartermaster was issuing heavenly bodies, angel wings and battle rations. But we were already backpedaling like MJ doing the moonwalk.

Although we didn't have our earthly bodies, we still had the common sense our mamas birthed us. I let the unneeded orientation guidelines slip out of my consciousness as we headed back through the pearly gates.

 

—kalamu ya salaam

photo by Alex Lear

 

 

 

What Took You So Long?

 

 

We've Got To Have A Video For This. Meaningless As They Be, Here Are The Images--All We Did Was Round Up All The Usual Suspects:For these young-stars, while the weather never was cold, the "forties" always were. Plus seems there was always this one cutie who could blow smoke rings out her thing. Toke a big blunt with her labia major, and puff a thick blue cloud of chronic. No shit. The first time she did it in front of Eazy all he said was "whoa, now dat some bomb ass pussy!" (I'm telling yall all this shit so you will know the context. This is the expository part of this story where I do the detailing. Wax and shine the ride and grease down the cow hide. Gas it up to full and bump the tapes up past ten on the 14-inch speakers in the Alpine system.)

 

OK? Got it? Are You Suitably Distracted? Confused? What Did That Naked Woman Have To Do With The Story? Oh, I See You're Getting The Picture. You Were Looking At The Picture With The Sound Sense Off. OK, Now Cut The Tee-Vee. Ignore The Video. Listen.

 

So Eazy and Tupac sayz to each other:

 

EAZY: Yo bitch, how I know I'm alive?

 

TUPAC: You don't, unless you die.

 

EAZY: You mean I got to die to live?

 

TUPAC: No, I mean you can't prove you lived unless you die.

 

EAZY: And so what happens when I die? 

TUPAC: One of three things. One. You meet God and the Devil and they decide which one of them two mothafuckaz is your old man and who is going to own up to you for eternity.

 

EAZY: You mean my mama don't get no say so about this shit?

 

TUPAC: Eazy, man, you always was slow. Your mama deal with you when you alive. Your daddy deal with you when you dead.

 

EAZY: Oh, I see, what you sayin'.

 

TUPAC: No, that's the whole point. You don't see. You don't see shit while you alive. You don't get to see nothing til you dead. While you alive, you just live. Do whatever the fuck you want and then when you dead...

EAZY: You get to see what you did?

 

TUPAC: Yeah! That's one option.

 

EAZY: Oh, I get muthafuckin options?

 

TUPAC: I don't know, I'm just speculating on how a nigga be making it after he done passed on. 

EAZY: This some of that Panther shit?

 

TUPAC: Nigga talking to you is like talking to a brick except you ain't even solid enough to build nothing with.

 

EAZY: I know this bitch-ass momma's boy ain't tryin' to bag on a man. Yo shit so weak til the last bitch you fucked charged you with sexual harrasment AND YOU GOT CONVICTED, motherfucka! 

TUPAC: Alright, whatever. At least I know how to count my money, instead of slaving for a white man, "let's see, one for me, and one for you, and one for me, and one for him, and one for me, and one for Cube, now we all got an even cut." Eazy, you like the clown in class cracking jokes so nobody notice how dumb he is. 

EAZY: This ain't school. You ain't no teacher. You just mad cause I know how to read ya. 

TUPAC: Alright, alright. Option two is that after this shit play out, that's all she wrote. You had your little fifteen minutes of fame and now it's all over.

 

EAZY: That's wack. If this is all there is, I want my money back cause I been jipped. 

TUPAC: Option three is that this shit is a cycle and we come back over again.

 

EAZY: What you mean come back?

 

TUPAC: You get born again but instead of being a gangsta, you come back as a bitch.

 

EAZY: I know you trippin'. 

TUPAC: I'm just saying it's an option.

 

EAZY: But Pac, if you come back as somethin' else, then it ain't really comin' back. It be a whole new thing. Like if you fuckin' this cutie and the shit is bangin', but then when you go back the next night, she don't be there. Her sista be there. Then you ain't comin' back. It's a whole new thing. 

TUPAC: Nigga, why you got to reference everything with your dick.

 

EAZY: I ain't got to. It just feel better when I do.

 

TUPAC: Yeah, whatever. 

EAZY: So how you goin' out?

 

TUPAC: Like a man, mothafucka. However it come, I'm going out like a man. My boots on, looking the bullet dead in the mothafuckin eyez. You know what I mean?

 

EAZY: OK, like I got to bounce. I got some beats and shit to put down in the studio. 

TUPAC: Nigga, I heard some of that shit. That shit sound...

 

EAZY: It don't matter to me how my shit smell to you, what matter is that muthafuckaz buy the shit I do.

 

TUPAC: Represent and get paid.

 

EAZY: I'm gon do that. What you gon do?

TUPAC: I been thinking about getting out of the being real biz and getting into some real fake ass shit. That way I get to play hard on the screen and then live soft on the titty for a long ass time. Instead of making five records and then having niggaz saying "Tupac who?" I'm thinking of jumping off into film and shit. I can make movies til I'm sixty-two and people will still dig my shit. Kind of like that muthafucka John Wayne. 

EAZY: Fuck John Wayne.

 

TUPAC: Not even with your dick. I'm just saying homey, I been thinking...

EAZY: Yeah, you done got philosophical as a muthafucka since you took them bullets in yo ass and done a lil time in the clink. Tell me, you ain't got but one nut left.

 

TUPAC: My one weights a ton, and it's twice as heavy as both your pebbles put togetha. By the way, howz your boyfriend?

EAZY: Nah, there you go. You know you got that shit assbackwardz as usual. That's yo boyfriend and my ho...

 

TUPAC: Blahzy, blahzy. Whatever. Say Eazy?

 

EAZY: What?

 

TUPAC: After we gone, what do you think they'll say about us?

EAZY: Who?

 

TUPAC: You know, all them magazines that be writing about what color toilet paper we use and when was the last time yo mama sucked my dick on the beach.

 

EAZY: Nigga, I know you don't believe none of that shit. 

TUPAC: I ain't asking about what I believe, I'm asking about how people be pimping us.

 

EAZY: Pimpin' you! Ain't nobody pimpin' me. I ain't no ho.

 

TUPAC: Well bitch, I hate to be the one to tell you, you got the claps cause you done been fucked so much, but all you got to do is look around and it's plain enough to see how these muthafuckaz are profiting off of you and me. If we go straight they picture us in white. If we be real they picture us in black. No matter what we do, they sell our picture. 

EAZY: I still ain't no ho!

 

TUPAC: No, Eazy, what you mean is you still don't want to be no whore, but as long as you selling to make a living, you tricking and whoring. Why you think we making all this money?

 

EAZY: Nigga, you talkin' some bitch shit. I'm gettin' paid cause my shit is the rage and everybody like the way Eazzzzyyyy does it.

TUPAC: Eazy, you dumb as they come, but you still my nigga. After you gone, I ain't never going to forget you.

 

EAZY: Pour a sip on the curb, shout out a good word for the gangstaz like me and you that stayed all the way true to the real of gettin' fucked, gettin' ducs, and doin' whatever the fuck we wanna do. Peace out, muthafucka. And besides who gives a fuck what happens after I'm gone?

TUPAC: Word. And Eazy, if I get to the otherside before you do, I'ma keep a warm seat at the welcome table, a cold forty in the box, and a light on the front porch so your sorry ass can find your way back home. 

EAZY: Yeah, you do that. Meanwhile, I'm outta here. 

***

So Eazy slid into a coma, and even before he eased out of here, his peeps was fighting over his shit. Who would get what? They couldn't hardly bury him straight behind all the lawsuits.

 

For a minute the magazines talked about AIDS and the radio advised safe sex when getting laid. But only for a minute and then the 24-7-365 was on again. Because in the muzak biz, the death of a star only makes more room for the wanna beez. And the hungry ones just keep on coming, keep on scheming, keep on dreaming.

The seduction of glamour and gangsterism is real. The high of being invincible, of dodging death and indulging every desire. Living large enough to make a cartoon out of life is the bomb, until it explodes.

 

Tupac was no fool. Undisciplined--maybe, self-indulgent--surely, and even ocassionally willfully crazy, but nobody's fool. He could see the moving light headed his way from the far end of the tunnel, and though, every now and then, he couldn't help thinking aloud about turning around, he just kept on trucking. He had shook hands with death before and still had all five fingers to prove he knew what he was doing. He was a fighter and a survivor and real men don't cry. So he sucked up any regrets and kept on stepping. 

Everytime the light inched closer towards him, some other kind of good shit would happen to make Tupac disregard the upcoming collision. 

God, he loved Iron Mike. The way Mike never let nothing keep him down. And Suge, that nigga is so for real. He covered Tupac's back and had a limo waiting out front when he made the bail. 

Inside of Tupac's head the party was in full effect: Did you see how Mike smoked that dude in the first round? And look whose driving me around, the president and me. Two multimillionaires... the light blinded him this time as death took a firmer grip. When four bullets said hello, there was no place for Mr. Tupac to go except to step off into the void of the great beyond. 

So when Tupac got to the other side, the first person he saw was Eazy-E and Eazy said to Tupac: "What took you so long?"

And Tupac, still a little dazed from the suddeness of the trip, haltingly replied, "I was having second thoughts about living."

 

—kalamu ya salaam

photo by Alex Lear

 

 

 

Nineteen Years, 364 Days Later...

(Dedicated to Mtume ya Salaam)

 

When he beeped me, I called him back immediately on my cell phone even though I was within blocks of returning home from overnighting one of those endless required reports (what a waste of money, there's nothing in most of my reports they don't already have, but, hey, like my man always says, they don't pay you to complain).

 

I had mastered the fine art of silence and of saying yes even when my “yes” only meant: yes I hear you and I'm just saying yes right now until I can figure out how to not do whatever it is you're demanding I do.

 

I'm a quick study, so it didn't take me long to learn that you get the best advice on how to survive from survivors: Kid, there's nothing more effective than silently doing your job. Learn to listen more than you speak, be quiet when people are talking in front of you about stuff you're not supposed to hear in the first place. Pay close attention when people are talking about you but not to you. And always resist the temptation to point fingers when someone is trying to dump their boo-boos on your back.

 

"You know, kid, they say you never see it coming and you don't. I guess they consider me a geezer who is in the way of pushing up the bottom line. They probably think I don't get it anymore..."

 

I had to admit to myself that there was something a bit unseemly about a fifty-something family man promoting adolescent singers and rappers, but, hey, his job description doesn't call for him to pick them, but simply to promote whomever the company is pushing.

 

"...And then again, maybe they have a point. We used to promote music, now we promote what they call talent. Some teenager who shaves once a week and sleeps with a different woman every night, if not every hour, or some young girl who wears designer lingerie for her public appearances and in-store autograph signings while giving interviews talking about getting respect. But you know all this."

 

He paused just as I pulled into my driveway. Like he and I joked one evening after an in-store with a female singing group whose talent quotient was strictly physical but who had a producer who knew how to cover up their thin vocals with phat beats: what this company is really looking for is a way to make records without having to bother with musicians at all.

 

"Man, I just wanted to make twenty."

 

He wasn't whining, he was just talking out loud, trying to clear his head, which had to be screwed up at the moment. He's 54. Been with the company since '77. He's seen a lot of money change hands under the table, a lot of overnight reversals in taste, and bunches of head honchos, HNICs, and industry hit men come and go. He's also seen how unpredictable popularity is. He says they used to laugh at that girly-voiced, skinny kid who wore leopard-skin bikini briefs as a fashion statement. Who would have thought he would go platinum and end up taking a name no one, himself included, could pronounce? In a similar vein, my man remembers Luther believing that he would never make it as a lead singer because he was shy, fat and gay--of course, he never called Luther gay. Being a pro, one doesn't say gay in public, cause outing people is not kosher, even when being gay is obvious. But, anyway, back when Vandross was first making his move from singing jingles, doing beaucoup backups for superstars who could barely carry three notes in a row without veering off key, and was occasionally getting to do leads with a no name, one hit group, Luther's physical attributes were not exactly the right combination for an aspiring R&B male icon slash sex symbol. But, just goes to show you, in this business, what counts is what sells. Period. And nobody really knows what will sell before it sells, which is why the company releases so many new acts who blithely cross from crass copycats to bizarre copycats in an attempt to make it by being different--now I sound like I'm whining.

 

At first I thought the industry was anti-music and make-a-buck- anyway-you-can oriented because 45-year-old, white, all-American business types were in charge, but since being here I've seen what happens when we get in. I can now definitively declare without fear of contradiction: when it comes to running the music industry, Negroes are just as fucked up as white folks and maybe even a little worse. The new black music division boss is an under thirty, gold earringed, dreadlocked, Howard grad who is well connected. He talks the talk, wears the gear, and has a string of hit records happening.  He could do whatever he wants to do, so what does he do? He hires Nintendo-playing underlings who order employees old enough to be their fathers to get some girls for the night--"not no whores like last time, some nice girls."

 

I guess that's the difference between working in promotions and working in sales. In promotions you have to be a pimp and a babysitter. I'm lucky, I'm in sales, so I get to be a shyster and a liar: "How does it sound? Oh, it'll definitely go platinum inside a month. You better order at least fifty, seventy-five to be on the safe side." I guess it wouldn't surprise anyone to know that a couple of weeks ago I put in my application at the post office. Needless to say, however, you never reveal a job jump until both feet are firmly on the ground somewhere else.

 

"I guess I'm going to get me a good lawyer."

 

He pauses, I’m using my hunched-up shoulder and my head tilted sideways to vice the small phone to my left ear. I don't say anything.

 

"With any luck, maybe I'll be able to swing a deal. I talked with the attorney who got a lifetime salary payment as a settlement for his client in that age discrimination suit the company settled out of court. Remember I told you about that? He says I've got a good case, especially since I kept records of everything. I've got every piece of paper anybody ever sent me and every response I made."

 

While I'm listening, I'm looking at all the junk on my home office desk. I used to be inclined to deep six most of this shit but my mentor has taught me the prudence of a four drawer file cabinet. I've got a good forty minutes of paper shuffling ahead of me.

 

"Man, it's incredible. The deal was so foul that the secretary, who gave me the papers and stuff, she was crying. She advised me to see a lawyer before I signed anything. I should of known it. Like I told you, I was expecting it, but then when I didn't have but five days left before I made twenty years..."

 

He exhaled loudly and I could hear the frustration leaking out of him. Out the clear blue, I suddenly remembered how a guy who had made promotions man of the year was terminated less than two years later and then brought back when a couple of major radio stations absolutely refused to play the label's product unless he was rehired. The company called him and said there had been a mistake. I heard that the only thing the guy said when he got the phone call was: oh, you mean you meant to offer me a raise rather than an involuntary retirement? And the caller says, yeah, that's exactly right. So, maybe the fat lady has a couple of more songs to sing before she's through. However, I don't hear any hope in his voice as he continues in a slightly bitter but resigned tone.

 

"I mean after Monday and Tuesday passed, and I only had to go to Friday to make twenty, I let down my guard and started thinking I had it made, you know. And then Wednesday they send me a ticket to jet to headquarters for a meeting on Thursday. I'm figuring it's a new act they want us to push or something. I mean who flies somebody cross country to New York to let them go?"

 

I couldn't say anything. The answer was obvious. Then he told me the guy never looked him in the eye the whole time. Some 26 year-old executive, sits a man down and tells an experienced worker who has been through countless ups and downs with the company that there has been some structural adjustments and that there's no job left for him. And that it just wasn't working out. It! What the hell is “IT”? Nineteen years, 364 days later and you're let go because “it” is not working out?

 

What would you do if “it” happened to you?

 

—kalamu ya salaam

photo by Alex Lear

 

 

 

 

 

WHO TRAVELS WITH THE NIGHT

 

Who travels with the night? We all do. Deep within ourselves we carry distrust and doubts, and these negativities fuse into our molecular specifics, a merger that not only permanently mottles the walls of our memory but also causes questions to be randomly released by totally unrelated happenings: for instance, the hue associated with two or three of us stealthily gathering dark brown pecans out of the tall, uncut grass; stuffing the oval-shaped, sharply-pointed spheroids into our jacket pockets; and then hopping the fence and laughing together while cracking the hard shells with a small hammer and eagerly eating those crunchy but soft seeds we had flinched from our neighbor’s back yard; that and meeting a date at Loretta’s Praline shop on Frenchmen Street on some soft autumn evening a half hour or so before sunset. Some how the colors of those two different experiences connect together and make me think of the shape and shade of my mother’s eyes, the same eyes that looked at my brother with such tenderness the time he was sick, and had a rough time of it, coughing, repeatedly, seemingly unendingly, coughing hard coughs, hacking up a slimy greenish-gray stuff which she, our mother, patiently wiped away with a hand-cloth while pressing a cool, moist towel to his forehead, leaning over him like a protective willow tree on a hot day. I’ve never forgotten the way she looked directly at me when I asked if he was going to be alright, and the motion her eyes made as she lowered them back to his, and gently touching his cheek she simply said, yes, god willing, and both at that moment and always since that moment I questioned why would god not be willing to let my brother live.

—kalamu ya salaam

photo by Alex Lear

 

 

 

 

Emilio Santiago

 

I woke up, slowly, or I thought I woke up. Maybe I was still dreaming. Next thing I knew I had quit my job at the factory, and at the office, and on the assembly line and I was sitting on the warm ground with my father fishing in City Park. We both had on freshly washed jeans and old shirts. His had a torn pocket and a hole in the left sleeve, mine had chocolate milk stains on it from that morning when I went to drink the milk and missed my mouth.

 

My dad was showing me things he never showed me when he was alive, or maybe it was things he showed me but things somehow I was unable to see then even though he tried to show me. I smile as I see myself learning stuff from my dad. I was 13 and I was learning how to smile like a man.

 

When the sun started going down we walked home. He walked slowly enough that I could keep up without rushing. I was holding the poles and the empty bucket, we had released all the fish we caught. Daddy had said there was no need to take what we didn't need, we had food at home. I asked him why had we come fishing then, and he put his arm around my shoulder, loosely around my shoulders, and kissed me on the nose.

 

Fully awake now, I look over at you. You are still sleeping. The windows in our room are shaded but the morning light is spread around the edges like the crust on bread. You make a very light whistling sound as you inhale while sleeping. I don't want to turn the TV on. I don't want to see anymore hostages. If I turn the tv on I will become a hostage too. What does your mother think of me now? I am in the middle of my life and there are no bells on my shoulders, no post graduate degrees on my wall.

 

I can hear the traffic in the street outside. Where do people think they are going? I wish everyday I could go somewhere I've never been before, touch the doors of houses I've never entered, walk in the wash of seas that have never wet me. I start to wake you and ask you the last time we walked along in the park wandering hand in hand through the flock of ducks or when was it I most recently kissed you in public. Over all I'm pretty satisfied with our furniture, it's just the nagging thought that we didn't really need a leather sofa and glass topped coffee table to be happy, but it's just a thought.

 

I see the shape of you beneath the thin sheet pulled up almost to your shoulders. The radio has come on automatically, and as the jazz filters into the room and into my consciousness I realize it's on WWOZ and someone is on the radio saying that this is a gorgeous Monday, that Mondays are the best days of the week. I look at him queerly. The music is nice.

 

Suddenly there is this sound, this song that doesn't quite sound like the average song, it sounds so, so, so I don't know, so lonely, no not lonely, so incomplete, unfinished. It sounds like he is in my head, or I mean that music is music that is inside me, and somehow he saw it. Did my father tell him to play this music? And then the track is over. I listen for who the artist is and the DJ calls my name, but I never made any music. I never made the music I wanted to, maybe he is trying to tell me something.

 

The next song that plays is a ballad in some language I don't recognize but I clearly see myself singing this foreign song on a red tiled patio early in the morning with five freshly cut yellow roses in my hand.

 

I stand up to listen to the music better. Both my hands are on top of my head with my fingers interlaced. I am nude. You wake up. I can feel you watching me. My eyes are closed.

 

When the song ends you ask me what am I thinking. I tell you I don't know and you kiss my hand, the hand with which I reached down to touch your thick dark brown hair.

 

Is this still a dream? No, my fingers are wet where you kissed me. The music is filling our bedroom. Maybe I am supposed to be an artist. Finally I tell you as much of the truth as I am able to understand at this moment, "I was just listening to that music and it made me think about a lot of things I've always wanted to do...."

 

—kalamu ya salaam

photo by Alex Lear

 

 

 

Just Like A Woman

 

         You know I ain’t scared of nothing. Not nothing. Mainly cause I been tried, tested and found true. I been stabbed. I been shot. I ain’t never been poisoned but I done slept in the same cell with the most vicious bunch of cut throats in the world, thanks to old cigar smoking Judge Shea who sentenced me to a double dime on accessory to armed robbery. I wasn’t armed but I was there when we stuck that store up when Peety popped the dude upside the head with the gun, I just stepped politely over the blood and tears flowing on the floor, and went on about my business of rahzooing the cash register. We had sense enough to shoot out the video camera eye, but not sense enough to take the video tape before we left. Aw well, you know, you live and learn. Time ain’t nothing but a classroom, and either you learn and move on, or you stay stupid and just keep doing time. I did a dime and loose change behind some stupid shit.

         You know the joint is good for getting your head together. It didn’t take me long to realize that sticking up poor people was both stupid and evil. First they ain’t got nothing much and second why take anything from somebody who ain’t got next to nothing? You hear what I’m saying? I view the joint just like grade school, you do that shit once and you ain’t never supposed to return. Me, myself, I ain’t never going back to the joint, twelve years is a motherfucking-Ph.-motherfucking-D. Besides them young thugs what’s showing up now in the slams is straight out ignorant ass fools, you know what I mean?

         As I look round this funny ass hole in the wall, it seems to me that everybody in this motherfucker done been up on the yard except for that pretty boy sitting over there checking out every hard leg what walk up in here, I guess he know how long he would last in the joint, and then again, some of them living better in prison than they ever could live out here in the world cause there ain’t no big time faking and fronting up in the joint. Damn near everybody is ether sticking and getting sucked or else sucking and getting stuck, so you know, you kind of get used to men being women. Dudes like pretty boy is a prize that brothers fight and die over everyday. Lil dude like him get a big time murderer to be his old man, ya know, a cat who got more time than Methusaleem, or whatever that old dude in the bible was called, anyway, they get sponsored by one of them kind of dudes who ain’t gon never see the sun shine again.

         Being in the joint is just like anything else after you get used to it, it becomes your life. The joint be your life just like being in the world is somebody else’s life. You do what you got to do to live. And you do whatever you can do to enjoy your life, you know what I’m saying? At first it be different, but after you spend a bunch of years doing it with dudes, you get used to it. Some people don’t, but most people do. It ain’t no big thing, not like it seem…

         Well ain’t this a bitch, here come Popeye Henry. How in the fuck did he get out? And who that woman he got with him? She look too fine to be Popeye’s squeeze. She must be a whore and he must be buying his first piece since getting out. The motherfucker acting like he don’t know nobody, strutting around with that real pussy by his side.

         “You want another beer?”

         “Yeah, give me another one.”

         “We don’t give nobody shit around here. You can buy another one.”

         “I got money, motherfucker…”

         “Man, have some respect for your mama. Call me Mr. Motherfucker.”

         Me and Euclid the bartender been going at it for over two hours now. Euclid’s a funny ass motherfucker. He claim he got his name cause he was conceived in the back seat of a Ford when his mama was in high school and she opened up a book that was on the floor and picked the first name she saw. Ain’t that some shit?

         You don’t talk much, do you? You ain’t said a word since we been sitting here.

         Aw shit, now look at this. Look like Popeye and that broad got some kind of major static happening.

         “…I can say whatever I want to say.”

         “See how much you can say with a fist all up in your big ass mouth.”

         Oh Popeye, that ain’t no way to treat a lady. Boy, you know I taught you better than that. “Henry, my man, why don’t you cool it.” She must not be no whore he just met, cause I don’t believe he giving her enough money to take a ass whipping like that.

         “Who that dipping they lip in my business?”

         Look at him fronting. He ain’t even so much as looked over here to see who it is sounding on him. Reaching his hand up in his coat like he packing and I’m supposed to be scared or something.

         “It don’t matter who it is, right is right, and right ain’t never wronged nobody. Just cause you got a beef with your lady, you ain’t got to go upside her head.”

         “Fuck all that shit. A man take care a business wherever the business is.”

         Now where this motherfucker get off challenging somebody’s manhood. See, before I went to the joint I would have been all over that nigga talking that murder mouth shit. But like I told you, I don’t plan on going back, and seeing as how I’m still on parole, I don’t need to be getting into no fight behind somebody else funny business. Except, you know, I know this nigga. We did time together up on the yard. I know him in ways he don’t want nobody to know. Maybe he didn’t recognize my voice.

         Now look at this shit. He hitting her again just to show me he can hit on a woman. Hey, man watch my back. I don’t want no heat slipping up on me while I’m dealing with this roach-ass nigga.

         “Miss, you ok?”

         “Steve, this ain’t your business man.”

         So, you did recognize me. You just fronting but I got something for your fronting ass.

         I look at the woman, and she don’t say nothing. “I said, are you ok, lady.”

         “Hey man…”

         “I’m talking to the lady, Henry. Not to you.”

         “Yeah, but that lady is with me.”

         “Meaning?”

         “Meaning, this ain’t none of your business.”

         “I’m alright,” she finally says cutting the silence of me and Popeye squaring off like some typical Saturday-night, two-dudes-fighting-over-a-bitch shit.

         I can hear the place get quiet. There’s always this silence before some shit jump off, sometimes the silence is less than a second, sometimes it be a minute or two, but there’s always this point where it could go any which way, and it’s like everybody be holding their breadth. And waiting. The dangerous quiet. That’s when you got to act fast.

         Popeye slips his hand back in his pocket. Knowing this nigga, I’m sure he got a shank, might even be packing a piece. I turn my attention away from him, hoping to cool the scene out, “What’s your name, baby?”

         She looks at Popeye when I ask her that. “I’m Marlene.”

         Popeeye glares at her. “What difference it make to you what her name is?”

         Look at this motherfucker fronting. “My name is Steve. Me and Henry go back a long ways. We did time together. Did you tell her about me, Popeye?”

         “She know I did time. I’m just saying that was then, this here shit is now. And I don’t appreciate…” I watch him make exaggerated hand motions in his pocket. “…you butting into my business.”

         “When you got out?”

         He don’t answer me. After we exchange snake eyes for a minute or two, I let it drop and head back to my seat. From over my shoulder I hear the ruckus. “What the fuck you looking at him for, bitch?” And I hear him slap her again. I know Popeye is just acting out on account of he just got out the joint, and he sitting up in here with a bunch of motherfuckers who been up in the joint, so he trying to prove that he’s a man and not a turned out, jailhouse bitch, but he ain’t got to be beating all over that broad to prove he a man. I can’t stand to see no shit like this go down, so I got to do what I got to do.

         “Popeye,” I say to him as I turn around and walk up in his face. “When you was my woman in the joint, did I treat you this way?”

         Henry don’t say shit. He kind of shrink back into himself a little, take his empty hand out his pocket, don’t say shit, and just walk away straight out the door. Marlene looks confused as a motherfucker.

         But, see Popeye should have been cool from the jump and I wouldn’t have had to call him out on that mishandling a woman shit. It reflects bad on me for him to act like a thug. Right is right and wrong ain’t nothing nice. And, like I said, ain’t nothing wrong in doing right cause right ain’t never wronged nobody. You know what I mean?

         “Hey, Euclid, sell me another beer, mister motherfucker.”

 

—kalamu ya salaam