WordUp - kalamu’s words

photo by Alex Lear

 

 

my lips, her palm

 

why do men look

at women with an impossible longing

to possess any body found attractive

 

i have watched a woman raise her knee

another’s breast revealed when she bent over

or just the intense magnet of a smile

while casually talking on the phone,

 

nia’s sleeping form as i lean across

to tell her i am going, there is no need for porn

magazines in my life

 

the world is too full of real women and a wife

who tells me it was so romantic how—after

she tripped on the gravel road—i sucked

the dirted blood from the wound on her hand

 

—kalamu ya salaam

photo by Alex Lear

 

 

On Visiting My Ex-Wife Of 16 Years

 

After Her Third Brain Tumor Operation

 

1.

they opened your head

to clear the brush growth from your brain

 

they dug into your skull

to save you

 

you never doubted your survival

like your name you were ready

 

stronger than suffering, we shall overcome

evidently your new favorite song

 

now you re-arrange yourself: hand, heart

head singing together

 

you construct a new nation

from the older bones

 

the distant memories and flesh

that refuses to surrender

 

despair will not dine

on your soul

 

your will to live is your candle

illuminating whatever dark

 

chance and circumstance conspired

to descend upon you

 

your flame rides through those storms

occasionally flickering but ultimately always strong

 

 

2.

for a third time you are learning yourself

tasting anew everything you do, motions

you formerly subconsciously made

now require a conscious kick-start

something as simple as walking

can no longer easily be taken for granted

 

who really remembers tumbling as a baby

people smiling and encouraging you “get up,

get up. you can do it” and embracing you

when you did it—the different sounds

that came out of one’s mouth learning to talk

the different items put into one’s mouth

learning to taste—who remembers

the struggle to learn how to be who we are?

 

 

 

 

3.

and so to visit you

in these momentous moments

when regardless of what we see before us

the snapshots inside of us are stronger, more

potent indices, emotional spurs that prod us

 

i can never forget when you…

do you remember when we…

was yesterday really that long ago

 

how we have aged

thrown into the sharpest silhouette 

as memories pirouette

on today’s stage

 

so

 

what now? you on one shore

i on another, separated by a river of years

so much water flowing under

so many bridges

 

what now?

 

i wave to you from a distant shore

my hand is familiar

my touch is long ago

 

it hurts to sit in a small room

and be so distant from one who was so close

 

and so i shake off the cloak of sentimentality

and leave

aware at the back of my mind

that the simple act of saying goodbye

—or more precisely, “tutaonana”

 

those swahili syllables we taught our children

to recite, not goodbye but we will see each other again

 

we will see each other again

 

and the question descends the staircase

with me: when?

 

that query’s younger sibling

innocently posing the more brutal interrogation

“why—do you really want to go through this again?”

 

 

4.

by happenstance

i saw gumbi the other day

 

she asked had i seen you

this was before my visit

 

i said no

and told her about other issues, other people

 

close friends literally dying

she shooed away those words

 

with a curt and cutting response

like they were a fly or an annoying mosquito

 

ain’t none of them

the mother of yall children

 

 

5.

and so it goes

trying to make a whole life

out of disparate pieces

 

parts of a whole puzzle

that do not interlock

 

my life is a mosaic

full of jagged interruptions

 

and tayari you are

in both substance and shadow

 

touching even

when you can only haltingly move

your right hand

 

—kalamu ya salaam

 

photo by Alex Lear

 

 

snapshot: dawn in dar es salaam

 

our intimacy is as subtle as the mottled shade of shell colors

on a warm basket of cayenne scented boiled crabs

or, more likely, the faint hint of spearmint tea

silently seeping while your attention is turned

to spreading the beige soft of cashew butter across

the crisp of one slice of toasted sourdough

which innocently rests near the dark

of seeded unsugared strawberry jam freshly smeared

atop the face of the bread's twin -- quiet contentment

is morning within our colorful kitchen where we are

as gaily nude as the golden gleam of early light

streaming through our window diagonally impressing

a translucent tattoo onto both the half sphere of your breast

& the upraised arm of my hand reaching to caress

 

—kalamu ya salaam

 

_____________________

Kalamu ya Salaam – vocals

Stephan Richter – clarinet

Frank Bruckner – guitar

 

 

Recorded: June 14, 1998 – "ETA Theatre" Munich, Germany

photo by Alex Lear

 

 

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

 

photo by Alex Lear

 

 

 

SOPHISTICATED HAIKU

 

after loving we

quietly lay, i with my

foot out the window

 

—kalamu ya salaam

 

photo by Alex Lear

 

 

this is dedicated

 

 

to the one

to the one ness,

to the all

to the all us,

to the creation and catapulting seed

to the beginning and brilliant continuance

to the suffering and feeling and crossings

         in the dark

to the watertorture, the shocking endless

         a pain and conflict we endured

         we endured in these last days and times

         before Black rebeginnings

to the oh

to the ah

to the

to the ancestors and the ancients

to the peace eye calm sensual

to the war eye shining serious

to the love eye crystal clear on us selves

         the righteous sightings of ex

         slaves surging self-consciously

         into sunlit sovereignty

to the eye and to the ear

         and the sounds, the sounds we

         music mighty rhythm thumping

         keeping us moving

         together, all us on the one

to the love, the tremble, the current, the connection

         and Black blessings of

         ebony  womb man flesh

to the saving and sending of something else west

         this is dedicated to the hook up

         and hipness of new afrikan

         space aspirations

to Black people

to Black, to people

to a Black a people

to the on time thought and taste

         that we are really one,

         really, really, really all one

to those who read this poem

         and wonder on this planet

         and want for this truth touch

         in time vector now

to all the things we are

         we ain’t and hey, yes,

         ought to be

         this is very humbly dedicated

to the one

         one love

         one heart

         one people

         one struggle

         this is dedicated

to all our triune wholeness

to those a been here

to those a here now and most certainly

to those a yet to arise and get

         get hopefully more than we

         way more than we got

         more than we are getting

         this is dedicated

to your momma and my mama

         and all the soft screaming

         and pleasure pain it took

         to get and keep us here

         don’t hurt our space

         don’t hurt

         don’t hurt our space

         be beautiful keepers of the sun

         be beautiful, keep the sun, keep us, love

         be husbands to life

         be break away from zoo madness, plastic

         and petroleum food and sexual molesters of life

         don’t hurt, don’t throw, no don’t

         please don’t throw this

         our love away

         this is dedicated

to your old man and my old man

         and all the weird walks

         we and they took

         and had to take

         still walking, still taking some shit

         somewhere, ready for the new music, and

         can play it yeah, can play it,

         will play it, just need some instruments

         this is dedicated

to the only one something that means much

to the highest flesh order in the universe

to the abruptly interrupted but will be continued

         golden social age of small circle get togethers

         and ancient communal societies updated

to the knowledge that though there will never

         be another you, we are going to make it

to the climb

to the getting up when we fall or temporarily fail

to the return

to the endless search to always make and leave

life better and more beautiful than when we arrived

to the one, again it must be said,

to the one, there is no other higher order

to the one we are

to the one we all are

to the one

         this is dedicated

to the one i

to the one

to the one i and i

to the one

         this is dedicated

to my people

         the one i love

 

 

—kalamu ya salaam

photo by Alex Lear

 

 

A Poem The Whole World Can Understand

 

 

economic exploitation is a universal

condition of the 20^th century, there is no world

untouched by multinationals, nor any mind unexposed

to the lure of mass produced glitzy designer consumables

what I mean is nearly everybody in the world has caught the wave

and tasted coke or at least wanted to / is this really a well

crafted poem?

 

it doesn’t matter, what matters is how well we get on with

helping each other deal with the aftermaths and legacies of

colonialism, those unavoidable struggles must and will be

the subject matter of world literature, the necessary priority

of millions of us, millions of us, no matter how unpoetic this

prophesy might sound next to Shakespeare, what do

we do with the world after white people have conquered? How do

we cope with human and environmental disasters? That is

the question all our literature must in one way or another

strive to answer

 

assuming we have time

and they do not drop the bomb, the

strategies and dramatic movements of people

of color will be the stuff of short stories, novels,

poems, critical essays and feature length cinema, say what you

will, agree with it or not, the future is not white and this

poem, like it or not, is a statement the whole world can

understand

 

 —kalamu ya salaam

photo by Alex Lear

 

 

my name is kalamu   

 

 i am african-diaspora

i am ancient and new

i am african-american

i am resistance and assimilation

i am a proud and pure cultural mulatto

i am well used labor unemployed

i am illiterate intelligence

i am beauty deformed

i am the fuel of pan-american cultures

i am freedom without wealth

         in my world of constant war

i am a country with no army

i am everyone’s love song

         and even though no one wants to be me

         —some times not even i—

         with the tender touch of my calloused hand

         i continue tending the fruit and flower garden of me

 

i am raped human wise enough to nevertheless

         love my woman self, knowing no woman

         survives slavery untouched

i am tubman feet willfully returning again

         and again to steal my people away

         from thieves

i have killed my children to save them from slavery

i have nursed my children, black and mulatto,

         teaching them all to respect and value life

who knows the pain of slave pregnancy: nine

         months of growing a baby who will surely

         be beaten down—i know

i have sold myself to save my daughters

         and sons from the defilement of poverty

i have denied myself and extinguished

         my dream candles to light a chance for my children

i have chewed the centuries old flag of degradation every

         morning and miraculously somehow managed to suck

         small droplets of hope from the warp and woof of filth

         which i transformed into warm milk and

         breastfed to my babies

no woman knows how to love better than i

         —i love strong men and love pieces

         of men, i love all my babies no matter

         the shade of their skin, and even in the deepest

         white night of my despair, i also love myself

i wrap our wounds with the silk strong softness of my caring

         and the salve cream of my patient quietness hugging

         hurt to the huge humanness of my heart

         knowing that for us, the survivors of slavery,

         there is no better therapy than love and struggle, so

i freely supply the love and steadfastly support the struggle

 

i am emasculated man collaborating and consciously forgetting

         to emulate zumbi, nat turner & toussaint

i am self-emancipating man resisting

         with words, with music, with arms

         with whatever, an enduring mandela of resistance

sometimes i kill my master and love my brother

sometimes i kill my brother and love my master

sometimes i just kill everything

sometimes i kill nothing

sometimes i love no one

sometimes i love everyone

even i cannot predict how i will feel/

         what i will think

         what day is this?

         what is happening?

 

civilization did not birth me

civilization could not create me

         civilization in enslaving me

         disfigured but ultimately failed

         to totally transform me

they tried conquest and captivity

they expounded dead thinking that stinks

they ceaselessly exploited the strength of my

         labor and shamelessly, in the name of development,

they forged for me an endless debt

they legislated my dependenc3e, my marginalization

         my alienation

they blessed me and so-called saved me

         using all the inhumanity christian masters

         could stuff into my mouth

but my vomit is beautiful

         my spit is song

         my tears are laughter

five hundred years of civilization

         and the mases of me still

         will not cut our hair

         shave all our faces

         cover our mouths when we laugh

         or stop making music, love and babies

i am stronger than dirt

but sometimes i am so full of shit

         you can smell me a mile away

         sometimes

         sometimes i drink too many “sorry-for-my-selves” on ice

         or gulp glasses full of warm “we-will-never-wins”

         until i reel in a drunken self-depreciating stupor

sometimes i am irresponsible and despondent

sometimes i give up hope, wear black ties and

declare my blackness should not be noticed

sometimes i flash diamond rings and do not care

         that they are the stolen teeth

         of south african miners, crystallized tears

         from brasilian favelas

sometimes i act like i am big stuff

         and demand to be treated like a rich slave

         merchant whose only concern for blackness is how

         i can profit

sometimes i even expertly wield the whip of oppression

         like some half-human latin american

         dictator decored with rows and rows of brutality

         medals made of broken bones pinned gloriously

         across my puffed-up chest

or at the very least i aspire to be a u.s. senator

         smoking a long cigar, drinking rare cognac and laughing

         at the donkey fucking the native woman at the private

         floor show staged in my honor after i have cut

         a deal and sit bloated with pride, unbelievably happy

         about the good fortune of my lucrative sell-out

or is it some monster criminal i admire with big hat,

         blazing fast guns and cocained realities

or maybe i’m the infamous international singer with

         thirty thousand tight dresses, surgically shaped

         breasts, a beautiful voice and a string of male

         lovers, none of whom look like me

sometimes i look in the mirror and i am not there

but that invisible self-negation is also me, sometimes

nevertheless no matter where parts of me may run

most of me always remains

bare foot on the ground watching the elite

be driven over me as they thank

their new gods that they are no longer me

 

although i am sometimes a thing,

a wild monster grown fat on self-cannibalism, the majority

of me is a creature of the earth and not an object

sprung fully formed from the forehead of some great european

in essence i am simply a wonderful being, like so many others

in this world teeming with amazing delights,

         there are so many uncaged birds and happy fish,

         fast multi-colored horses and me

         there are hard wood trees and wispy clouds, wild mountains

         naked beaches and me

         there are trade winds, gently baked moon illuminations,

         white foaming green waves and me

i am not a creation of men, those

         creations are automobiles and toilet seats

         televisions and rocket ships, cheeseburgers and satellites

box me in a ship and send me

         to brasil, sill i am me

tie me in a seat and fly me

         to new york still am me

drop me on a burro and walk me

         to bluefields (in nica. libre) i remain me

slow cruise me secretly me secretly at night

         from grenada to barbados, antigua

         to st. kitts, martinque to trinidad

         to any of them, to all of them

         what do i become? in essence

         nothing different because the insides

         of all of that is me

 

no matter the currency or rate of exchange

no matter the longitude or location of our u.n. seat

no matter the year of our abolition

no matter when we first voted

or who was our first rich man

no mater how many sport games we win

         or how much we are paid to shake our ass

no matter your perception

         or my subjectivity

even as we are cut by colonial customs

         into portuguese pieces, into spanish pieces

         into french pieces and english pieces

no matter in what way each of our

twists their tongue in order to articulate

         our sounds

none of that matters

if i hug you hard and you kiss me sincerely

if i and i music together

         dance samba, play pans

         kiaso, gospel and jazz

if we wage struggle wherever we are

         and enjoy peace in each other’s presence

if we laugh at ourselves with each other

         and are serious about helping one another

if i love what you see in me

         and you love what i see in you

if we seek each other’s substance

         and eschew each other’s shadow

if my liberty is your freedom

         and your equality my upliftment

if my brother is maurice bishop

         and your brother is malcolm x

if this, then what does a name matter?

 

my name is kalamu,

that is how i am called

but inside the fullness of me i know

my whole name must include all your names,

all the handles you use, indeed

our ancestors sagaciously buffed

our resplendent obsidian inner-spirit walls

preparing us to receive the hieroglyphed history

of our common conditions which chatteled centuries

have etched into each of us, black

codes mutely detailing, once we learn

to read ourselves, the deep and someday

soon shining joy soaked futures

we all would love to taste

 

when we braille read the keloided past

of us and sight read the as yet unformed

future of us, then today’s names can be seen

for exactly what they are and no more,

simply little squibbles, just different

little catch phrases conveniently used

to detail specific manifestations of

a talented and multi-textured black experience

whose nucleus is foreign to none of us

 

when i learn to pronounce your name

i am simply discovering

another me

 

my name is kalamu

now,

what is yours?

tell me how to speak my name

 

 

rio/4

10/87

 

—kalamu ya salaam

photo by Alex Lear

 

 

Forty-Five Is Not So Old

 

            It was 1:30 in the morning.  Lucinda was half a jigger away from inebriated as she held a double shot of Seagram's and 7-Up poised before her glossy, hot pink painted lips. Precisely at that moment, Lucinda made up her mind "since I'm going to die eventually, I might as well live tonight" which meant she didn’t want to go home alone tonight. In fact, she hoped she wasn't going home at all, at least not to her own home.

            Billy must of thought she was a fool. "Away on business" or so he had said with feinted casualness.  Lucinda knew.  Even as she had allowed herself to act like she believed him when he said he had to go to Portland for four days, she knew.  Maybe he really did have some business to do there, but for sure he was sleeping with Sandra with her little narrow ass. It didn't matter that Billy Jo had left Thursday during the day and that Sandra was at work on Friday, answering the phone when Lucinda called on some pretense or the other. "I know something is up," Lucinda mouthed right before the cool liquor crossed her lips.

            Lucinda was a public relations specialist, she knew how to make things look like what they weren’t. Who had said life was just an illusion? Wasn’t it true that illusions were part of life? The only question was do you believe? Do you believe in what’s not there? Damn, this liquor makes you think some funny thoughts. But no, Billy Jo’s disinterest was no illusion. Nor was Sandra an illusion.

            Just thinking of that little 96-and-three-quarter-pound strumpet made Lucinda angry because invariably it made Lucinda think of when she weighed 115 pounds and was good to go, but that was at least eight years ago. Her eyes growing increasingly glassy, Lucinda silently surveyed herself in the large mirror behind the bar. One hundred fifty-five pounds really wasn't that heavy, “besides I'm tall and have big breasts. How is it these little skinny wenches can get men so excited, what's to it?

            "Furthermore, the slut has buck teeth. What in the world could skinny Sandra possibly do for William James Brown that he likes better than what I do for him," Lucinda wondered as she took another slow sip of her mixed drink. "I don't look bad--for my age. Hell, in fact, it's not really age. It's experience. I look good to say I'm as experienced as I am."

            Lucinda smirked as she thought about how Sandra couldn't massage Billy Jo's feet like she did, then wash them in a little antique porcelain wash basin--I bet she doesn't even own any antiques--dry them with an ultra-fluffy, teal-colored towel, and then slowly suck his toes as her flawlessly-lacquered fingernails crawled up and down the soles of his size-eleven feet. And for sure, Sandra had no clue of some of the more stimulating thrills Billy Jo's big toe could arouse. Like when Lucinda felt really risqué, really felt like lighting up Billy Jo's little firecracker in her sexy night sky, after cutting his toe nails with a clipper and gently buffing the edges to a smooth evenness with an emery board, after washing them in warm water with a scented soap, after tenderly drying them and then sucking them as he lay back on their bed, and after massaging his feet with baby oil, and as it got good to him, after all of that, Lucinda would climb up on the bed and slowly stroke her pussy with his big toe, stroke it until she was wet. God, a woman didn't know what she was missing if she had never reached a climax with her lover's toe tapping on her clitoris. What did that inexperienced child know about sophisticated lovemaking? Lucinda took a long sip of her drink.

            Lucinda recalled how pleasantly surprised Billy Jo always seemed whenever she dropped in on him at work. With a toss of her luxuriously coiffured hair which had been crafted into a gleaming and glistening, jet black, lengthy, chemically-treated mane that languidly lay across her shoulders, Lucinda smiled slyly as she reminisced about how it had been, the last time she turned Billy Jo on at his office.

            "Billy, I was in the neighborhood, on my way to that little boutique I discovered, you know the one I told you specializes in silk batiks and as I crossed Poydras I felt this twinge like a little spark of lightening." He had looked at her partially annoyed but also partially pleased as she stroked his male ego. "I couldn't wait. So..." she slid seductively around his desk, "I decided to stop here."

            Lucinda reached down and slightly opened Billy Jo's bottom desk drawer. She propped her leg up on the edge of the drawer as she took his right hand and cunningly glided it beneath her skirt and up her thigh. Lucinda shuddered involuntarily as she expertly guided his fingers into the curly mass of pubic hair and the moist flesh of her mound. She tensed her thigh muscles when his fingers reached her clit. "Yes, yes, I needed that," she salaciously whimpered while throwing her head back and squeezing her eyes close with the same intensity as the forceful contractions caused by Billy Jo's fingertips tap dancing on the head of her clitoris. Lucinda savored the first trickles of what would soon become a flow. And then his phone rang. It was intrusive Sandra reminding "Mr. Brown" he had an appointment in ten minutes.

            "That's enough," Lucinda said pulling his hand away, "for now." And then she remembered his astonishment as she bent over to slowly suck her moisture off of his fingers. "We can't have you smelling like pussy when you shake hands with the movers and shakers of industry."

            When Lucinda completed tongue washing each finger, she reached into her mauve silk purse which hung by a silver metal shoulder strap dangling off her left hip. Moving aside her black satin panties which she had removed in the parking garage, she withdrew a pink linen handkerchief that was embroidered with her initials. Before she finished drying his fingers, there was a knock at the door.

            "Come in."

            As Sandra entered, Lucinda ostentatiously finished her task with a flourish, waving the handkerchief, "there, all clean, all dry."

            After daintily refolding her handkerchief and replacing it in her brightly beaded pouch, Lucinda slowly kissed her husband on his clean-shaved cheek, paused to close the bottom desk drawer and cheerfully called out to him over her shoulder as she sashayed past Sandra, "have a good meeting honey, we'll finish ours tonight."

            Pausing at the doorway, Lucinda pirouetted coyly, "and Sandra, you have a nice day. OK." That little narrow-ass secretary didn't know anything about how to administer sexual quickies, didn’t know that men liked sexually aggressive women who were otherwise the model of ladyhood.

 

 

    While she was lost in the reverie of remembering the sexual games she often played with Billy Jo, an impeccably dressed young man sat on a stool one removed from Lucinda. Attracted by the resonance of his masculine baritone ordering a cognac, Lucinda turned to look directly at his massive profile. She sniffed and caught the faint whiff of an expensive cologne. He was ruggedly handsome.

            "Hi," she smiled at him.

            He looked at her, briefly. Lucinda saw the almost imperceptible survey flicker as his eyes started at her face, moved quickly down her body, strayed briefly to her behind--she sat up straight and slightly arched her back--and down her legs, and... and, nothing. He turned away without even responding.

            She wanted to throw her drink at him. Instead she decided to annoy him. "I said, hello."

            He grunted, turned his head and pretended he was ignoring her. Lucinda hated to be ignored.

            She got up, slid onto the stool next to him, and ignored his ignoring her. "My name is Lucinda."

            "OK."

            "And your name is?"

            "Jawon."

            Oh god, what a common name, Lucinda thought, he probably doesn't even have a college degree. Lucinda's liquor continued the conversation, "Jawon, that's nice." Pushing her purse aside, Lucinda leaned forward on the bar's leather lining. "Jawon, I'm conducting a survey. Would you mind if I asked you a couple of opinion questions?"

            Jawon grunted without looking at her.

            "I take that grunt to mean, 'oh god, why doesn't this old bag just leave me alone with her silly questions. I'll answer one or two, but she better make it quick'."

            Jawon was slightly taken aback by her boldness. He turned to get a second look at this woman. Lucinda leaned back slightly, crossed her legs, and did not bother to tug down her worsted wool dress. Noticing her broad, soft-calf leather, black belt with the bold, gold buckle, Jawon accessed she was probably some kind of leather freak who liked to tie down men or spank them with a black riding crop. Nah, it's not worth it, was his final appraisal. 

            "If our ages were reversed," Lucinda leaned forward again, bracing her flawlessly made-up face with the back of her exquisitely manicured hand, "If I was a mature man and you were a young attractive woman, would you be offended if I brushed you off without so much as a civil hello?" Sporting a self-assured smile, Lucinda looked directly at Jawon awaiting his answer.

            Acid cruelly dripped from Jawon's thickly mustached lips, "I think you ought to be at home baby-sitting your grandchildren instead of out here trying to rob the cradle."

            "Ah ha. Well, Jawon, ten years from now, I hope you're not sitting on the other end of this question, and if you are, I hope the lady whose attention you're trying to attract, is just a bit more understanding than you are now. That's all. You may go now."

            Jawon backed off the stool and walked away, leaving a dollar tip on the bar while offering no further acknowledgment of Lucinda.

      Lucinda turned to face the mirror behind the bar and in the reflection caught sight of Roderick, the genial bartender, standing discreetly to the side, dressed in black slacks, a crisply starched white shirt topped with a hand-tied black bow tie, and a black and white checkered vest highlighted by a metal name tag which mirrored the bar's multicolored neon-and-florescent-lit interior. There was neither smile nor smirk on Roderick's placid face, nor did his eyes give any indication that he had watched the drama unfold. Without bothering to look directly at him, Lucinda sat her drink on the dark wood of the bar and familially addressed Roderick, "Well, Rodney don't just stand there. Freshen my drink, please."

            As Roderick moved toward her, Lucinda glanced at her watch. It was almost midnight in Portland. Lucinda mischievously decided to call Billy Jo and disturb whatever little excitement in which he might be engaged. Before Roderick could pour the freshener, Lucinda waved him off, "Rodney, I've decided to go home instead of sitting here and getting my feelings hurt. Be the gentleman that you are and call a cab for me please."

            Lucinda never, never ever drove her white Lexus when she went alone to paint the town. A solitary woman cruising down the avenues late at night was like flashing a baked ham in front of hungry bulldogs. Any man that she might meet would pay more attention to her car than to her, and assume that where there was a Lexus there was a big bank account that they might access. Besides, it was safer this way. Not that she had ever done much more than flirt, just to see if she still had what it took to attract a man ten years younger than she. Most of the time... oh, why think about.

            Pulling two crisp, new twenties from her purse, Lucinda waved them at Roderick, "I assume this will cover my tab for three doubles and also adequately provide for your well being."

            Roderick nodded affirmatively as he received the bills with a smile. His clean-shaven head was oiled to a soft, attractive sheen and were it not for the gaucherie of two gold-capped teeth, Lucinda might have found him attractive as well as personable.

"Will there be anything else I can do for you?" he asked Lucinda in a charming tone that implied he was both a trustworthy listener and a resourceful procurer.

            Lucinda's liquor got the better of her normal disinterest in what other people did or didn't do. "Does diabetes run in your family, Rodney?"

            "Not that I know of. No, I don't believe so. A little arthritis is all I've ever heard about, but then my folks are from the country, out Vacherie way. Don't a day go by they don't walk at least a mile and all their food is fresh, home cooked."

            "You're fortunate, Rodney. Did you know the treatment for diabetes is deleterious to the libido?"

            "So, I've heard."

            "Watch your diet young man, we wouldn't want your libido going south before you're sixty-five."

            "Ah, no mam. We certainly wouldn't want that to happen." Roderick had been idly wondering if she were single or out for a fling, or both. Without her having to say anymore he knew that she was grieving for a husband or lover who was no longer sexually active. Someone called to him from the other end of the near empty bar. Roderick waved an acknowledgment to the customer while he was wrapping up with Lucinda. "Is there a particular company you prefer?"

            "Company?"

            "Cab Company."

            "No. How would I know, I don't usually take cabs."

            "OK. I'll be right back." Roderick walked briskly down to the waiting customer, served him, reached under the register, pulled out the bar’s phone and rotely punched in the White Fleet number as he walked back to where the matronly woman sat.

            "A cab is on the way. The dispatcher will ring me when they're outside."

            "Such an efficient young man you are."

            "Thank you," said Roderick with a graceful bow of his bald head.

            "Rodney, one more thing."

            "Yes. At your service."

            "Might, I use your phone to make a quick long distance call?" requested Lucinda while removing another crisp twenty from her purse along with the note page on which Billy Jo had written his hotel telephone number. "My husband would just love to hear from me at this particular moment." Roderick took the twenty with his right hand and handed the phone to her with his left.

            "Take your time," Roderick said over his shoulder as he moved to the far end of the bar.

            "Mr. William James Brown, please. He's a guest." Lucinda smirked at the thought of calling Billy Jo from a bar.

Although she felt her mood turning foul, when Lucinda heard Billy Jo answer the phone, she brightened her voice, "Hello, my lover. Where ever you are."

            "You know where I am. I gave you the number and you called it."

            "I miss you."

            "I miss you too, honey."

            Then there was an awkward hush as Lucinda waited for Billy Jo to indicate interest in her. And waited. And waited.

            "Other than missing you, I'm doing all right, thank you," Lucinda finally broke the stalemate, not bothering to mask her sarcasm.

            More silence.

            "I'll be home late Sunday night."

            "Should I wait up?"

            "You don't have to."

            "Billy Jo why do you..." her words trailed off into a strained silence. Something was in her eye, she paused to dab the edges of her left eye with the heel of her hand. "You know where I am now?"

            "No, I don't Lucinda. Where are you?"

            "I'm sitting in a bar, but I would rather be somewhere with you."

            Again, silence.

            Something else was in her eye now. "Billy, I just want to make you happy. Be good to you. Make it all good to you..." Lucinda abruptly stopped babbling. "You see you've got me babbling. Would it excite you if I told you I wanted you so much that we could make phone sex right now. And...," Lucinda paused. "I started to say something really naughty but this is a mobile phone and anyone could be listening."

            Silence.

The liquor kept her talking long after she normally would have stopped.

            "I'll be forty-nine next week and, in another four months or so, you'll be forty-six, and that's not so old. I was thinking maybe some other medication might help you, I mean, maybe, make you feel less, or, I mean, feel better, or...," his tight-lipped silence was not making it easy. "Are you sorry that I couldn't have children?" As Lucinda questioned Billy she instantly regretted saying anything and wished that he would say something. Anything. "Billy are you there?"

            "Yes, I'm here."

            "And I'm not."

            "Lucinda, I think you've had too much to drink."

            She had not realized she was slightly slurring her words.

            "It's all right. I'm catching a cab home."

            "See you Sunday night, honey."

            Lucinda held the phone to her ear long, long after the dial tone sounded following Billy Jo hanging up. As Lucinda lowered the phone from her ear, Roderick moved toward her. Before she could hand the phone back to him, it rang and startled her. She almost dropped it. Roderick grabbed it, also catching hold of her hand in the process of securing the phone.

            "It's OK, I've got it." She left her hand nestled in Roderick's as he used his free hand to expertly hit the talk button, shift the phone to his ear, and answer, "Hello." While he listened to whomever was talking, Lucinda tightened her fingers on Roderick's hand. "Thanks. She will be right out."

            Roderick hit the talk-off button and leaned on the bar without trying to pull his hand away. "Your cab is outside."

            "Is it?"

            "Yes, it is."

            "Rodney, you wouldn't be interested...?"

            "I don't get off until four and I've already promised..."

            "Just kidding." said Lucinda unconvincingly as she reluctantly released his hand. "Have a good night."

            Lucinda slowly descended from the stool, studiously attempting to maintain her balance and walk as straight as she could. Roderick shook his head. She didn’t have a ring on her finger and she was calling her husband from a bar at almost two in the morning; Roderick had seen so many like her, "the world is full of lonely people."

 

 

    At the door Lucinda paused before heading out into the chilly dark. Who was she fooling, she had never cheated on Billy Jo. And never would; even if she did like to sometimes pretend she would enjoy being promiscuous. No, what Lucinda really enjoyed was being desired. Desired like Billy Jo used to do before his illness flared and… Lucinda didn’t want to think about it.

      So, why did she keep thinking about how unfair it was that she had been a virgin when she first married, stayed married for five miserable years, spent seven wasted years so-called “dating” until she found Billy Jo floundering in a marriage that was all but legally over; so terribly unfair that now that she have found the man she wanted he didn’t…

      Lucinda had salvaged Billy Jo from Betty’s neglect. That woman was so…beneath Billy Jo, so incapable of helping him achieve the finer things in life. Unfortunately, for Billy and Betty’s children, all three of them looked like their mother and, worse, acted like their mother. They were all parasites, they just wanted what little money Billy Jo had saved, which wasn’t much. What was a measly $78,000 anyway?

      It’s amazing what one can think of when opening a door.

    Betty didn’t understand Billy Jo, what he wanted in life, what a legal career could mean. She was uneducated and Billy Jo deserved more. Betty undoubtedly didn’t know how to do all it took to keep a man—Lucinda used to say to “keep a man happy.” These days she cynically just placed the period after man. Later for this happiness crap.

            But wasn’t she entitled to happiness? People admired her—she came from a good family, was well educated, took care of herself. That thing with her uterus didn’t stop her from being a woman. And my, my, my, wasn’t she some kind of woman? Exactly the woman Billy Jo needed as a helpmate to eventually become a judge.

            Lucinda loved Billy Jo. He would be a public success, and God knows he was privately terrific. Lucinda loved the way Billy Jo made love to her, even though she knew he was not as interested in loving her as she was in being loved by him… Oh, this was all too… Lucinda pushed against the burnished brass plate etched with the club name, Black Diamond.

 

 

    As the door swung open, an early morning gust sent a shiver through Lucinda and she suddenly remembered asking Billy Jo to turn around. “I want to suck too,” she had said while he had been patiently slurping her wetness with an almost disinterested expertness.

            In her dating career, which seemed like another life time ago, she had had the opportunity to sexually examine maybe twelve dicks. Ah, the variety of the male sex organ, the little differences, particularly when aroused. She liked the feel of some, especially the way they throbbed when she squeezed or how they jumped as she teased the scrotum with her fingernails; for a couple of others it was how they looked, the veins pulsing on…what was his name, yes, Andre, light-skinned Andre, with the thick veins crisscrossing the surface of his thing, or the hooded darkness of Jerome’s uncircumcised penis; and then there had been the size of Harold’s tool. A  basketball player’s big dick, but he hadn’t known what to do with it, or without it, for that matter.

Love making with Billy Jo had been the biggest turn on, surprisingly so—oh, you could never tell just by how a man looked, or even how he danced, you could never tell if he knew how to make love without using his dick. Billy Jo knew. And Lucinda really, really liked that.

            Moreover Billy Jo wasn’t squeamish about her freaking him. He hardly moved the first time she inserted a forefinger in his rectum, while she was sucking him and he was busy down there giving her head. Why was she like that? What did it look like? She supine, he on top of her, his head bobbing between her quivering thighs, his knees astride her head, his member in her mouth, her nose just beneath his taunt testicles—Lucinda really liked that he was clean so the smell was never suffocating—and her hand spread across his bottom, one long finger deep inside him. What would a photograph of that look like?

    He never questioned her, or made her feel embarrassed or feel anything but happy to have her way with him—not even the time she reminded him to shower and have a bowel movement before they jumped to it when they had been out on that wonderful weekend at the spa in Nevada, and had had a big lunch, and a scrumptious dinner, and had been out all day and dancing half the night, and...her finger was all the way in him, plunging at him, and the more deliberately she pushed, the more he nibbled at her clitoris, and she sucked him so hard she was afraid she was going to hurt him, but it felt so good. Why? Why all of that? Why did it take all of that?

 

 

    At the curb, the cab driver held open the back door of his maroon Toyota Camry. Lucinda slid in, thanking the driver by flashing a wide smile and making no attempt to hide her thighs as, one by one, she slowly swung her legs into the sedan. She would have really given him a good peek but he was studiously not looking, and Lucinda was not sure whether he was just being a gentleman or if, for some unfathomable reason, he really didn’t want to catch sight of what lay between her legs.

    Lucinda slid all the way over to the driver’s side of the back seat so that she was directly behind him when he got in. After she gave him the address, Lucinda folded her arms, briefly; she made sure the door was locked and then pushed her body deeply into the corner of the back seat.

            Lucinda knew what she was going to do. Lucinda knew what she shouldn’t do.

    She scooted down, lay her head on the fabric of the backseat and pretended to sleep.

    Her hand crept under her dress. She had not worn panties.

            “Any particular way you want to go?”

            “Oh, whatever. I’m sure you know how to do your job. Take whatever route. This time of the morning, what difference does it make? Are you…?” Lucinda stopped herself. She didn’t want to make small talk. She wasn’t even mildly interested in this young foreigner. She certainly didn’t want to know what country he was from with his African accent. What did that matter?

    Yes. Her left hand was there.

            “Mam?”

            “Don’t mine me. I babble sometimes after a drink or two. I’m not used to drinking.”

Good, he was taking the expressway. No lights. No stops.

            If he turned around and saw her—God, I would be so embarrassed, Lucinda lied to herself, halfway hoping he would look at her, would… “Oh.” She scooted down further and gapped her legs wider. Forefinger in the hole, thumb on the button.

    She was beginning to breathe heavily—is that why he turned the radio on? “Is OK I play radio?”

    “Yes. Of course.” Their eyes met briefly in the rearview mirror. Could he imagine how smooth her thighs were? The treadmill and the exercise ball were really an effective way to keep her legs toned. What would he think if he turned and saw her, saw down there? The way she kept her private hair close cropped. How the dark of her looked in the shadows, the deep chestnut of her bulging labia major set off by the cream of her dress bunched up almost to her hips. Would he pull over and try… even on the expressway? What would he do if he could see the glistening sheen of the beginnings of a mildly musky flow dripping down there?

    Lucinda smiled wanly. The guy looked away and pretended to be just driving a woman home. But Lucinda knew. Maybe he could smell her arousal. “Billy.” Barely audible, her utterance was more a release than a sounding. Lucinda wanted to touch her nipples, to rub them between her thumb and the side of her pointing finger. She could smell the driver, he reeked of Old Spice or was it one of those obscenely-colored (whoever heard of quality perfumes in those garish shades), one of those obnoxious body oils those unkempt street merchants hawked? Lucinda closed her eyes.

    Lucinda imagined Billy Jo’s lips sucking her breasts. Could you call this sex? A short tremor shot through her. Lucinda’s legs jerked and she bumped against the back of the driver’s seat. She knew she should stop. Billy. Just thinking about him.

            She turned slightly sideways as though she was going to curl up on the seat or like she was trying to get comfortable, or look out the window. Or anything but… “Oh.” Why was she doing this to herself? She never usually made sounds during sex with Billy Jo because she usually had him in her mouth when she came. Lucinda wanted to stop, wanted to move her hand. But. “OH!”

            “You OK, lady?”

            “I’m OK.” Lucinda caught her breath and held the air inside her chest, tensing to enjoy the sweetness of the release that was just about to happen.

             Lucinda paused, turned and looked up at the rearview mirror; she was certain the man was leering at her. But he wasn’t. At least he was pretending he wasn’t. Lucinda was sure he was waiting for her to close her eyes and then he would stare. “OH,” a sudden contraction caused her to jerk. Her free hand flew to her mouth. She bit her fist.

     Lucinda knew that men got off on watching women please themselves, however, she no longer cared whether he was furtively observing her. Lucinda squirmed as she continued and her thumb press hit just the right rhythm. “Oh-Ohhh.” She turned her head just as the driver adjusted his rearview mirror.

            Patrice Orobio saw the woman fling her head back and open her mouth, like she was, well, like she was… No, she couldn’t be. These crazy  American women. He didn’t like that they were so out of control.

            Meanwhile, in Portland, after replacing the receiver and pausing for a moment of silence, Billy Jo lay on his side in the dark, Sandra firmly massaging his back.

            "That was Lucinda."

            "What did she want?"

            "Nothing. She was drunk."

 

photo by Alex Lear

 

 

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