bb explains why… (a haiku for mr. king) we’d be so damn mean if me and lucille couldn’t sing these sad ass songs —kalamu ya salaam
haiku #58 black people believe in god, & i believe in black people, amen haiku #93 may the life i lead help others live, may my work help beauty be born haiku #96 our bodies teach us take nourishment from the good & shit out the rest haiku #100 what we know limits us, wisdom loves everything not yet understood —kalamu ya salaam
NINE NEW ORLEANS HAIKU French Quarter Intimacies through weathered wood dark on shadowed streets ancient voices whisper history * * * New Orleans Rainbow from buttered gold to purpled black, the sundry shades of my people shine * * * Our Natures Rise hard core nights are so erotic, a whiff of the breeze is narcotic * * * Sunrise On The River shy dawn tenderly gold tongue kisses the rippling river's flowing face * * * Quarter Moon Rise soft moon shimmers out of cloudy dress, stirred by night's suggestive caress * * * All Nite Long amid dancing & drinking til dewed dawn, nights stretch 24 hours long * * * The Spice Of Life cayenne in our blood we dance, eat, laugh, cry & love with peppered passion * * * St. Louis Cemetery Crypt bones float in raised stone, white, altared graves, blood transformed, become black souled thrones * * * Makes You Go Oohhh! sing of lusty foods so savory they buck jump cross your tongue's dance floor —kalamu ya salaam
haiku #112 emerging from jail their dragon, our butterfly his smile is so huge —kalamu ya salaam
WORTH MORE THAN A DOLLAR Otis Johnson was sweating. The concrete was griddle hot. Otis' scuffed, black leather shoes were clean although unshined. The plastic, hot sausage bucket he used as a kitty had twelve coins in it: three quarters, five nickels, two dimes and two pennies. He'd been hoofing on the sidewalk a long time, too long for just a dollar and twenty-two cents, thirty cents of which he had used as startup money in the kitty. He stopped dancing. None of the passing tourists seemed to notice the sad stillness of Otis. People flowed around him without breaking stride and without even the slightest modulation or hesitation in their conversation. Otis could have been litter on the banquette: a candy wrapper, an empty plastic beer go-cup, anything someone no longer wanted; that's how he felt as people stepped around him. For a moment Otis had been so absorbed in his inner turmoil that all he heard was the replay of Hickey's effective pitch from when they had danced as a team. "Thank ya, thank ya, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls. You are enjoying the best tap trio in the world. Him is June-boy, I'm Hickey and that's Otis. We can out dance anybody on this here street. We is called the New Orleans Flying Feet. For our next number we gon show you how good we is and we would appreciate it if you would let us know how much you like what you see. When we finish our show, just drop in a few coins before you go. All we ask, as we dance so pretty, is that you reach into yo pockets and (all three of them would join in together, execute a spin and end with their arms outstretched and their fingers pointing to the bucket Otis' mama had given them) FEED THE KITTY!" Then they would go into another routine Otis had choreographed for them. It was full of hesitations, hops, spins, shuffles and jumps. Since June-boy was fastest he always went in the middle. Otis went first, he'd get the people clapping. Then June-boy would have them goin' "oooohhhhh" and "aaaahhhhhh." Then Hickey would step in with his feet beating like drums. Nobody on the street could tap out rhythms as powerfully as could Hickey, whose short, stocky frame was surprisingly agile. When they stopped, everybody would be clapping and then would come the show-stopper. Otis' cousin Marsha had told him: always save your best stuff for last. Otis thought what would be best was a dance that didn't use no singing or hand-clapping, only the music they had inside themselves. So Otis had worked up a secondline routine that the "Flying Feet" executed flawlessly. They would start off dancing as a team, every move the same, right down to their finger movements, bugging the eyes and sticking out their tongues, shaking their heads and going "aaaAAAHHHHH." Then they would go into the solo part. Two of them would break and stand back to back, except they stood about two feet away from each other and leaned back so that it was really shoulder to shoulder, and they would have their arms folded across their chests. They would be looking up like they was searching for airplanes, and of course they would be smiling. The third person would be doing a solo, any solo he wanted to do, except that it had to be short. Then after all three had done their solo, they would link arms and high kick, end with some spins and jump up clapping. Then Otis would dance with his mother's umbrella that June-boy had artistically decorated in the same way he had painted the kitty-bucket. June-boy would go through the audience with the kitty bucket silently soliciting gratuities. And, of course, Hickey worked the audience asking them to give what they could to "keep the Flying Feet flying." Afterwards, they would divide up the money and they would sit in the shade to rest. Hickey always said, "divide the money up on the spot and ain't nobody got nothing to say about how much they got." Usually they did pretty good. Ten or fifteen dollars a piece, twenty on a really good day. Once they had made twenty-seven dollars a piece with eighty some cents left over which Otis gave to June-boy and Hickey since June-boy, who was good with numbers, kept excellent count of their profits and Hickey did all the talkin' that encouraged the people to give. *** They had worked that way for six Saturdays and, even though it was hard work dancing for five or more hours, they had made good money. Then Hickey's old man left his mama, and his mama decided to move to Houston by her cousin. Otis knew how badly Hickey must have felt. Otis had never known his father. His mama said that the man who was his lil' sister Shaleeta's father and who came around all the time, frequently staying the night, wasn't Otis' father. Anyway, without Hickey it just wasn't the same. June-boy couldn't talk hardly at all and Otis couldn't talk like Hickey, so the money fell off drastically. Nobody could hustle the crowd like Hickey. "Don't be fraid to give a dollar, don't be shame to give a dime. If you can't give nuthin' but a smile and say thanks, we 'preciate that too, cause we out here dancin' just for you. Now if you could spare a quarter that sho would be right swell, and if you could give a bill instead of silver that would really ring the bell. But whatever you give we appreciate it each and all, all we ask is that you FEED THE KITTY YALL." When Hickey did it, it didn't sound like begging. It made people laugh and they would give. And of course it also helped a lot the way June-boy, who was real small and reed thin with big eyes and a bigger smile, carried the kitty bucket around staring up into the faces of strangers, silently pleading for their financial support. So when June-boy got sick and Otis tried going out on his own, he would be lucky to make four or five dollars a Saturday. Dancing on the street used to be fun when all three of them were together, but now it was neither fun nor profitable. In the middle of his dance, Otis abruptly stopped, turned away from the street, stood stone still for two whole minutes, and then brusquely snatched up the kitty bucket with the $1.22 in it and started walking away. He didn't know why, but today when he was dancing for tips he felt like he was doing something he shouldn't be doing. In fact he felt almost as bad as "that dollar day" which is how Otis always referred to the incident. *** "Look at them lil' niggers. They sho can dance." The man laughed as he jovially poked an elbow into the arm of the guy standing next to him. It was a raspy, albeit almost silent, mouth wide open laugh of amusement. June-boy had heard what the man said and was sheepishly walking away from him. With a familial pat on the shoulder, the laughing man stopped June-boy. In one fluid motion, the man went into his pocket and pulled out a small wad of bills held together by a gold money clip which had "R.E.T." floridly engraved on its face. Rhett, as he was affectionately known by both friend and foe, peeled off a dollar bill and dropped it in the bucket, "here you go, young fella. Yall dance real good." June-boy looked at Rhett's mouth. Rhett was smiling. It looked like a smirk to June-boy. June-boy looked away, first at the dollar in the bucket, then at the other people standing around. Otis reached into the bucket, pulled out the dollar, crumpled it in his small fist, and threw it at Rhett. The money hit Rhett in the waist and fell at his feet. "We can dance but we ain't no niggers." Rhett was stunned. He looked at the man he had hunched moments ago. "I didn't mean nothing by it. They kind of touchy these days, ain't they? Even the little ones." Rhett kicked the knotted dollar toward the boys and walked off chuckling. The small crowd that had been watching dispersed quickly and quietly. One guy dropped three quarters in the bucket and said, "Wish yall luck. Don't judge us all by the way some old redneck acts." Hickey was livid. At first he had looked around for something to throw at the guy: a brick, a can, a bottle, a stick, anything. The only possible missile within reach was the dollar bill. After the first flush of anger, Hickey turned from staring at the stranger's back, and refocused his attention on the money lying on the sidewalk. As Hickey moved toward the dollar, Otis stamped his foot atop it. "Naw, we don't need no redneck money. I ain't gon let nobody buy me like that." Otis snatched up the dollar, walked over to a nearby trash can and threw it in. "Come on yall, let's go." And they started walking home, heading out Rue Orleans. Otis was so angry, he simply half-heartedly waved and didn't even verbally respond when his friend Clarence, who was standing by the hotel door, said to him, "what's up, lil man?" As the frustrated trio exited the French Quarter, crossing Rampart Street and taking the shortcut through Louis Armstrong Park, they argued about the money. Hickey was still angry. "Boy, I wish I'da had me a brick. I woulda bust that sucker all up in the back a his head. I woulda kicked his ass good for true and it wasn't gon be nuthin' nice!" June-boy responded, "yeah and then what? The police woulda put us in jail for fuckin' with a tourist." June-boy walked over to one of the benches in the Congo Square area and sat counting their take for the day. "They'd had to catch me first." Otis ignored Hickey's verbal bravado. Silence reigned as June-boy finished the count. "How much we got?" Hickey demanded, obviously still agitated. "Twenty-six dollars and fifty cents. That's eight dollars and some change each." "Yeah, and if Otis wouldn't 've been so stupid and throwed that dollar away. We could of had nine dollars a piece." Otis spoke up, "you was mad enough to kick him but not mad enough not to let him kick you by putting a dollar in the kitty while he calling you out your name." Hickey quickly retorted, "way I see it, Otis, we had earned that dollar, and we shoulda kept it." June-boy divided up the money and gave each one his share. They rose from the bench and continued walking toward the projects. Nobody said anything for half a block. Finally June-boy broke the silence, "aw shit, it's over nah, let's forget about it." Otis tried not to say anything more, but the words were burning his throat. "Money don't make it right." Neither Hickey nor June-boy said a word. When Otis got home, the pain his mother saw carved into her son's furrowed brow was not on account of what the White man had said but on account of how June-boy and Hickey had reacted. Otis told his mother what the White man had said but didn't tell her that Hickey and June-boy wanted to take the money. "Otis, you hear me. I don't want you going back out there. We don't need the money bad enough to have people mistreating you while you trying to earn honest money." Otis knew that it was his mother's pride speaking, but he couldn't wear pride. They couldn't eat no pride. He had bought the taps for his shoes. He had bought the jeans and some of his T-shirts. He paid his own way to the show. He even helped buy pampers and things for Shaleeta. That little money he brought home was plenty. "Mama, I can take care of myself. I'm allright. I got sense enough to stay out of trouble and sense enough not to let nobody misuse me." Shirley Johnson looked at her son and smiled at how grown up he was acting. Just then Shaleeta had started crying. "I'll get her, mama," said Otis, glad for the opportunity to end the conversation before it got around to his mama asking what did June-boy and Hickey have to say behind what went down. Otis picked up Shaleeta, held her in his arms and began dancing to the music coming from the radio which was always on either B-97 if Otis was listening, or on WWOZ, the jazz and heritage station, if Shirley was listening. OZ was playing ReBirth Brass Band doing a secondline number. *** As the crowd flowed around him, Otis started feeling sick. He left the corner they had held down for over two months now. After walking two blocks in ruminative silence, he passed Lil Fred and Juggy dancing on their corner. Otis waved at them. He knew they wouldn't wave back because there were five White people standing around them. Suddenly it dawned on Otis what had so upset him about the dollar day. Otis stopped. He looked back at Lil Fred and Juggy. They were Black. He looked at the people they were hustling for money. They were White. In his mind Otis surveyed the streets as far back as he could remember. The results stung his pride. He had never seen any White kids dancing on the street for money and he had never been given money by any Black tourists, indeed most of the Black tourists would walk by quickly without even looking at the youngsters mugging, clowning, and cutting the fool on the sidewalk. Only Black boys dancing. Only White people paying money. Otis looked at Lil Fred and Juggy grinning at the White people as the dancing duo held out their baseball hats seeking tips. Otis shook his head, is that how he looked when he danced? While turning away from the image of his friends hustling on the sidewalk, Otis spied his own face reflected in the sheen of the brass hotel door held open by Clarence the doorman. A well dressed couple walked pass Otis and Clarence into the hotel. Otis was eleven years old and dressed in worn jeans and a Bourbon Street T-shirt. Clarence was forty-two years old and dressed in a white uniform which incongruously included sharply pressed short pants with a black stripe running down the side. "What's happenin' lil man?" Clarence genially greeted Otis. Otis was frightened by what he saw. He saw his young face in the door and he saw Clarence's old face beside the door. Was this his future? They had always told themselves they were hustling the White people. But that dollar day had started him thinking. Fred and Juggy across the street, clowning for tips had brought the thought to the surface of Otis' consciousness. And Clarence patiently opening doors, bowing, and servilely smiling a "welcome" made it clear as clear could be. Clear as that stinging, unforgettable southern drawl that constantly replayed in Otis' head: "Look at them lil' niggers. They sho can dance." Otis walked resolutely out of the French Quarter, vowing never to work there again. —kalamu ya salaam
Could You Wear My Eyes?
At first Reggie wearing my eyes after I expired was beautiful; a sensitive romantic gesture and an exhilarating experience. For him there was the awe of seeing the familiar world turned new when viewed through my gaze, and through observing him I vicariously experienced the rich sweetness of visualizing and savoring the significance of the recent past.
I'm a newcomer to the spirit world, so occasionally I miss the experience of earth feelings, the sensations that came through my body when I had a body. I can't describe the all encompassing intricate interweave of spirit reality -- "reality" is such a funny word to use in talking about what many people believe is so unreal. I can't really convey to you the richness of the spirit world nor what missing human feelings is like. I'm told eventually we permanently forget earth ways, sort of like when we were born and forgot all those pre-birth months we spent gestating in our mother's womb, in fact, most of us even forget what it feels like to be a baby. Well the spirit world is something like always being a baby, constant wonder and exploration.
Reggie must have had an inkling of the immensity of the fourth dimension --which is as good a name as any for the spirit world--or maybe Reggie guessed that there was a meta-reality, or intuited that there was more to eyes than simply seeing in the physical sense. But then again, he probably didn't intuit that this realm exists because, like most men, centering on his intuition was difficult for Reggie, as difficult as lighting a match in a storm or imagining being a woman. In fact, his inability to adapt to and cope with woman-sight is why he's blind now.
I was in his head and I don't mean his memories. I mean literally checking his thoughts, each one existing with the briefness of a mayfly as Reg weighed the rationality of switching eyes. This was immediately following those four and a half anesthetized days I hung-on while in the hospital after getting blindsided by a drunk driver a few blocks beyond Chinese Kitchen where I had stopped to get some of their sweet and sour shrimp for our dinner. Through the whole ordeal Reggie never wavered. Two days after my death and one day before the operation, Reginald woke up that Monday morning confident as a tree planted by the water. Reggie felt that if he took on my eyes then he would be able to have at least a part of me back in his life.
He assumed that with my eyes he maybe could stop seeing me when he brushed, combed and plaited Aiesha's thick hair or sat for over an hour daydreaming at her bedside while she slept, looking at our daughter but thinking of me; or maybe once my chestnut colored pupils were in his head then my demise wouldn't upset him so much he'd have to bow his head like he was reverently praying when a woman jumps up in church to testify--like sister Carol had done the day before--and has on a dress the same color as the one I often wore.
Reginald was so eager to make good as a husband and father, to redeem whatever he thought was lost because of the way he came up. I am convinced he didn't really know me. He had this image, this ideal and he wanted that in the worse way. Wanted a family, a home. And I was the first woman he ever loved and who ever loved him. All the rest had been girls still discovering themselves. We married. I had his child. And for him everything was just the way it was supposed to be. For me, well, let us just say, some of us want more out of life without ever really identifying what that more is and certainly without ever attaining that more. So, in a sense, I settled -- that's the woman Reginald married. And in another sense, there was a part of me that remained restless. I hid that part from Reginald. But I always knew. I always, always knew me and yes, that was what really disoriented Reginald. He loved me and I could live with his love, but until he wore my eyes he never got a glimpse of the other me.
I used to think there was something wrong with me. I should have been totally happy. Of course, I loved our daughter. I loved my husband. I could live with the life we had, but... But this is not about me. This is about the man whom I married. I married Reginald more because he loved me so much than because I loved him back like that--I mean I loved him and all but I would never have put his eyes into my head if he had been killed and I had been the one still alive.
After we went through all the organ donation legal rigmarole, we actually celebrated with a late night seafood dinner; that was about eight and a half months before Aiesha was born. Just like getting married, the celebration was his idea, an idea I went along with because I had no good reason not to even though I had a vague distaste, a sort of uneasiness about the seriousness that Reginald invested into his blind alliegance to me. You know the discomfort you experience when you have two or three forkfulls left on your plate and you don't feel like eating anymore, but you have always been taught not to waste food so you eat that little bit more. Eating a few more mosels is no big thing but nonetheless forcing yourself leaves you feeling uneasy the rest of the evening. I can see how I was, how I hid some major parts of myself from Reginald and how difficult I must have been to live with precisely because he didn't really know the whole person he was living with, and he would be so sincerely worshiping the part of me that he envisioned as his wife, while inside I cringed and he never knew that despite my smiles how sad I sometimes felt because I knew he didn't know and I knew I was concealing myself from him. Besides, what right did I have not to eat two little pieces of chicken or not to go celebrate my husband's decision to dedicate his life to me?
In hindsight I came to realize I shouldn't have let him give me things I didn't want. Reginald would have died if he had known that having or not having a baby didn't really make that much difference to me. He wanted... You know, this is really not about me. When we went to celebrate our signing of the donation papers, I didn't know then that I was pregnant but even if I had, we wouldn't have done anything differently; stubborn Reginald had his mind made up and, at the time, I allowed myself to be mesmerized by the sincerity and dedication of Reg's declaration--my husband's pledge to wear my eyes was unmatched by anything I had previously imagined or heard of. When somebody loves you like that you're supposed to be happy and if you aren't well then you just smile and, well, I think when he saw the world through my eyes he saw both me and the world in ways he never imagined.
The doctors told Reginald there usually weren't any negative side effects, although in a rare case or two there were some unexplained hallucinations but, even for those patients, counseling smoothed out the transition. The first week after the operation went ok and then the intermittent double visions started. For Reggie it was like he had second sight. He saw what was there but then he also saw something else.
Sometimes he would go places he never knew I went and get a disorienting image flash from a source about which he previously would never have given a second thought, like the svelte look of a waiter at a cafe, a guy whose sleek build I really admired. Reginald never envisioned me desiring some other man. I don't know why, but he just never thought of me fantasizing sex with someone else and now suddenly Reginald looks up from a menu and finds himself staring at a man's behind. Needless to say, such sightings were disconcerting. Or like how the night I got drunk on Tequila would flash back every time I saw limes. Reginald is in a supermarket buying apples and imagines himself retching, well, he thinks he's imagining dry heaves but he's really seeing the association of being drunk with those tart green, lemon-shaped fruit. And on and on, til Reggie's afraid to go anywhere new, afraid he'll run into another man I had made love to that he never knew about, like this person he saw in a bookstore one day, a bookstore Reginald never went in but which I used to frequent. That's how I had met Rahsaan. Reggie just happened to be passing the place, looked inside the big picture window and immediately peeped Rahsaan. When he looked into the handsome obsidian of Rahsaan's face with it's angular lines that resembled an elegant African mask, Reginald got the shock of his naive life. He didn't sleep for two whole days after that one.
And when he closes our eyes to sleep, it's worse. A man should never know a woman's secret life; men can not stand so much reality. Their fragile ego's can't cope. It's like they say in Zimbabwe: men are children and women are mothers. Being a child is about innocence, about not knowing the realities that adults deal with every day. Men just don't know the world of women. So after Reginald adopted my eyes, you can just imagine how often he found himself laying awake at night, staring into the dark trying to make sense out of the complex of images he was occasionally seeing: awakened by the terror of a particularly vivid dream in which he saw how he had treated me, sometimes abusing me when he actually thought he was loving me--like when we would make mad love and he wanted me to suck him, he would never say anything, just shove my head down to his genitals. Sex didn't feel so exquisitely good to him to see his dick up close, the curl of his pubic hair.
Although the major episodes kept him awake and eventually drove him down to the riverside, it was the unrelenting grind of daily life's thousands of tiny tortures that propelled poor Reg over the edge. Looked like every time he turned around in public he felt unsafe, felt vulnerable to assault from men he previously would never have bothered to notice. Seemed like my eyeball radar spotted potential invaders everywhere Reg looked: how to dodge that one, don't get on an elevator with this one, make sure there's always another person nearby when you're in a room with so-and-so. And even though as a man Reg was immune to much of the usual harassment, it became a real drag having to expend a ton of precautionary emotional energy in the course of taking a casual stroll down the block to buy some potato chips. The strain of always being on guard was too much for Reg; he became outraged: nobody should have to live like this is the conclusion he came to.
He never knew when the second sight would kick in and the visioning never lasted too long but the incidents were always so viscerally jolting that they emotionally disoriented him. In less than two weeks it had reached the point that just looking at make-up made Reg sick. He unconsciously reacted to seeing some shades of lipstick by wetting his lips with his tongue, like there was something inappropriate about him having unpainted lips--a vague but powerful feeling that he was wrong for being like he was started to consume him. And he couldn't bear to watch cable anymore.
The morning Reginald blinded himself, he stood on the levee staring into the sun without squinting. Silent tears poured profusely down his cheeks. He kept saying he had always thought our life together was beautiful, and he never knew I had suffered so. And then he threw a twelve ounce glass, three-quarters full of battery acid onto his face, directly into our unblinking eyes. A jogger that morning found Reginald on his knees, shrieking. The runner ran to a house and begged the people who lived there to call an ambulance for a Black guy folded over on the levee screaming about he didn't want to see anymore, couldn't stand to see anything else.
—kalamu ya salaam
Ways of Laughing I look at the young women in our class—Inola, my mother is there in some of their eyes when they share with each other whatever little they have: four pieces of candy, two, or even three, are given away. On the lower back of one is a tattoo, an adornment to beautify what is already brown and beautiful, all of them wear colors like the sky after a spring rain, moisture sparkling in the atmosphere colored the most promising of colors, their sharp voices are some times sweet, some times bitter taking on the taste of their life experiences, their eyes are so old to be housed in such youthful faces, despite disasters they are still full of hope and the romanticism of youth thinking that life is not uncaring, is not totally unfair, will give them a chance to be something other than disappointed like their earrings they come in all sizes and shapes, and different ways of laughing —kalamu ya salaam
Wounded All five of our children were sitting, their big eyes furtively looking around, each one both anxious and fearful to hear what I had to say. Tayari, her voice steely and cold, had told me I had to be the one to tell Asante, Mtume, Kiini, Tuta and Tiaji. And now the time had come. The usually active siblings were silently, even sullenly, bunched at one end of the table, occasionally fidgeting, resentful like kids waiting for a whipping they all would receive because of something that only one of them had done. Tayari did not look up or at me. I sucked up some air, screwed up my courage, and proceeded to make the dreaded announcement. The whole house on Tennessee Street had been holding its breath waiting on Kalamu’s proclamation, a statement that would signal permission to exhale. I don’t remember what I said, nor who spoke up when I half-heartedly asked if anyone had a question or something they wanted to say. None of us knew what all was going to happen next nor what this rearrangement would bode for the immediate future. After years and years of getting along, including all of us weathering and reconstituting ourselves following Tayari’s brain aneurism operation, no one at the table, surely not Tayari nor the oldest of the young quintet, Asante, now suffering through her sweet sixteen year, but also and paradoxically not even the man whose steadfast daddy had set the example for him of what it meant to be a husband and father, none of the attentive ears really wanted to hear Kalamu say that he and mama were breaking up and that he was leaving home. When I uttered whatever fate-filled words I spoke I was determined not to go back on my declaration. I really can’t recall the specific syllables I muttered, but regardless of the haziness of my memory, what still shakes me is the repulsive feeling of self mutilation, even though at that time I rationalized my actions as corrective surgery. Cutting loose was something I knew how to do. At various moments in my life, I have not hesitated when I decided to sever ties. I have become acclimated to dealing with the freedom of uncertainty even as I am certain that I will continue to push forward notwithstanding that too often my moving forward means leaving others behind. Although six other people were present and feeling their own pain, none of them was aware of what I was really doing. I had pulled out the ever rigid knife of my pig-iron-strong willfulness, unsentimentally pressed the edge to my nostrils and proceeded to chop away at my big-ass nose all because I had come to the conclusion that my marriage had run into the wailing wall and had posted a big, red stop sign displaying a one word curse. Divorce. I was pulling the plug. Tayari and I were separating. It’s over a quarter century later and the emotional wound still aches a bit whenever I place my finger on that unraveling. Once you cut it off, your nose never grows back the same way it was before you amputated it in a vain bid to save face. Was living my life the way I wanted really worth breaking up our family? Regardless of the answer—an answer that varied from time to time over the last thirty years or so—regardless, the deed was done and never rescinded. I do not like to think about that day but sometimes like a hurricane that unexpectedly turns or doubles-back, the awfulness of that day engulfs me in a flood of harsh, unforgettable recollections, forcing me to recognize just how deeply I wounded myself. —kalamu ya salaam
Epiphany
(something like how nia feels to me, xcept, this one is not really abt her)
god sent me / here / she said / & smiled / when we first met
glowing / & unblinking / she looked me / brown eye to brown eye / which wasn't easy / seeing as how she was only five-three / maybe / sneaking up on five-four / one of them no make-up / womens / wearing a mixture of clothes / tie dyes / silks / colored cottons / whatever gave the impression / the vibe of red / yellow / gold / green / & a couple of blues / nobody has a name for yet
i wanted to say / well / god / must have been / mistaken / cause i ain't sent for nobody
well, not really sent / it's more like / i was called
oh shit / i thinks / to myself / she's one of them / touched people
later / when she reads / some of her poems / honey nectar tart sweet aromas / explore the air / around us / fill my ears / & it is i / who am touched / by this woman
this woman / i'm with / this woman / i will always be with / no matter / what happens / whether we separate / or stay together / there are people / places / experiences / that become you / contribute to / making you be you / people you can never unfeel / un-be / leave behind / even when they are gone / they are there in your particulars / the rush of your breathing in the dead of sleep / the timbre of your sound / singing to yourself / speaking to another / they are there / anyone who has been truly intimate / remains / impressed inside
later i learn / how this woman / has a way / of appearing before me / with every vision i get / like, i wake / in the middle of the night / to play a dream tune / & she is already up / waiting for me / with the lyrics for our next song / fresh ink on soft paper / she knows where i'm going / before i get there
what i mean / is not simply / her physically being there / because sometimes her body / still be in bed / but her inspiration / in my head / be tongue licking my imagination / how else could i conceive / except impregnated / by some emotion seed / she dropped / into my soul / when i was busy / not consciously paying attention / to how she was subconsciously / moving me
so what / could i do / but submit / to the beauty / touch / spirit intellegience / of this hip / bundled laughter / looking up / at me / one soft autumn day / in the late years / of my life / ? / you dig?
& that's how / i met / my second / wife
—kalamu ya salaam
_____________________ Music: "Misterioso" by Thelonious Monk Kalamu ya Salaam – vocals Stephan Richter – clarinet Wolfi Schlick – reeds Frank Bruckner – guitar Mathis Mayer - cello Georg Janker - bass Michael Heilrath - bass Roland HH Biswurm - drums
my eyes wide open:
an open letter to my executioners
if you
catch me, so be it
my dark face knows
bush joys
i laugh at your square world
alternatives, everything you offer
smells like jail
my hair has been clipped
many, many times
but i continue to let it grow
choosing my beard over the edge
of your razor
track me with your dogs, spy
my toe prints on the mud
where i ran, where i danced
catch me if you can
and if you do
so be it
but before i'd dine on your
stolen feasts
i'll drink rain,
wash myself in the streams of life
and keep steppin'
keep steppin'
keep right on steppin' down the road
past my people's martyred bones
broken and stacked in irregular piles
by the wayside, past skulls
perched on poles, cruel totems
which i decline to heed
even if i have to go
totally nude to fight your dragons
you will not detour me
i will go
i will live while i'm alive
i refuse to die while i am alive
refuse
i will even go to your white wall
place my firm handprint on the
damp stucco darkened by body
fluids siphoned from murdered comrades
reject the charity of your blindfold
wink as i stare down your bullets, and
greet sweet death with
my eyes wide open
catch me if you can
and if you do
so be it
—kalamu ya salaam
____________________________
Kalamu ya Salaam – vocals Stephan Richter – clarinet Wolfi Schlick – tenor Frank Bruckner – guitar Recorded: May 31, 1998 – Munich, Germany