photo by Alex Lear

 

 

Earth Day

 

daily, once we arrive

we should ask ourselves what are we doing

to make the earth glad

that we are here

 

walking its face

breathing and being

           

does our living

help or hurt other

life forms

 

every time we celebrate

a birthday we should use the

occasion to reaffirm our pledge

 

to make the earth

glad that we are here

 

—kalamu ya salaam

photo by Alex Lear

 

 

 

the past predicts the future

            (for narvalee)

 

 

when you get closer to yr relatives

you will be surprised

 

at how black they are,

they feel

 

the fit and familiarity of their emotions in the twilight

how much of your pain they understand

with a knowing smile, and how much of their pain

you never knew, thus you frown

embarassed by your ignorance

and turn to yester-world

altared on the mantle piece:

 

ancestral photographs, amazingly graceful figures

whose dominant features are boldly ironic eyes

which seemingly float effortlessly just above the surface

of the cream colored paper, inscriptions in unfading black ink

on the reverse "me & shane, dec. 1934"

 

a small, soft purple, velvet box enshrining a plain gold ring

a slip of torn paper from another era unthrown-away

seven quickly scribbled numerals, the abacadabra key

to a birth, a midnight move to another town, or even

a pledge cut short by accidental death, "oh, it's just a number,"

the slow, quiet response to your investigation

 

so you pick up a pencil gilded with the name of a 1947 religious

convention attended and delicately place it down beside

an 87-year-old hand mirror (you resist the impulse

to look at your reflection, afraid that you might see

unfulfilled family aspirations), this mirror is atop

a piece of lace, pressed, folded, ancient matriarchal adornment

 

you will be surprised to learn,

as the years go on, everything

your people say sounds like something

from your life story, something

you wondered about sitting in the car

the other day in the hospital parking lot before the visit,

before the treatment

 

especially if you are intelligent

paid more than $10 an hour

carry credit cards rather than cash

and climb aboard a flying machine more than three times a year

 

you will be surprised that although you live in some other city

there is a spot with your familial name

blind embossed and hand engraved in the heart-home

of people you seldom see, surprised

that much of your life had already been accurately predicted

by an aunt who knew you before you were born, i.e.

 

when your mother

and father were courting, staying out later than curfew

and clutching dreams tightly in the naked embrace

of yr conception

 

—kalamu ya salaam

photo by Alex Lear

 

 

I Sing Because...

 

         Amid the weariness of work day's end, Sarah-Bell savored the quiet of oncoming twilight. At last, she could momentarily take it easy, unhurried. And she was grateful for small blessings.

         Lilting into the breezeless amber of the October evening, a mesmerizing wordless song flowed from Sarah-Bell's full, plum-colored lips as she plodded down the dusty lane. Her ankle-length, thorn-tattered, sweat-soiled skirt swished with each step.

         Six-foot-four-and-a-half-inch, one hundred-eighty-seven pound Jim One-Toe, deftly dragging his maimed left foot, hobbled beside Sarah-Bell. He had a pretty fair voice himself.

         One-Toe smiled in admiration of the way Sarah-Bell made each phrase of her improvised reel end on a little upward swoop that just naturally made a man feel good.

         "Sarah-Bell, you sing so pretty. Can I be your man?"

         Sarah-Bell furtively peeked over at One-Toe, smiled and immediately refocused her gaze on the last visible tip of the orange sun swiftly falling behind the nearly clean-picked field of cotton plants.

         "One-Toe, you know I got a man."

         "But he don't come to you all the time," One-Toe retorted. A quick grin of near perfect white teeth flashed across the dimpled midnight of his handsome blue-black face.

         Almost two good moons had passed since anybody had seen Mule-Boy visiting Sarah-Bell. Gathering was most over, Mule coulda been sold off by now—everybody knowed Master Gilmore over to the nearby plantation was good for sending you down the river at the drop of a hat.

         Sarah-Bell scrutinized the squinting sincerity of One-Toe’s slender eyes. “It ain’t that he don’t. He can’t co…”

         Suddenly interrupting herself, Sarah-Bell deftly hiked-up her skirt as she stepped around a fresh pile of smelly horse droppings. Then, while shooing away a fat, green and black, fly with a quick fan of her much-pricked, field-toughened hand, Sarah-Bell continued her conversation, "...and you couldn't be with me every night neither, that is, if'n I was to even let you come by at all."

         One-Toe was encouraged that Sarah-Bell was at least considering the merits of being with him. He spyed a brief glimmer of interest smoldering in her eyes as she announced her decision, "Naw. I don't think so, One-Toe. I thinks I can wait."

         "Yes, m'am." One-Toe was disappointed, but not discouraged. He had plenty mo' days to blow gently on the spark he glimpsed in Sarah-Bell's pecan-shaped eyes. He reckoned harvesting the love of a woman like this was worth a long season of planting and weeding.

         "But if you was to get tired a waiting. I would come. You know I would. Like a bird to the nest. I would come to you every night I could."

         "Which make you no different from my far-away man who come to me every night he can."

         "Well, don't forget I'm closer to the nest. I can get to you quicker than him, even if'n I ain't got but one good foots," One-Toe joked. Sarah-Bell grinned as One-Toe made fun of his own infirmity.

         She liked his gentle humor but she didn't feel a need for another man climbing on her just now, even a fine man like One-Toe.

         For a few seconds they exchanged knowing glances and allowed their eyes to speak for them. Then, while holding her hand palm side out, Sarah-Bell gracefully waved to One-Toe and spoke in a husky half-whisper as she strolled on, "Good night, brotha One-Toe."

         One-Toe peered longingly at the broadness of Sarah-Bell's back and the ampleness of her hips. He looked til his imagination was as full as it could stand to be. One-Toe wanted that pretty-singing woman. He had seen a bunch of women who was face-prettier, but he had never heard no one or nothing, neither woman, man, child or bird, what sang prettier than Sarah-Bell.

         One-Toe had been thinking so hard about holding Sarah-Bell in his huge arms he missed catching sight of Chester Browne squatting nearby Sarah-Bell's door. When her singing faltered and then abruptly fell silent, One-Toe quickly surveyed the area to see what disturbance had stilled Sarah-Bell's song. One-Toe glared at Chester. Everybody knowed what a driverman in the lane after hours waiting by a woman's door meant.

         One-Toe spit into the dust, turned and drug himself into the bitter barreness of his resting room. Shortly thereafter One-Toe heard the thudding shuffle of Chester's horse moseying past the open doorway as Chester and Sarah-Bell rode out the lane. A high-pitched whinny from the horse taunted One-Toe, but One-Toe refused to look at the too-familiar abduction.

         Chester wasn't talking, and Sarah-Bell wasn't singing.

         The chomp chomp chomp chomp of the sorrel's hooves echoed against the mud-caked wall of One-Toe's sleep space and reverberated inside One-Toe's skull.

         One-Toe forcefully buried his face into the gritty dirt floor and stifled an urge to say something, to say anything; a word, a sound, call her name, something.

         Sarah-Bell's silence tormented One-Toe. He would gladly let them ax-chop his good right foot if-in he could visit Sarah-Bell; Chester or no Chester. Naw, if-in he had a cooing dove like Sarah-Bell to share nights with, he wouldn't even dream of running again. He would stay and comfort her.

         It was nearly an hour later before Chester had finished his business. Chester never kept any washing-water in his cabin, and Sarah-Bell had not even dared think about going down to the master's well, so all she could do was wipe herself with her skirt tail before she set off to walking back.

         Despite her general habit of immediately forgetting the weight of an overseer hovering over her and thrashing into her, Sarah-Bell found herself mulling over her plight. Her thoughts were accompanied by the stark crunch of her footfalls on the loamy trail.

         Maybe, if-in it proved necessary and she didn't wait too long, maybe Sarah-Bell could brave a trek over to Gilmore's and plead with Mama Zulie for some womb-cleaning chawing roots. Sarah-Bell paused and fleetingly hugged herself. I sure hope nothing that drastic is needed. Probably not. Her regular bleeding had just stopped a day or so ago.

         As Sarah-Bell pushed determinedly on a trivial worriation nagged at her. Even though she was aware that Chester's drool could do her no harm, it sure was a mighty aggravation the way the taste of Chester's nasty kiss sometimes seemed to stay in her mouth for days. Luckily, on this particular night, he had mostly wanted to suck at her nipples rather than her lips.

         Plus, he had come quickly enough. It hadn't been too long fore a spent and drowsy Chester dozed off and Sarah-Bell had been able to scoot from under him, slip off his pallet and proceed to walking the three-quarters a mile back to the lane.

         By the time she was most halfway there Sarah-Bell had managed to bury Chester's assault and summon up a plaintive song to soften the knot of jumbled sorrow resting heavy in the bottom of her stomach.

         Shortly, for the second time, the soles of Sarah-Bell's thickly-callused feet felt the well-worn familiarity of the lane's path. Sarah-Bell was welcomed back by the sleeping-sounds of her people. Snores. Whistles. Sobs. Groans. A few moans from someone sick, or was it from someone really tired, or maybe both.

         Sarah-Bell was too exhausted to stumble fifty more yards down to the creek for to wash herself. She would do that in the morning. And though she was hungry, she was also too fatigued to gnaw on the piece of hardtack secreted deep in the pocket of her skirt. Right now she needed to lay down by herself and seek the solace of sleep so she could disremember the dog-odor of Chester's hair she had endured when he had been slobbering on her breasts. It was funny how that foul smell lingered in her consciousness. Seems like smell and taste had mo staying power than the abuse of touch.

         Sarah-Bell's sharp ears caught the faint sound of some animal moving in the woods. Judging from the swift lightness of the rustling coming from the bushes, she guessed it must be a rabbit. An owl hooted. Sarah-Bell wordlessly empathized with the prey--run brother rabbit, less you be somebody supper.

         Times like this Sarah-Bell wished she was brave enough to hightail it like One-Toe had done. Maybe she would make it to Mexico, which is where One-Toe said he had been headed. Sarah-Bell thought of what One-Toe had declared when they brought him back: Some gets away, some don't. Getting free was worth the risk, worth losing some of a foot.

         She flinched at the thought of so permanent a loss. Even though she had survived more than her share of suffering, Sarah-Bell still didn't know if she could stand one of her limbs being mutilated or cut away.

         Sarah-Bell was too tuckered out and emotionally drained to do anything more than collaspe into her doorway. She didn't even crawl over to check on her children balled together in slumber beneath a patchwork spread of sackcloth and shirt pieces. No sooner her dark-haired head nestled onto the curved comfort of her pillow-stone, a weary Sarah-Bell was dead asleep.

         The next day in the pale dim of half-dawn morning light only one child sat where two usually fidgeted. Sarah-Bell's heart dropped. "Where Suzee-Bell?"

         "Them took her," Johnny-Bell replied.

         Was no need to say who "them" was. Was no need to ask "where" they took her.

         We ain't got nothing but each other, and they won't let us hold on to that, Sarah-Bell's insides roiled with anger. Both man and God was unfair. Man for what he was doing. And God for allowing men to act the low down way they did. Sarah-Bell knew Johnny-Bell would be next. She knew it just as sure as she knew a snake would eat an unprotected egg.

         Johnny-Bell was her fifth child.

         "What's yo name, boy?"

         "Johnny..." the child stuttered frightened by the hissed intensity of his mother's question.

         "Naw. Yo name Johnny-Bell. BELL. You Johnny-Bell. Yo brothers is Robert-Bell and Joe-Bell. Your sisters is Urzie-Bell and Suzee-Bell. No matter where they cart you off to, no matter what they call you by, you remember the name yo mama give you. And if you ever hear tell of yo brothers or yo sisters, you go find 'em if you can. But you remember 'em even if you can't find 'em. You remember yo people. You hear me?"

         "Yes, mam."

         "Say, yes, Sarah-Bell. Don't mam me. Call me by my name. Sarah-Bell."

         The confused four year old wet himself. He had never heard his mother speak so harshly to him; but he didn't cry.

         When she realized how hard she was shaking him, Sarah-Bell softened her grip on Johnny-Bell's shoulder. He was just a scared little boy, and her rage wasn't making this crisis any easier for him. She could feel currents of fear in the heavy trembling racking his little body, which was twitching like a throat-cut calf at slaughtering time.

         Within seconds Sarah-Bell reigned in her emotions, mustered up her fortitude, and tenderly enfolded Johnny-Bell into the comforting shelter of her bosom. They swayed in mutual anguish as she sought to rock away both his fear and her grief.

         Instinctively she handled her perdicament as best she knew how. Within seconds of hugging Johnny-Bell, Sarah-Bell was breathing out a long-toned lullaby and anointing the reddish-brown hair of her son's head with song-embellished kisses.

         And she didn't loosen her embrace until she heard the rooster crow for day. After emerging into the muted shine of daybreak, hand-in-hand, mother and child marched down to the water to bathe themselves.

         The word about Suzee-Bell buzzed through the small community. Just before departing for the fields, glassy-eyed and scowling, Sarah-Bell stood in the middle of the lane sullenly declaiming her determination.

         "Yalls, hear me. Every time I have one, they take and sell 'em away. Sarah-Bell is through birthing babies. No matter who lay down with me, ain't no mo babies coming out of me. I'm done. Done, you hear me. Done."

         And with the finality of her words resounding in everyone's ears, Sarah-Bell whirled and commenced to trudging off to the field. One-Toe scrambled to catch up to Sarah-Bell.

         Without breaking stride, Sarah-Bell closely examined One-Toe's unblinking gaze. Satisfied with what she saw, Sarah-Bell gave a quick nod and gratefully accepted the respectful silence of One-Toe's company.

         She started singing, quietly at first but more forcefully as they sauntered on. The irresible refrain of Sarah-Bell's song syncopated their gait. Together, they would face another day.

 

—kalamu ya salaam

 

photo by Alex Lear

 

 

ALABAMA 

 

1.

it is late in december 1998, the weather is uncharacteristically warm. there is much that is wrong. an old man has killed himself. 

 

if he had been an airplane and fell from the sky, the forensic engineers might have diagnosed: metal fatigue—the quality of structural breakdown when the weariness caused by the ravages of time destroy an object’s physical ability to bear the weight of existence. but this fellow was not a passenger jet. he was just a chestnut colored, elderly african american whom everyone said looked remarkably good for his age.

 

his eyesight was fit enough—without glasses he could drive day or night. and he would step two flights of steps rather than wait on a slow elevator. he was sensible about his diet and walked two miles every morning to keep his weight down. plus, any day of the week, he could out bowl his son. no, his age was not a problem.

 

so what was so disastrous in his life that the permanent solution of suicide was the action of choice to deal with whatever temporary problem he was confronting?

 

we are not sure what exactly was wrong, but we do know that when he resolved to end it, he was watching television. got up and said something to his wife, who was in the kitchen. shortly thereafter went into his back yard with a gun in his hand—no  one in the house saw him go outside. but what if they had? could they have stopped him? probably not. at best they may have been able to momentarily postpone the inevitable, but eventually life turns cold. or we are deluged with the dreariness of chilly rains. and we die.

 

what did the slow moving man think as he descended the steps into the back yard? indeed, did he think, or was his mind blank with certainty?

 

his body died there, but was he already dead in spirit? does it matter what happens to the body, once the spirit has been broken? this is a story about death.

 

2.

i have often thought about those stark black and white photographs of lynching scenes. we know what happened to the lynchee, but what happened to all the lynchers? the ones standing around. some smiling into an unhidden camera—look, you can see that these people know that a photograph is documenting them. a number of them are looking at the camera full on, challenging the lens to capture something human in the grisly scene. a significant number are children, young boys and girls, leering.

 

i have heard stories of whites who were repulsed by those death scenes. those who were changed forever by witnessing a lynching, hearing about a lynching, backing away from their parents come back home chatting about the nigger who got what he deserved. ok. but what i want to know is what happened to the lynchers who did not back away. those who took in the murder scene as acceptable. later on in life, how did they raise their children? do they have flashbacks of lynchings—occasionally? often? never?

 

does watching a man or woman die a violent death diminish the person who enjoys the spectacle? can one revel in the fascinating flame of a human on fire and afterwards remain emotionally balanced? and what about memory, does the extreme violence of mob murder involuntarily replay years later triggered by scenes such as oj maintaining he did not slice nicole’s throat or wesley snipes on the silver screen bigger than life kissing a white woman who favors irma singletary, your daughter’s friend who divorced a black man after he beat her one night and she refused to press charges against him the next morning?

 

in many of those garish photographs there are a lot of people standing around. i wonder how many among those audiences are alive today, driving america’s streets and buying christmas gifts?

 

3.

richard hammonds was a handsome man. he was moderately intelligent. could work hard but really didn’t like to exert his body to the point of sweating. believe it or not what he was really good at was leather work. give him a piece of leather and his tools and he could make anything from shoes to hats and everything in between. and he would do it well, so well that a number of people have been buried wearing shoes richard had made—their family knew how proud the deceased had been of richard’s handicraft, so that’s what the corpse wore at the funeral.

 

for example, brother james sweet—his name was actually james anthony johnson but, with a twinkle in his eye, he would raise his left hand, flashing his ruby and diamond pinkie ring, graciously tip his every present gray stetson, and, in his trademark rumbling baritone, request that you call him “james sweet, bra-thaaa jaaaames sweee-eat, cause i’m always good to womens, treats children with kindness and is a friend to the end with all my brothers”—well, brother sweet had instructed everyone of concern in his immediate family to bury him in his favorite, oxblood loafers that richard had hooked up especially for sweet. there were no shoes more comfortable anywhere in the world and he, sweets, which was the acceptable short form of brother sweet, certainly didn’t want to be stepping around heaven with anything uncomfortable on his bunioned feet (nor, likewise, running through hell, if it came to that—and he would wink to let you know that he didn’t think it would come to that). of course, at a funeral you don’t usually see the feet of the recently departed but that was not the point.

 

the point is that people were really pleased with richard hammonds’ handiwork. unfortunately, in terms of a stable income, although richard hammonds excelled at making leather goods, what he actually loved to do was watch and wager on the ponies. and since he lived in new orleans and the fair grounds racetrack was convenient, well, during racing season, which seemed to be almost year round, richard spent many an afternoon cheering on a two year-old filly while his workbench went unused.

 

fortunately, richard hammonds seldom wagered more than he could afford to lose and on occasion won much more than he had gambled for the month. however, winning at the racetrack was uncertain. no matter what betting system he used, richard could never accurately predict when he would win big or how long a loosing streak would maintain its grip on his wallet.

 

routinely, richard would do enough leather work to pay the house note and give eileen an allotment to buy food and then it was off to the races. needless to say, had eileen not worked as a seamstress at haspel’s factory in the seventh ward, this would have been an unworkable arrangement.

 

but richard hammonds didn’t drink more than a beer now and then, went to mass every sunday morning, and was moderately faithful, so what could have been a precarious and intemperate social situation settled into a predictable and manageable state of affairs until richard was wobbling home one october evening—he had had a very good day and had indulged in a few drinks at mule’s, in fact, he had even bought a round for the guys and stashed a small bundle in his hip pocket for eileen and still had in his inside jacket pocket enough money to pay for every bill he could think of.

 

when the police stopped richard his explanations of who he was, where he had come from, where he was going and how he came to have so much cash weren’t sufficient to please the two officers who were looking for a middle-aged colored man who had robbed and raped a woman over in mid-city.

 

we do not have to go into any details. the focus of this story is not on the beating, the injustice of his subsequent death, or even the condemning of the two police officers. remember we are concerned with death, and the question is: when, if ever, did richard know he was going to die and what was his reaction, or more precisely, what were his thoughts about that awful fact, if indeed he ever realized the imminence of his demise?

 

4.

everybody, sooner or later, thinks about dying. for many african americans there is even a morbid twist on this universal reflection on the inevitability of mortality. for us, it is not just a question of when we will die but also a more thorny question, a question we seldom would admit publicly but one that at some occasion or another consumes us in private: would i be better off dead? if you had been reared black in pre-sixties white america, sooner or later, you probably looked that thought in the eye?

 

however, the universality of death thoughts notwithstanding, there is a big difference between abstract speculation about the eventuality of death and the far more difficult task of confronting the stale breath of death as it fouls the air in front your nose. death is nothing to fuck with. indeed, actually facing certain death can make you shit on yourself, particularly if death not only surprises you but also perversely gives you a moment to think about crossing the great divide. like when a lover in the throes of getting it on, sincerity announces through clenched teeth that they are about to come, you respond as any sensible person would by doing harder, or faster, or stronger, or more tenderly, more intensely, more whatever, you increase the pressure and help usher that moment, well, when it’s death coming what do we do, do we rush to it, or do we withdraw from it? don’t answer too soon. think of all the people you have heard of who died as a result of being some place they really shouldn’t have been, being involved in some situation they should never have encountered, at the hands of someone whom they should never have been near. think about how often we die other than a natural death—and then again, what death is not natural, because isn’t it part of human nature to die, and to kill?

 

richard never expected to die on that day, especially since he had just experienced the good fortune of a twenty-to-one long shot paying up on a fifty dollar bet. even when the tandem took turns trying to beat a confession out of him, even after his jaw was broken and he could only moan and shake his head, even then richard still didn’t think of death. he was too busy dealing with pain. when they put the gun in his mouth, he perversely thought, “go head, pull the trigger, that would be better than getting beat like this,” but even then, richard didn’t really expect to die. he just wanted the beating to be over and if it took death to end it, well, he was feeling so bad he thought that death might be preferable. yet, richard didn’t really think he was going to die. in fact, as is the case with so many of us, richard died before he realized they were going to kill him.

 

we blacks wonder about fate and destiny, justice and karma. sometimes there seems that there is no god, or rather if there is a god then he is capricious with a macabre sense of humor—we grant him humor because to think of god without humor would be to concede that we are at the mercy of a monster who enjoys literally tormenting us to death.

 

which brings up another question, would we procreate if it were not so pleasurable? if sex didn’t feel good, would we bother with conceiving children? for many of us the answer is obvious; of course, we wouldn’t. that’s why birth control was created—to protect us from disease and children, to make it possible for us to enjoy the pleasure of sexual procreation with none of the responsibilities of child rearing. which means that the drive to have children may in fact not be as strong as we have been led to believe, or maybe, it’s simply that in modern times we have been conditioned to think only of ourselves—the personal pleasures. but the question i really want to raise is this: what if death were pleasurable would we end ourselves? what if it felt really good to die—not just calming but totally pleasurable?

 

of course, richard was not thinking any of these sorts of questions as the two officers smashed in richard’s face. formal philosophy is a task engaged in by those for whom survival is not a pressing issue.

 

5.

every age, every people, every society has an ethos—a defining spirit. and this spirit expresses itself in sometimes odd and fascinating ways. for much of the 20th century the ethos of african americans was one of contemplating the future with a certain optimism. why else march through the streets of birmingham, alabama and sing “we shall overcome” to bull connor, a man who was not known for any appreciation of music?

 

the birmingham of bull connor was just about half a century ago. during that period when bombs regularly sounded throughout birmingham and the deep south, if you go back and look at the pictures of black people of that era when they posed for a portrait, especially if they were college educated, you will invariable spy among the men what i call the classic negro pose of hand to chin in contemplation. a variation is one temple of a  pair of glasses held close to or between the lips; then there is the pipe firmly grasped, not to mention the college diploma held to the side of the head like a sweetheart—these are iconic images of optimistic negroes, images that capture the ethos of their era.

 

today, the hand has moved from the chin. we no longer pose in contemplative ways, what is cropping up more and more is the hand to the crown of the head, not in a woe is me posture, but more like: damn, this is some deep shit we’re in.

 

unconsciously, during a recent photo shoot, i ended up in that pose. when the picture was published i was mildly surprised, i did not remember adopting that look of serious concern. but just because i don’t remember it does not mean that it didn’t happen. clearly it happened. there is my unsmiling portrait. and i see that pose more and more, particularly when i look at the publicity shots of writers. we are children of production—we are shaped and influenced, even when unconscious of it, by the prevailing ethos. a lot of us look like we are gravely weighing the upsides and downsides of both life and death.

 

and when people tell you how much they like that photo, then that tells you just how much the photo reflects our current contemplation of death. in those photographs rarely are we smiling. our eyes are wide open. we are not dreamy eyed romantics. we are not lost in meditation. we are looking at death. the disintegration of our communities, the fissure of our social structures, the absence of lasting interpersonal relationships, the proliferation of age and gender alienation. the death of a people.

 

and when i took my photo it was supposed to be a happy occasion. but obviously the myth of the happy negro is long gone.

 

6.

i wonder when the old man put the gun to his head did he hold his head with his free hand?

 

7.

richard couldn’t put his hands to his head because his hands were handcuffed behind him.

 

8.

which story seems more plausible: the old man or richard? is it not odd that by piling up details and framing the story in a believable context it is relatively easy to believe that richard hammonds actually died as a result of a police beating and shooting in the late fifties in new orleans? and that the old man seems to be a metaphor. but an old man (whose name i don’t want to reveal because it would add nothing to our story) actually killed himself during the christmas holidays (of course i speculate and fictionalize a lot of the old man’s story, but the suicide actually happened) and the story of richard hammonds is totally fictitious except for the cops who killed him—cops did kill negroes in new orleans.

 

9.

the old man and richard hammonds had gone to high school together, and gone to bars together, making merry, drinking and acting mindlessly stupid on a couple of occasions. they had double dated a couple of times, and had once even engaged in sex with the same woman (at different times, months apart, but the same woman nonetheless—she remembers the old man as the better lover because he was more tender, seemed more sincere.

 

(there had been this untalked about but often expressed rivalry between richard and the old man. close friends are often bound by both love and jealousy, so there was nothing unusual about them being attracted to the same woman. but remember richard was the handsome one. he was also glib, perhaps because he learned how to hold back his feelings. he could talk a woman into bed, or more likely the back of a studebaker—richard’s father worked as a pullman porter and made nice money for a colored man and had bought a car but was often not in town to enjoy the car and richard, though he didn’t personally have much money, did have access to the car. anyway, richard never thought about what the women he bedded in the back seat thought about before, during or after he bedded them. after all it was just a moment’s pleasure.

 

(but the old man, well, he was a young man then, he thought about how other’s felt about him a lot, and though he fucked mildred, it was not because she was available but because he was really, really moved by mildred and told her so. told her, “girl you moves me.”

 

(“i do?” she was used to men wanting to sex her, but not to men admitting that they were deeply affected by her.

 

(“yes, you does,” and he twirled her at that moment—they were dancing and he was whispering in her ear, dancing in a little new orleans nite club, to a song on the juke box—he twirled her. and smiled. and she had never been twirled quite like this gracefully dancing young man twirled her. and when she reversed the twirl and spun back into his arms, he momentarily paused and said, “i wish i could dance with you all night.”)

 

the old man had not been angling to get her in bed, he was just genuinely enjoying her company. he liked to dance. she liked to dance. they were having a good time. and when somehow they ended up making love on the sofa in her front room that night while her sister and her sister’s children soundly (he hoped) slept two rooms away, he had been a little nervous at first.

 

her softness felt so good, before he knew it, a little cry caught in his throat. he was trying to be quiet, but goodness and quiet sometimes do not go together. i mean, you know how good it hurts to hold it in? well the possibility that the sound of your love making will disturb and awaken others nearby, that anxiety about discovery adds to the covert enjoyment. so, instead of surfacing upward through his throat, the cry was redirected down into his chest, but it bounced back and was about to pop audibly out of his mouth. mildred felt that sound about to pour forth like a coo-coo clock gone haywire, and with the mischief that only a woman can summon she cupped one hand tightly over his mouth and with her other hand reached down and gently squeezed his testicles.

 

ya boy liked to died. he shuddered. he couldn’t breath. her hand tightly covered his mouth and partially blocked his nose. and he was coming like mad. and he moaned a stifled moan, air yo-yoing back in forth between the back of his mouth atop his throat and the near bursting constriction of his chest. finally, he wheezed gusts of exhales out of his distended nostrils, which flared like those of a race horse heaving after a superfast lap. and then he cried out and tried to call back the sound all at the same time. and that was followed with another terrible quake. in a semi-conscious state, he lay helpless, wrapped up in the murmured laughter of mildred’s playful passion.

 

but he didn’t hear her soft, soft laughter. he didn’t hear anything. he was totally out of it. he was struggling to catch his breath, in fact had almost slipped off the large couch—if her legs had not clamped around him so firmly, he would have tumbled to the floor. after that he didn’t distinctly remember anything until he woke up the next morning, at home, in his own bed and didn’t know how he got there. he must have walked home or something, but all he could remember was her softness, her touch, his lengthy orgasm (he had never come that long before), and the way her legs held him when he almost fell over. you can easily forget a short walk home, but there are some experiences that are so sharply etched in the memory of your flesh, those encounters you never forget.

 

a couple of days later when richard asked the old man about mildred, whether they had done it, the old man had said, “no, we just had a good time dancing and i took her home. then i went home.” richard had replied, “you should have got it, she likes you. i got her drunk and got it once but she never would let me get no mo. but she likes you. you should get it.” the old man had said nothing further, merely looked away, certain that richard would not understand that what the old man felt for mildred, although initiated by the sharpness of their sexual encounter, was, nonetheless, a feeling deeper than a good fuck.

 

many years later, when the old man was watching the house of representatives vote to impeach bill clinton for lying to the american people about the monica lewinsky affair, something terrible took hold of him. although he continued to see mildred for over twenty years and even had a kid with her, the old man had never told his wife. and he felt intensely guilty. intensely.

 

he felt horrible. felt like he had felt at richard’s funeral. sitting in the catholic church before a closed casket. the body had been too brutalized to have a public viewing. the police had shot his good friend richard, shot him in the head.

 

while he sat between his wife and two daughters on one side and his young son on the other side, the old man was thinking about his dead friend when he looked up and saw mildred looking over at him with those large, limpid, brown eyes. nearly every time he stole a glance her way, she seemed to be looking directly at him. he could not read her eyes.

 

but his friend richard was dead. and his wife and legitimate children were at his side and his woman was across the isle staring at him, and the old man felt really guilty about how he was living his life, and he put his head in his hands and just wanted to ball up and die. and he didn’t realize he was crying until his wife daubed his face with her handkerchief.

 

10.

a murder is a crime against society. we look at pictures of murderers and wonder about them. wonder what led them to do it. wonder do they have feelings like the rest of us.

 

what motivates one human to lynch another?

 

in the case of a suicide, everyone who survives wonders not only what led to the murder but also, particularly for those who were close to the victim, we wonder what could we have done, what “should” we have done to prevent the murder.

 

murder is a crime condemning society and suicide is particularly damning of those who were close to the murderer (who is also the murderee). if you think about someone close to you committing suicide, you have to ask yourself, what did i fail to do that would have prevented that person from committing self-murder? while sometimes we ask that question of a mass murderer—what could have been done to prevent them from acting the way they did—we always ask that question of a suicide. and why? if we can not stop people from committing large and impersonal murders, how can we hope to stop small murders, the most personal of murders: the suicide? the question is perplexing.

 

after awhile though, you come to an awful realization: maybe it is impossible to stop people from killing each other and themselves. indeed, is it not a certainty that it is impossible to stop suicide?

 

11.

if you are shot in the head with a large handgun it can be messy.

 

12.

if you shoot yourself in the head with a large handgun it can be messy.

 

13.

the old man’s casket was sealed before the funeral mass just like richard’s had been. a closed casket is a terrible death for it is a death which suggests that this death is much more worse than ordinary death. this is a death you can not look in the face. and what can be more horrible than imagining how horrible death looks when the corpse is too horrible to look at?

 

14.

mildred was at the old man’s funeral. so was their son who favored his mother but had his father’s skin color. mildred had not talked with the old man in over two months, and then it was only briefly over the phone. he had said something about being sorry he had never been brave enough to marry her. and hung up. mildred had waited in vain for him to call back. as anxious as she had been, she had never once broken their agreement. she knew where he lived, knew his phone number, but she never called. never. and now he was dead, gone. life is so cruel, especially when much of your life is lived cloistered in a box of arrangements shut off from what passes for normal life. to everyone mildred looked like the statistic of single mother with one child: a son, father unknown. but what she felt like was a widow, a widow whom had never been married but a true widow nevertheless, her de facto husband’s corpse sequestered in a closed box, not unlike her whole life, lived unrecognized outside of sight. issac (mildred and the old man’s son) used to ask who his father was, but he stopped asking after weathering junior high school taunts. and once he was married and had children of his own, he understood that what was important was not who his father had been but what kind of father he would be for his children. when his mother called and asked him to accompany her to the old man’s funeral, issac at last knew the answer without ever having to rephrase the question. mildred and issace both remained dry-eyed throughout the service even though inside both of them were crying like crazy.

 

you can not gauge the depths simply by looking at the surface. printed on the program was a smiling snapshot of the old man. next to the closed casket there was an enlargement of this same posed photograph. but what picture of the old man was in various people’s mind?

 

moreover, what does a self murderer look like whose death has left the corpse too gruesome to witness? certainly not like the smiling headshot on the easel surrounded by flowers.

 

was the look in the old man’s eye as he pulled the trigger anything like that wild look in the eyes of white people staring at a lynched negro—of course not? but what did he look like looking at his own death?

 

15.

have you ever seen a picture of the man who was convicted of bombing the baptist church in birmingham, alabama and killing those four little girls? he looks like a white man. and once you get beyond the racial aspect of the murderer, he looks like a man. and once you get beyond the gender aspect of the murderer—a grown man killing four little girls—well, then, he looks like a human being. murderers are human beings. they look like what they are. it is a conceit to think that murderers look different from “ordinary” human beings. what does a killer look like? look at the nearest human being.

 

16.

while i admit i have not seen a lot of pictures of white people—and then again i have undoubtedly seen more pictures of white people than of black people when you consider how the image of whiteness surrounds us and bombards us in school, in commerce, in television, in entertainment, in advertisements, everywhere—but anyway, i don’t remember seeing many white persons in the classic negro pose of yore nor in the contemporary iconic hand to the crown of the head pose.

 

in examining the photos of lynchings i see none of the concern for the future that the hand to the head would indicate. that hand to the head indicates that a person has a heart. that a person is feeling life, and though the life that is felt may not be pleasant, at least we are still feeling.

 

but when you watch and listen to and smell a person dying, and when you cut off your feelings for the fate of another human being, well...—and you know it is not biological. have you read about the civil wars in africa typified by the hutu vs. tutsi conflict? how literally thousands of people are hacked to death. it is one thing to fire a gun or drop a bomb, it is another thing to whack, whack, whack with a machete slaughtering a human being as though assailing a dangerous beast or a tree that was in the way of progress. when any of us, be we white, black, or whatever, when we severe our feelings to the point that not only do we methodically and unfeelingly commit acts of mass murder or acts of ritual murder, when we can watch murder and not feel revulsion then obviously we have moved to the point that death gives us pleasure.

 

when i first raised the issue about death and pleasure you may have thought, “oh, how absurd.” but the next time you are chomping your popcorn and sipping your artificially flavored sugar water while watching thrilling scenes of mayhem, murder and mass destruction on the silver screen (perhaps i should add that you have paid for the privilege of this pleasure), but the next time the bodies fly through the air, the bullets rip apart a young man in slow mo, the very next time you watch an image of death and get pleasure from it, see if you can remember to say “oh, how absurd.”

 

i think you won’t be able to, any more than at the moment of orgasm you would holler “oh, how absurd.” for you see pleasure in and of itself is never absurd, perverse perhaps, but never absurd. and taking pleasure in someone else’s death: oh, how... what? how do we describe that pleasure? what is human about enjoying death? or perhaps, since deriving pleasure from someone else’s demise seems to be a norm today, maybe i should ask, what is inhuman about enjoying death?

 

there is much that is wrong.

 

—kalamu ya salaam

photo by Alex Lear

 

 

when a man loves a woman

 

i don’t know why i was immobile, just standing, caught between moving forward and backing away from some horror that was not my nightmare. i mean, why wasn’t i doing something, why couldn’t i think of anything to do besides be a voyeur, an onlooker, saying inside my head: this is none of my business, yet, steady gawking at the timeless tableau?

 

i didn’t see him wind up, but i saw the fist smash. they were half a block away. she cringed, or crumpled, or slumped, or something, against the brick wall of the white-painted old warehouse. too far away, i could not hear anything. but from the way she staggered, the hit must have been hard. no love tap. no heated argument slap. but a fist. to the head, or maybe the heart, the middle of her chest, between her breasts. i don’t know. from where i was, i could not really tell.

 

a moment before, i had been at my desk. and someone, i forget who, someone had rushed in and said a man was beating a woman, outside. i remember there were at least three of us, standing at the corner, just beside the front door entrance to the black collegian and edwards printing company. it was butch and me, and i forget who the third person was, probably bill, but i’m not sure. and by the time we got there, what may have started as an argument on the street, and probably included some cursing and even perhaps a shove, or maybe he grabbed her and she tried to jerk away, or could be she swung her purse at him trying to back him back, or something. i don’t know.

 

i don’t remember exactly how old i was, but since i left the magazine in 1983, i had to be in my early to mid-thirties, old enough to know better. i had not yet been to nicaragua, but by then had been to cuba the first time, and haiti, and jamaica, and tanzania, and china, and japan, and korea. i had been a lot of places. seen a lot of things. stood with progressive forces, even ventured into a few situations where to be caught was possibly to be imprisoned, if not straight up killed. some would say i had been fearless. some might say bold. going gladly where most folk feared to tread.

 

so why was i not moving forward this time. why was i just standing and looking. i told myself i did nothing because it all happened so fast. like liston going down in the first behind an ali punch most people didn’t even see, the fight was over before i could re-act. but i saw her body take the blow. and i did nothing.

 

immediately afterwards he looked like he said something to her. and they walked away. together. away from us. down the street. and the three of us went back inside. well. the old street adage: don’t get in the middle of lovers fighting cause you could end up getting jumped by the both of them. or, the other old saw: he might have a gun, she might have a razor (which was reinforced by the fact that most of the men in our office were gun owners, and lorraine, our first secretary, carried a straight razor). and the projects where those kind of people congregated was one block down the street in the direction the couple was headed. but i knew better, and besides, i have faced down police and soldiers—a pistol or a knife was nothing, comparatively speaking. no, the truth was, i wasn’t afraid for my own safety, the truth is, or was: i had been socially shaped not to respond to violence against women, and i was simply doing what i was trained to do: nothing!

 

trained by movies and television that are not only forever showing a woman being slapped, or smacked, battered or bruised, but the media has made violence into an acceptable form of entertainment, something we watch and enjoy, watch and laugh, watch and take pleasure in someone else’s pain.

 

seasoned by the callous lassez-faire of street life that essentially said: i don’t tell you what to do with yours, you don’t tell me what to do with mine.

 

encouraged by the army, especially in terms of all the shady dealings that went down with the women we sexually and economically abused with impunity—a lot of people don’t know that the word hooker came from the name given to the prostitutes employed by general hooker during the civil war; oh, yes, i’m aware general hooker didn’t directly pay the prostitutes or even officially condone the sexual laisions, but that’s the american way. the leaders always have maximum deniability even as the status quo works its nefarious show.

 

conditioned by a culture that said a fight between lovers was nobody’s business but theirs.

 

assaulted by the literature—i never forgot native son bigger bashing bessie with a brick.

 

not to mention pornography, the all-time top grosser among americans, even in the state of utah which is supposed to be so righteous. the violent sexual exploitation of women and children, our number one form of entertainment.

 

violence against women was reinforced by damn near everything i could think of. and the reinforcement was incremental, no one thing guiding it all, but the preponderance, the cumulative effect, like one rain drop does not a storm make, but a multitude steady falling will flood us out, wash us away, cast us adrift, like i was, hesitant, unsure on that sidewalk. where was mr. bold black man that day?

 

even though violence was never practiced in the home where i grew up, and even though it was unthinkable that i would personally hit a woman, nevertheless, in ways, until that day, i was not totally clear about, i  now realize that yes, i passively condoned such violence, and if not condoned it at least tacitly accepted men beating woman as the way it was with some people, a sort of twisted status quo. and, perhaps my passivity was birthed by an even more sinister moral equivocation: it’s ok to be my brother’s keeper, but that doesn’t include stopping my brother from giving my sister a beating—oh, sure, in the family, somebody you know, your mother, sister, daughter, lover, auntee, oh sure then jump in and break that shit up, but some sister on the street we never seen before, i don’t know, you never know what the deal be and ain’t no sense in getting caught up in some edge of night drama.

 

protecting an unknown sister‑no matter what i said in the abstract, when my face was pushed up in it in the real world, her back against the wall, some huge dude all up in her grill—i hesitated.

 

there had to be some reason, some reasonable explanation for why i simply stood there. it took me a while to realize the main reason was that i live in a patriarchal society, a society within which violence against women is not only deeply embedded, but also a society within which violence in general, and violence against women in particular, is so broadly accepted that it becomes invisible even though it is ubiquitous. how can something so obvious be so ignored?

 

the weight of acculturation does not easily budge and can keep us from moving forward even as we believe that it is backwards to stand still.

 

afterwards, not minutes, but in the days that followed, i said i would never be silent again. that moment of stillness turned me around. i would never be uninvolved again. and truth be told, i haven’t, but on the other hand, i have never been tested like that again. never been within shouting distance of a man beating on a woman.

 

yes, i have stopped young people who got into inevitable fights and tussles with each other. it really, really saddens me that so much play-fighting is accepted as a form of affection among many of our young people. their seemingly harmless mock violence is ameliorated by genuine affection or, more likely, rather than by affection, by pubescent desire; whatever, the result remains the same: in more cases than not, what began as a seemingly harmless activity actually ends up being a predictable  preparation for them accepting violence as part of the package deal of personal relationships, thus violence is fatally intertwined with what too often passes for true love.

 

i can not imagine any of my daughters or sons either accepting or perpetrating abusive violence.

 

i have marched. i have campaigned. i have written essays, plays, poems, made movies. but ever since that day, i have never been caught standing around simply looking when a man beat on a woman. nor will i ever again revert to letting aggressive violence go down without at the very least shouting out against such abuse, without doing something to stop the violence, and if not bring that violence to a “squelching halt” (to quote my father), at least intervening or in some other effective way opposing and lessening the negative effects of such violence.

 

cause when you get right down to it, a true love of one has to also be, to one degree or another, a love for all—and if we can not love others, especially those whom we see as the “other,” whether that be a gender other, an ethnic other, a racial other, a sexual-orientation other, whatever other, if we can not love an other and yet claim to love a particular individual then we are cutting off part of our own selves—the part of our selves that is also a part of the other. we are restricting our lives, constraining our souls, diminishing our spirit, and this is especially true when we are dealing with the questions of violence against women.

 

when a man loves a woman, truly loves a woman, he will not silently condone nor, through his own inaction, allow any man to do any woman wrong. because, while there are those fortunate enough never to be victimized by violence, in general there are no exemptions: each woman in a society shares some of the essence of every woman in that society. when a man truly loves a woman, he must love all women or not really love any woman at all.

 

—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

photo by Alex Lear

 

 

Malcolm, My Son

A Play By Kalamu ya Salaam

Cast

Amina. African American woman. Late 30s, early 40s. A single head of household. her son has been away at college. She is an aged militant who has been worn but not defeated by dealing with the necessities of daily life.

Malcolm. A 21-year-old African American male. Amina's son. Intelligent but emotionally troubled. Ambivalent about his father and their non-relationship. Growing into what is supposed to be his transition to manhood and grappling with how to successfully actualize this struggle.

Production Notes

The male actor should be "gay and proud" (i.e., out of the closet) and should not be a heterosexual actor pretending to be gay.

If professional lighting is available, each time the characters "cut" to re-begin the confrontation, the lights should get slightly brighter until they are full up after the last "cut." Because the play is in verse, the actors should be directed to bring as much emotional resonance to their voicings as possible, that is, they don't have to "play like" this is a naturalistic confrontation. The actors should employ a great deal of "body English" and movement in the delivery of their lines.

The play is to be done as an encounter between the audience and the actors as well as an encounter between a mother and her son. It is important that the actors be responsive to the audience and, when they address the audience, that they actually engage individuals in the audience rather than simply looking at or speaking in the direction of the audience.

*  *  *  *  *

(When the lights come up, Amina and Malcolm are facing each other, a chair between them, neither one moving. A second chair is off to stage rear, left.)

Malcolm (Softly, tentatively) Hello. Amina Hello. Is that what you say? (She wants to move to him, but does not.) What will you tell me this gray afternoon? What marks are on your chest? What spear has been thrust into your side? What do you have to show? What do you have to hide? What light shines in your eyes? What shame do you deny? And what will you expect of me this moment? Should I hold you? Is there any embrace that can hold you? Should I just kiss you lightly on the cheek? A quick peck perhaps, something that will not keep You anchored to me? Or maybe even a gigantic hug? Or should I just wait quietly and see? What you are, what you have become? What you And what the world have made of my son?   Malcolm   Hello, But not like before. Today I have come to leave you forever. Though I will still be your child, I have come to announce that now I am me, And just me being me will hurt you, Not that I want to hurt you Or hurt me. It's just when children become adults Parents are sometimes hurt. Hello. But never again like before.   Amina   How was it before?   Malcolm   How can I forget? How can I not remember seeing the redness Of your blood falling everywhere and My own efforts not to panic, and My not knowing what to do And wrapping your hand in a towel And driving like crazy to the hospital And watching them sew your finger Back together? How can I forget?   Malcolm   (He holds up his hand as she talk. When she finishes, he points his forefinger to her and she reaches out her forefinger. They touch over the chair. Just fingertips. And they laugh, the chair between them.)   Hello.   Amina   (Drops her hand, steps back.)   You don't remember when you were conceived? No, of course not. How could you? How could you remember that night Or those many mornings after? How can a child remember what the mother Will never forget?   Malcolm   (He smiles for the first time. Chuckles.)   I was nothing but energy in the universe, Spirit pulsating, waiting for the creator To give me form, waiting for a woman And a man to snatch me in a moment of ecstasy, To reach into an intensity and transform My energy into a warm-blooded mass, Laser burn a hole in the spirit atmosphere, Open a flesh window through which I could crawl. And that's how I climbed inside of you. I was born to you because I was cruising through that night when you were with that man When you were wet and he was stiff And your sweat-gleaming torsos were slipperily Connected together, joined in ritual union And yall was so beautiful I had to choose That moment to climb through from the other side into this dimension of time and being You didn't make me. I chose you. I chose both of you.   Amina   How can a baby choose its parents?   (Smiles. She is amazed at the perceptions being dropped by Malcolm -- perceptions she has never considered before, but perceptions that are both daring and sensible.)   Malcolm   No. (Correcting her) Really the question is How can parents choose a child? At conception, At that moment you have no idea where you are At that moment everything is out of control Even if you are trying to have a child, still You have no way of choosing anything. All you can Do is open the window You have no way of knowing who will come Flying into the womb.   Amina   (Sits. Smoothes her dress. thinks a moment, then looks over at Malcolm, who is still standing has not moved.)   How do you How does your . . . your being . . . I mean as infinite energy You don't yet have a body, you don't have a brain, A mind, nothing. How do you . . . how can you choose? How can you possibly choose anything? You didn't exist before. You weren't anything, how could you . . . ?   Malcolm   Some realities we choose, and . . . Some realities we submit to. Perhaps choose is a wrong word. The window was open. I was shooting by. The creator created the coincidence. I just submitted. You're talking about nature. I'm talking about the supernatural.   Amina   Is this what they have taught you in school?   Malcolm   They would never teach me to be me. They can never give me identity.   Amina   (Proudly) Where did you get it then? From where came this insight into the unseen?   Malcolm   Ultimately, from you . . . And . . .   (He hesitates, as if he were about to say something dangerous or possibly distasteful.)   And from all of us, our various histories, What we did, what we didn't, From when I really listen Listen to our music. yes, especially that, Even though it is true I still don't know Our music the way I will when I am older. Ultimately, it will come from that, Or at least that is from where I think My deepest knowledge of self will surface, Gushing out of our music It's just a feeling I have, not knowledge, Nothing I've rationally deduced, something I've intuited even though I've yet to learn To fully trust my feelings.   (Pause. As he says this next line, he touches Amina's shoulder. At first she returns his touch, but quickly withdraws her hand when she hears about Malcolm's father.)   From our music comes a lot of the unknown,  And from you and from man, That man: your man, my man, Rudy, as he is named, Cowboy as he was called in the street, Those seldom times he was here, and even Briefly Chimarenga, the warrior, the resistance Leader, the six shooter, the sperm shooter Your man, your lover My man, my father from you, Amina From Cowboy From history . . .   (He pauses, then steps away from her briefly before speaking to her over his shoulder.)   Did you ever go looking for him after he left, Or did you just wait to see if he would come back?   (He does not wait for her answer. She does not give a verbal answer, but hugs herself, remembering the loneliness, and drops her head in silence.)   I looked for him. I looked for him with all the hatred . . .   (He turns and looks at her. She senses his stare during the pause, looks up, returns the look briefly, then looks away, but then quickly goes back to his eyes. They lock eyes.)   With all the hatred you taught me, like you, I hated my man.   Amina   (Looks away.)   Actually, I hated him because I loved him, But you can't understand that, can you? So did you ever find . . . Did you ever find him?   Malcolm   You know I did. I am he. I found my man Inside of me . . .   (She gets up, looks at him, and starts to step to him. Stops. Steps tentatively. he has not moved.)   Mama, I must tell you something.   (His voice stops her just as she reaches to embrace him.)   Amina   It must be serious. You're calling me mama In such a serious tone. It is serious, Isn't it?   Malcolm   Yes.   Anima   (Sits again. Waits. Looks at him.)   Will you tell me, or must I pull it out of you?   Malcolm   (Softly) I'm going to tell you.   (She clasps her hands.)   But I don't know how.   Amina   (Shakes her head, anticipating something awful.)   what is it?   Malcolm   It's really two things.   Amina   (Tries to make a joke.)   Oh, well I'm relieved. At first I though You had just one terrible tale to tell, but It's easier to take now that you tell me There are two tales to be told. or do I understand you correctly?   Malcolm   Yes, yes, you understand.   Amina   Should we talk some evasion, talk About the dog's puppies, your grades, The latest book I've read . . . you know How people do when it's time To talk seriously?   (Points to the audience.)   Should we provide them some entertainment, Some non-critical, covertly political propaganda That they can believe is free of political lessons Like we used to believe cigarettes and sex Were a safe high we could indulge day and night Without affecting our lives? Shouldn't we at least give a disclaimer? After all this is a play, And plays are not supposed to be too real, Too real.   Malcolm   Maybe. I don't know.   Amina   You do know, You know unhappiness has a desk in your heart And is a late-night-working fool. You know you're looking for answers To questions you're afraid to ask. You know that you question The reason for your birth, and sometimes wish That you were something or someone else Other than who you are And you know most audiences have been trained To be supremely uninterested In confronting this about themselves.   You know.   Malcolm   Cut! Let's start this over.   (He exists. Amina gets up and stands next to the chair, waiting for her son to come home. Malcolm enters. Cheerfully.)   Hey, what's up?   Amina   Malcolm, Malcolm, you're home   (Crosses quickly to hug and kisses him.)   How's school? How're you feeling? Are you hungry? What do you want to eat? Can I fry you something? Do you have a girlfriend yet? Does your father know you're here? Do you know your father? Would you like it if I didn't ask so many questions? Do you know why I ask so many questions? Do you know all the questions Black women have For Black men? Do you have answers for even half of our questions? Like why can't we be friends, friends, forever? What's happening to us? Do you remember your father? Do you remember the few years he was here And we were happy? Do you remember my version of our family history? Do you understand how terribly hard it has been For me to raise you by myself, and keep Myself together? Do you know all the things a Black mother Will do to make sure her son becomes a man? Are you using your penis yet? What color is your love? Will you make some woman happy? Are you going to be just like your father? will I have to hate you? What . . .   Malcolm   Cut! let's try it one more time.   Amina   And why do you want to cut now? Do questions bother you? Should I speak in statements, declarations, Petitions, supplications, jokes, sly asides, Demure completions of your every desire, son? Is it not enough for me to be your mother? Do you also need me to be your emotional servant?   Malcolm   Cut, because the world does not understand, Cut, because this audience is confused.   Amina   And?   Malcolm   And I'm confused too.   (He exists and re-enters. he starts to speak, but cannot find words. Suddenly Malcolm turns to the audience and begins to speak. As he does, Amina freezes. Malcolm steps to face the audience directly.)   I'm trying to figure out how to talk to her, How to tell her the truth about myself. Of course, part of the problem is figuring out What's the truth and then finding the words To talk the truth.   Amina   (Amina steps to Malcolm's side and speaks to the audience.)   Sometimes we just don't have the language We need to deal with the world Did you notice, at first, how everything I said was a question?   Malcolm   Do you know how much it feels like We're always being questioned, our manhood Is always being challenged?   Amina   There are no words for liberating talk In the master's lexicon. part of the reason Men find it so hard to understand women Is that men don't accept women making words, Making concepts, making language. So even to express myself I must speak with male words.   Malcolm   The first question some of you will ask Is, How can words be male?   Watch   (He exist and re-enters.)   Hello, I'm home.   (They hug.)   God, I'm glad to be home. This semester was a bitch!   (They pause, but continue hugging each other.)   Amina   (Turns to face the audience.)   Now, why does something hard and difficult Have to be referred to as a bitch?   (Amina looks at Malcolm.)   Malcolm   Ain't that a bitch! I never thought of that.   Amina   There you go again.   Malcolm   Ain't that a bull, i mean, ain't That a dick, shit, I don't know what to say?   Amina   We're trying to work this out Let's start again, okay?   (They part. Amina smiles at the audience. Malcolm re-enters.)   Malcolm   Hi, Mom!   Amina   Hello, son.   (They embrace and kiss quickly on the lips. Hug each other with glee.)   And how long has it been that you've been gone? Only five or six months really, Yet it all seems so long How's momma's man?   Malcolm   (Breaks the embrace. To the audience)   Now is she talking to me asking me about my father? Or is she talking to me but thinking I am my father, You know, like seeing my father in me? Is she talking to me and addressing me in a sort of I wish you were, I want you to be "a man" Sort of way? I mean it's deep.   Amina   It's not really that deep. It's not really a sexual thing. It's . . .   Malcolm   Since when is being a Black man not a sexual thing?   Amina   We don't hate Black men.   Malcolm   Let me finish. I'm not saying yall hate Black men. I'm saying yall hate the way most of us End up being. Yall hate what we become Under the knife of the world.   Amina   (To the audeience) Now you see, here we go back into the male language Mess: "the knife of the world"! Next we're going to get to women castrating men, Women accusing men of being eunuchs . . .   Malcolm   No, not women castrating men, The world castrating Black men, and by the world I really mean this society, this society Cutting our manhood off and making it impossible For us to be men.   Amina   Can't you be a man without a penis?   Malcolm   Get serious   Amina   I am serious, sunrise serious, A bold break for something completely different.   Malcolm   (Breaks character.)   Hold it. Hold it. Wait a minute. What's going on here?   Amina   Male language. Male insecurity.   Malcolm   Female anger. Female insecurity.   Amina   What do you mean "female insecurity"? I know I'm a woman.   Malcolm   How?   Amina   How what?   How do you know you're a woman? And before you say, "Because, I had you," Let's ask the question: Does having a child Make you a woman, or conversely does not Having a child mean you're not a woman?   Amina   Cut! Let's do this again.   (To the audience as Malcolm exists)   You see how deep this stuff gets? The male/master's language.   Malcolm   (From offstage)   You know it's not all a question of male language. Some of this stuff is about more than language, It's about the reality of social relationships, Even when we don't say a word to each other.   Amina   Malcolm, shut up and let's do this.   Malcolm   (Enters)   Hi, God, I'm glad to be home.   (They embrace. Look at each other wordlessly, and release from the embrace. malcolm sits in the chair.)   Amina   What's wrong?   Malcolm   I need to tell you something.   Amina   (Crosses to him. Touches his shoulder, gently.)   I don't know how to say this.   Amina   That's because you don't have language Not for the deep things in relationships. You have power words but no connecting words, No way to talk about what's inside yourself Without making yourself sound like an insect, An abomination that should be cast into the fire.   Malcolm   You're assuming that this is something bad.   Amina   I'm assuming that if a man has a hard time saying something then it's probably A personal revelation which is hard for him to make Precisely because he thinks that the revelation Will mark him as being less than a man. And what man wants to be seen as less than a man? So, unless it's like the rare moments When you are helpless in a lover's arms, Spent, caught in the throes of the after-tremble, At that one milli-moment of ultimate vulnerability When you know how weak you are and simultaneously Also recognize how warmly secure You feel wrapped in your lover's embrace . . . It is usually only then that you own up to those deep Revelations of vulnerableness. I know that Every lover who has ever held a trembling man A vulnerable, trembling, tears-in-his-eyes, Whispering, babbling, post-ejaculation man . . . Every lover knows that. You see all it is that you don't have anything At this moment but what you perceive to be weakness, Weak words to describe yourself, and you are ashamed.   Malcolm   I'm not ashamed!   Amina   You're afraid   Malcolm   I'm not afraid.   Amina   You're confused.   Malcolm   I'm not confused!   Amina   You're a man.   Malcolm   I'm not . . .   (Catches himself)   It's not like that.   Amina   No, not when you conquer someone, Not when you're just doing it to reach your climax, Your pitiful little moment of pleasure . . .   Malcolm   (To the sudience)   You see how she talks!   Amina   Am I lying? Don't you conquer your lovers? Don't you just ride them like a jockey? And if not that, Aren't you afraid to admit how it is When you're not conquering, When you're in love? That is, if it happens, because It doesn't always happen for you all Sometimes you never achieve love, Only mastery. Malcolm, you know precisely what I mean, And you know how precisely I'm correct.   Malcolm   This is getting out of hand.   Amina   Why, because you're in in control? Male language/master's language-- Isn't that it, lack of control? "Out of hand"? Ha, you mean out of control. Hold your head up and answer me.   Malcolm   Yes   Amina   But you know-- And even as I say this, I recognize that most likely You don't know, but you should know, And for you survival's sake you must learn-- You're no less a man when you're not in control.   Malcolm   We don't control this society. We don't control space ships. We don't control slave ships. We don't control mean green. we don't . . .   Amina   Stop the litany of what you don't, What you ain't got, What you can't get, What you'll never have! You have life, and no matter How severely circumscribed You also have spirit, energy, imagination, An ability to create brilliant colors Even when enchained in the dankest dungeon. You don't have to be simply a billpayer. You have paid dues, you can be Anything, everything, No matter what it is you perceive You lack or what you think they have So much more of than you. They wish they had the lips with Which your creative history kisses life.   Malcolm   What good are music and pyramids Of bygone years in the face of the knife?   Amina   My son, my son.   Malcolm   Who's not a man, not a man I'm not a man.   Amina   Is that what you wanted to tell me? Is that the thing that was so difficult to say?   Malcolm   No. It's something else.   Amina   What else?   Malcolm   When I found myself . . . I mean when I found my father . . .   Amina   (She catches his meaning and completes his thought.)   You found yourself.   Malcolm   Yes! Exactly. We played a game of checkers In the barbershop and I realized All the soft parts of him were dead Or buried so deep that those softnesses Seldom saw the light of love's touch.   he was a genius at camouflaging His emotional amputations.   In his eyes I saw Black holes Where everything went in But nothing came out.   I think he had been hurt By his self-perceived inadequacies, Maimed by his personal assessments Of powerlessness.   Amina   Did you also see that some men know better Than to fall into the trap of hating themselves For not being what they think a man should be? The trap was not the inadequacy of the man But the impossibleness of the definition of manhood.   the musicians know, those old blues singers And jazz men with their horns in their hands . . . No hope of fortune or fame but dedicated nonetheless To the creation of an artform That the majority of society disdains. Yes, they knew and actualized, knew That there was another way to be a man; And created an oh so beautiful language They simply called "the music," An impossibly gifted language In which tongue they could express feelings English can never express. Prez's tear-tatooed tenor rising In what some would consider feminine sensualness, A delicacy otherwise never, never ever Associated with being a man, or even swaggering Lee Morgan in all his macho hardness Being tender as an azalea petal As he blew a ballad, and God, the beauty Of Dear Clifford, or Fats Navarro . . . I wish You had known him, his virtuosity and bravura As a trumpeter, and you know his nickname Was Fat Girl. And then there is the sensitiveness Of the man I most remember, gentle, Gentle Eric Dolphy, his expressiveness So open, so free, so full of feeling, or Charles Lloyd licking the sky in trance Meditation with crying eyes transforming pain Into the beauty of majestic music, and Of course Trane, a magnificent man of such Forceful gentleness.   Malcolm   I have not really heard them yet. I'm still very young, so I can not yet really know These men you remember with such reverence.   Amina   These are men. Black men not defined by their genitals Or the depth of their pockets, But by their spirits and creative acts. Black men, I tell you, Men who knew themselves And who shared the breadth and depth Of their manhood. With the whole of this world In a language of their own, A language they created And indeed the very creation of their language Was also the instrument needed Not only to manifest But, indeed, also to actualize Their true manhood.   Malcolm   You really believe that, don't you? You really believe a musician is a man?   Amina   No, you misunderstand me. Not simply the act of creating music But the creation of language . . . You can make someone else's music, You can make musical entertainment Without creating language, But . . .   Malcolm   And does what you're talking about Apply to women, too?   Amina   Yes, of course. Except women are less likely to be listened to, And we all know the rare conceptions. But let's not change the subject. We were talking about knowing manhood And how both you and your father failed to know and love your own manhood.   I want you to live your potential manhood, Know it, live it like your father never did Like Rudy never did Like Chimarenga almost did Like Cowboy . . .   Malcolm   Cowboy didn't know   Amina   He never realized, Except in extremely self destructive ways, The potential of his manhood. He never knew.   Malcolm   No one taught him And he never learned, that's What I'm trying to learn.   Mama, I want to be a man. I don't want to be like my father, I wish Cowboy had known.   He hated himself. He hated the weak parts of himself. He hated that he could not be all the man You wanted him to be.   Amina   It was never about all the man You think that I wanted him to be. Instead it was always about Not being able to be like what he thought A man should be.   Don't you know that I know you can't be white.   Malcolm   You mean, that I can't be a man.   Amina   No, I mean that you can't be white Or, rather, that you shouldn't be white, Because we both know that daily There are Black men out there Proving how coldly white they can be.   But this is my point What you're calling your manhood Is just some projection of being a master, A conqueror, a barbarian on a ship With a gun and a whip Sailing the seven seas and conquering the world.   But, my dear son, You don't have to be that to be a man. It is enough to be your creative self, To be a vibration of the universe Manifesting energy through real time. That's enough.   I know America Will never leave you alone, But it is not the knife that is the killer, It is your acceptance of their definitions. Once you accept what they mean by man Then you're doomed never to be able to be a man Simply because you can't really be a human being And at the same time be like their definition Of man, A man should never strive to be the master Of another human being.   Malcolm   But is not there a way for me to be in control Of my own life? That's all. That's all I want -- To control my own Life.   Anima   The power to create is life. Discipline yourself, yes-- but control What is that? In al the history of the world, What has that ever been but an excuse For militarism, for fascism, Sometimes a seductive and seemingly Logical fascism, but rule by force Nonetheless in the name of The greater good?   Malcolm   You make it sound so easy, too easy, But we both know one can not eat creativity. Creativity will not keep the rain and wind From your hair, out of your eyes-- And besides, everyone wants what everyone Else has.   Amina   Be honest, do you, Do you really want what everyone else has?   Malcolm   Yes, sometimes   Anima   Which would you rather: to be rich Or to be in love, surrounded by And supported by those who love you And whom you love?   Malcolm   Both!   Anima   Not really . . . because To be rich, especially in this society, Means to impoverish others. The wheels of your shiny ride Are purchased by the bared and bunioned Feet of others, your mansion At the expense of thousands of homeless . . .   Malcolm   That is all didactic. I'm not talking about hurting anyone I'd just like to be comfortable.   Anima   Your comfort is expensive. Just the energy it takes to maintain your comfort Means starvation for others, not to mention Pollution of the land and atmosphere. But you know this as well as I do, Maybe without detail but from the lash of history You know this; You know how this country was raised, Whose broken and flogged back, whose blood  Vampired, and not just ours, Native Americans Literally millions and millions, and millions of us, millions and millions, more millions Than it is sane to count or think about. Just like matter, just like energy, Richness is neither created nor destroyed Just transferred and transformed. You already know this.   (She pauses, looking at him.)   You are testing yourself, teasing Me. What you really want is to be happy, healthy, And surrounded by people you like, To travel in peace And have time and space to live Howsoever you envision life.   Given the choice of making an extra dollar Or spending an hour with someone you love, I know love would be your choice . . .   Malcolm   That all sounds nice, except our love ones Are poor, we need that dollar.   Amina   No! That is precisely my point What we need is a different society Dollars will never make us happy We are human beings. We need each other to be happy. Only each other living productive And creative lives; living full out Imaginations blowing for all we Know and can learn, all we can Dream and conceive, Like life has always meant before machine makers enchained out labor. Do you understand?   Malcolm   You always talk these theories, Dazzling as the sun, and though I feel Them and know the truth of them, They are so far away I am here On the ground struggling in the here And now, struggling to make my way, To find my way. I've got economic Dragons to slay and your dream words Are a flimsy sword, and inadequate shield.   Amina   You're slipping back into the male language Of militarism. Besides, you know, Where has your male rejection of this vision Gotten you? Are you happy, any happier Trampling on people, denying What's in your heart? I don't think so.   I think the reason you're listened this long Is because inside you're empty, You're searching for food and shelter.   (Pauses)   The truth is that you must be a warrior. The world can not be healed unless you stop Those who are raping us. These mad, mad people Must be forced up off us. I know that My only only insistence is that we be clear Why we are fighting and what our goals are, Be clear that we are rainbow warriors Calling a halt to coldness--emotional Coldness as well as the wintering Of the environment. And, simultaneously, In the process of resisting we are also rebuilding, By example and vision creating anew our humanity. If in the process of ending slavery We do not resurrect community, then in truth We will not have ended but rather merely transformed Our current slavery into a more sophisticated slavery, A slavery of another and more difficult Form.   (She laughs.)   I know, I know, I know. Sometimes I preach, but all of my wordiness Is just a deep longing to get through this phase Into a different dimension, into a space Where love is unmolested by systematic slaughter.   Malcolm   The poor will be amongst us.   Amina   Your quoting of the Bible sounds cynical.   Malcolm   We can't change human nature, there Will always be wrongdoing--rape, as you did it, Exploitation, inhumanity, always. Evil is eternal.   Amina   In particular terms, of course, in individual Human expression, of course, but for now I'm talking on a social level. Systematic manifestations. Malcolm, don't believe so much of the master's Propaganda.   Malcolm   What do you mean?     Amina   Humans have been here for thousands and thousands Of years, only in the last century Has the planet itself been endangered By the actions of people. If we could live for millennia and not destroyed the earth, Why should a mere four or five hundred Years be so destructive?   Do you see we are talking both quantity And quality? If the quality of life Is maintained, then the quantity of life. Can go on and on and on for thousands And thousands of years. But if the quality Of our living becomes rapacious, Then the quantity of our existence Will also diminish. This is a basic Karma, surely you understand.   Malcolm   Mama, I'm tired of talking about problems.   Amina   That's because you are basically a lover Of life and being forced to fight Places your life out of balance But the truth, the awful truth, My dear son, is no matter how tired You are, these problems will not disappear Just because you do not deal with them, This life will force you to deal With problems--and the longer you delay The more difficult the dealing.   (Pauses)   You know the most difficult dealing Will be learning to live together. We've been so thoroughly indoctrinated In exploitation, we've been slaves so long, That now we are experts on slavery, On slavery and little else, at least On a conscious level. Little else do we know How to do. Fortunately awe still feel Other paths, other ways, but unfortunately We don't know how to fight on the one hand And how to love on the other. Yes, This world is tiring, but As the old folks counseled Members, don't get weary, Don't get weary.   (Pauses)   This is why love is so necessary Love to heal our wounds, Love to rejuvenate us, massage The weariness away.   Malcolm   You say love so easily, And yet you are so alone, so without.   Amina   Malcolm, my son, Actualizing love will be no easier Than fighting our enemies. Indeed, Achieving love is probably an even deeper And more difficult struggle, especially Since we are all so flawed, some of us fatally, So terribly flawed.   Malcolm   (As he hears this, turns very somber.)   We are, as you say, So terribly flawed--fatally, In truth we are.   Amina   Whatever the truth, we can handle it. What is your name? Why do you think we named you Malcolm? You should be alive with energy And unafraid to transform yourself. Every time you recognize the truth Be what you are, whatever you are Just be that, choose truth-love the truth.   Malcolm   Suppose the truth is I'm not a man?   Amina   Male language again. The truth is you're alive You are human. You can be beautiful No matter how ugly the rest of the world is. You can zoom beauty. You can touch people. You can sing. You can be all of that. And to be all that is to be a man, Regardless of what and how the master is Or what this society forces you to swallow.   Malcolm   Hi, mom. This is your beautiful son, Malcolm, And I'm . . . gay.   (He looks at Amina, she does not avoid his gaze. He is trying to shock her, trying to force her revulsion and rejection.)   I love men. I swallow their seed. I putt heir dicks in my mouth, And in my ass. And yall always told me that a faggot Wasn't a man.   So maybe I'm not a man. The Bible says I'm going to hell. The Koran says cut off my head.   (She patiently waits for him to finish and continues her gaze at him with her eyes of love. Malcolm softens and admits his terror.)   Amina   (Moves to the chair slowly and sits.)   I knew already. We've always known that some of our sons . . .   Malcolm   Were not men. Are you saying that you always knew That I was not a man, that I could never be A man?   Amina   (Softly) This is not new.   Malcolm   I didn't hear you.   Amina   I said this is not new.   (They look at each other.)   What is it you're waiting for me to do? Do you want me to act out? I can do that. Watch. Just give me a minute.   (She lowers her head briefly, hand to forehead, obviously concentrating.)   Malcolm   What are you doing?   Amina   I'm watching television. I'm reading the daily paper and Ebony magazine. I'm putting relaxer in my hair I'm putting on green contact lenses.  Now I'm ready to hate you.  To curse you out . . .   (Suddenly she springs to her feet. She begins very quietly but builds in intensity and volume as she goes on.)   You are pitiful. Pitiful. You hate yourself. You hate your father. You hate your manhood. The reason you love men Is because you can't be a man yourself, So you open your flesh to men, Like a woman does, taking men inside yourself Thereby coming as close to manhood as you can.   What did Cowboy say to his son? Does Cowboy know his son is a punk? Did you tell your daddy you love men Because you hate men, because you hate him?   Get out. Get out.   (Trying to regain her composure.)   I'm sorry, but I, I can't stand this. I can't love that you're not a man. And I don't know how you can stand yourself. Get out, just get away from me.   Malcolm   (He turns and begins to walk away slowly, then pauses.)   I knew you would hate me.   Amina   I don't hate you. I pity you. You hate you   Malcolm   Don't pity me. You made me. You raised me. Where do you think my love of men comes from? School? Ideas in books? White professors whispering Plato in my ear? Reading James Baldwin at night Looking for the juicy parts And finding homosexual love?   The hatred in the mirror, The morning after as I brush my teeth And feel like I can't get the stain Of a man's cum off my tongue? The failed attempts to fuck a woman? Or should I just have done Like the man around the corner, the one who fixed Our air conditioner, the one with two kids and A very lovely wife, the man who one day jumped up And just left home to live with his male lover?   Should I have taken you on that trip?   Or should I have just gone and found my father And shot him down for being a dog?   Amina   Malcolm, don't say anymore Don't say anymore, Just go away. Please go away. It'll be easier for you where nobody knows you And you can be something twisted.   Malcolm   (Malcolm tries to reach Amina. he crosses to her, wants to touch her, wants her to embrace him.)   You're still my mother. I still love you.   Amina   (Strikes him forcefully on the chest in a fury.)   Why can't you be a man? Why can't you be a man? Why can't you be a man? Why a freak? Why a faggot? Do you wear women's clothes: Pantyhose, lacy underwear, blouses, Slips, and lipstick?   (She collapses momentarily in his arms. When he embraces her, she backs away, slapping him twice.)   Be a man. Why you want to be a woman? We've got too many women now/ What we need is men. We need men.   Malcolm   (Sarcastically) Thanks. I needed that!   Amina   You see, I can act as big a fool As anyone else, but I also have other emotional vectors To guide my living.   (Long pause. They look at each other lovingly.)   Malcolm, be careful, lest you're dead of AIDS Before the year is out, Infected by someone whom you think Loves you.   Malcolm   Safe sex   Amina   Is that not somehow contradictory, Ironic, or at least paradoxical-- You need to protect yourself From your lover? You live in such a way That it is necessary to take precautions When you love someone. If that is the case Then where is the love?   Malcolm   We live in a time when love is at risk, When love is a risk.   Amina   And that ultimately is so sad Is it not? It is truly sad To live in a time When love is a risk.   Malcolm   Yes. But . . .   (He is at a loss for words. however, Amina cuts him off before he can collect his thoughts.)   Amina   And you know what is also sad about this age? As terrible as AIDS is, We women and our children, we Black women, Are the ones who are dying with no notice, No acknowledgment often, not even an obituary mention.   It is we dying, we infected, we the carriers Passing on the illnesses of our times-- And ignored, not even included as raw statistics. Many of us die from related diseases But the counters don't even tally our deaths Much less treat our lives.   I know it seems like I'm always talking woman talk But the silence around us is so incredible, So incredible . . .   (Silence, a long pause)   But you were going to say something. What?   Malcolm   I don't know.   (With a mixture of force and bewilderment)   I'm alive. I'm me, what I am, What I sometimes wish I wasn't, What I am struggling to learn to accept I'm here, in this time. I don't know. What else can I do?   Amina   Do you believe your great-great-grandfather Was a man?   Malcolm   What?   Amina   Your slave forefather, Was he a man?   Malcolm   Yes   Amina   Think of the time he lived in, The conditions under which he was forced To find a way to manifest his manhood, Cut off literally from land, from tongue/language, From self, castrated metaphorically And sometimes, indeed often times, castrated Literally. Think of him And what he faced, and the fortitude Of his manliness to overcome that To remain a man, be a man In an era of chattel slavery Think of the immensity of that Struggle for wholeness, for manhood And know that you are the descendant Of men who have had to piece their manhood Together in the eye of the hurricane, Be self-surgeons sewing together their severed Members.   Imagine that, Malcolm, my son. Rise above what you consider your limitations. If a slave could be a man Then certainly a free homosexual can.   Okay. Cut   (To audience)   Let's deal with this.   Is homosexuality a sickness?   Is it the sickness of white society Infecting us like so many people keep thinking?   Let's assume that it is.   (To Malcolm)   Let's assume you're sick and twisted.   Even if we assume that, the real question remains: What are you going to do?   You're here, on this planet, in this era, Whether we like you or not, Think you're normal or freakish, Healthy or sick, Whatever. The point is you're here And our responsibility to each other Is not to change each other But to help each other.   Do you really believe that your sexuality Is a dysfunctionality? That you are father-famished and therefore Gay because of the absence of a male? Do you really believe that if your father were here You would not be gay? Do you really swallow that madness?   Malcolm   We are dysfunctional. We were never, well maybe only for a moment! But mainly we were never a whole family.   Amina   What can any of us, Oppressed and exploited, What can any of us Know of a fully functional nuclear family? When were we ever simply Husband/wife/children family Except in our extended Bonding defiance of the society that told us We were less than ourselves because We were not family units, and at the same time Were constantly tearing us asunder?   Do you think we were family on auction block? In cotton fields and slave shack? And later in the ghettos And laboratory high rises?   If you believe That you are the way you are because of some social dysfunction In your family tree Then you are branding yourself pathological In the extreme as if night were all  There was to your day.   Malcolm   Were there ever any other gay men in our family?   Amina   If you open the closet in the hall, If you root around in the corners of the attic, If you dig in the crevices of basements, Go to the old picture books And look into the eyes of our blood . . . The felt hat worn across that great aunt's eye With a man's tie dividing her breasts,  The big-eyed youth hiding on the edge of the picture His hands clasped in his lap staring with terror At something way beyond the camera . . .   In the tear-strewn trail Of all those still-missing ones Who left home and disappeared Somewhere across the Rockets or into The soft belly of Europe, The cousin you never heard from again After he reached fifteen and left the church choir And had the beautiful voice That broke your heart to hear him Reluctantly sing goodbye, Or the one you only heard from through Occasional phone calls at odd times During some randomly selected decade . . .   Like I said, this is nothing new We just keep pretending we've never Dealt with all this before, pretending. But we are now no more sick Than we've ever been during this sojourn In the wilderness of being forced to make do, Striving, although often valiantly failing, To create wholeness from the twisted scraps Of what's left after labor rape And racist assault on our human selves.   (Pauses)   Dou you understand?   Malcolm   Somewhat, somehow, some parts . . .   (He starts to say something but can not find the words.)   Cut.   Amina   No! Don't cut. Don't turn from the difficult. Don't cut, deal with it! Stop looking for alien blueprints When you have as birthright All the tools you need to be, A chest full of all the sinew and nexus Needed to construct a whole human being. Don't cut. Deal.   You ain't dead until you stop singing, And if you don't sing, Then you're not fully alive.   Break past this tendency to surrender Just because living may mean choosing to die Rather than accepting and accommodating madness, And if not death, at least choosing A form of sanity that the status quo Will tell you is insanity. You make yourself less than a man When you choose to live with a chain on your mind, Your beautiful infinite spirit harnessed In the carcass of a negro, a dead thing Who stops thinking, stops creating In a confused and ultimately futile effort To reach detente with oppression.   (She laughs. Deeply.)   Deal   Malcolm   Cut!   Amina   (Disappointedly) Malcolm.   Malcolm   No. I'm ready.   (Smiles.)   I'm just going to do my entrance again.   Amina   Okay   Malcolm   (Exits, then re-enters.)   Mama   (He goes to her. They embrace.)   I have something to tell you.   Amina   Sit down, Malcolm. Wait, let me get a chair.   (She brings a chair from the rear and sits next to him.)   You want some coffee?   Malcolm   (Nervously) No.   Amina   You hungry?   Malcolm   No.   Amina   What is it?   Malcolm   I don't know how to say it.   Amina   Just say it.   Malcolm   I'm afraid you'll hate me.   Amina   I love you   (Touches his face tenderly.)   Malcolm   Like you hate my father   Amina   You are not your father. I love you.   Malcolm   You'll hate me like you hate him.   Amina   No.   (Pauses.)   I'm glad that you're releasing your fears, Telling me what teeth are at your throat, What's causing you to turn your head And seal your lips. I'm glad You're sharing fear, Because fear is the secret destroyer Of struggle, and the only solution Is shared strength. Alone, you can never be as strong Or as gentle, for that matter, as when You are intimate with someone With whom you share struggle,  I'm glad, yes.   Facing the debilitations of our own Deficiencies, all the major things we feel Are wrong with ourselves, and being Able to share that bitter drink With another in effect Releasing the repressed self, That self so often branded ugly and Repulsive, the thing whose very removal Leaves a gapping open wound Sensitive and vulnerable to touch And hurt, and then too The bitterness of misuse By those close enough to smell the blood, Facing all of that and finding out, After we dry our eyes That those deformities were only paper tigers, Props held fast in place by our own refusal To clear the deck . . .   (Pauses.)   Much of this is so abstract. I know you, you're not your father. You understand? Not that you can't love whomever you choose to love. It's just that it would really be good to be able To point to you as an example of Black manhood . . .   Malcolm   Malcolm   (laughingly, bitterly)   Yeah, people be pointing at me all right, But not as no example of Black manhood.   You've seen me in the street, A young man whose effeminacy Made you wince because I so obviously Looked like what I am And it makes you uncomfortable.   Amina   Yes, and I've wondered how terrible Your torment must be To be the way you are, Knowing how cruelly streets Will callously treat you When you are like that . . . To see you young and defying All the social images Of young manhood you've been taught . . . I've seen you and wondered How I would see you If it was not you but Some other mother's child Whom I saw walking sideways Into the day, but defiant still, and, yes, Though I would rather you go a different way, Still, not only is this sway your walk, the walk You must walk if you are to be true to yourself, But also I have come to admire your bravery Your daring to be so out of step.   (Pauses. Turns to the audience.)   We are not just what society shapes us To be, we are also what we become, What we make of ourselves, and that is The Most most difficult knowledge to grasp Movers, with their minds made up, Can make waves, waves which will Give motion to the ocean, Shake the ship of society and stitch a flag Out of song sent soaring into the atmosphere, Your smile a people's anthem.   (She starts a spontaneous dancing in place.)   Oh it feels so good to be a creative human being. Just the thought of self-determination Makes me dance. Yes, If you're looking for an answer Start with everything you can do And build up to doing everything you can't do now But want to do, everything Do we have to do this again? Now that I think about it, Yes, surely, every day, every day, Every day we have to reach into ourselves, Find the sun, create the sheltering skies Under which we can live, And this god-light is inside the dark of self. Your brightest light is revealed Only when you open your deepest self, Give birth to yourself.   (The lights fade down. In the dark we hear Malcolm and Amina.)   Speak, Malcolm!   Malcolm   (Addresses the audience through the dark.)   Whether you, or me, or anyone else Can dig it or not, I exist. Whether you think I'm a freak Or I'm just another human being, I exist. No Matter what you think, And for that matter, No matter what I think, I exist.   Amina   Yes, you exist.   Malcolm   And you're going to have to deal with this man.   Amina   (Laughs. Exits with Malcolm)   Go on. Malcolm, my son My son--a man, yes. That's what men do. You force the world to make space for You. Yes. And you sing in your own tongue. Not the male master's language, But your own words fashioned to express Your own realities, Just as I will speak my tongue And will reach for our tongues to be Entwined.   Yes.   Singing, the yes of life!   Yes.

*   *   *   *   *

 

photo by Alex Lear

 

 

all that's black ain't brother

 

            1.

            white people

            come in all colors

 

            their systems sink

            past skin

            anchoring into bone, mind

            flesh, heart and soul

 

            it is geno-suicide

            to minstrel aliens

            but some of us do die

            strangled by our own

            hands

 

            2.

            some of us

            selfishly think that

            self starts

            and stops

            with i

 

            dream not of peace

            but money, don't

            dance, hate

            our energy

            and lust for

            an equal opportunity

            to turn the screws

 

            see that

            black boy over there,

 

            he's white.

 

—kalamu ya salaam

photo by Alex Lear

 

 

THE MOMENT OF THE FIRST DAY

1.

people get married all the time. but not in congo square. eight o’clock in the morning — there is a softness about that time of day in place de congo, the sun has not yet risen past the trees, barely cleared the rooftops of nearby buildings. the birds have recently finished feeding and are chirping their contentment.

 

though this late may morning is early summer, the atmosphere is still pleasingly cool. instead of a breeze, the new day gently air-caresses like a lover alternately kissing and blowing unhurried exhales on intimate skin through partially parted lips. big, full smiling lips. laughing lips. tickling. lips. like that.

 

there are moments when romance is real. when every little thing really is alright. when people do lean close and be touching—admittedly rare but nonetheless simply beautiful.

 

i quietly draped my arm over nia’s shoulders and cozied close. whispered something, anything.

 

i wonder how many lovers danced together here during slavery times, here on this meeting ground just outside what was then the city proper, beyond the ramparts, the city’s earthen defense line, out on the plain next to the bend in the canal where the houmas and choctaws came to trade, and where our enslaved ancestors assembled to barter food and handicrafts, and to make music, sing and dance?

 

i wonder how many lovers met here, secretly in public—secretly because their “masters” didn’t know the full import of these assemblies, didn’t know the get togethers were also trysts. and in public because the community of captives all knew juba loved juline, were aware elise was dancing for cudjoe, and had no doubt that esmé with her brown eyes round as spanish coins cast shyly toward the ground was glowing in the spotlight of josé’s focused stare as her slow twirling kicked up bouquets of dust. how many black hearts have been entwined here?

 

who can know the specific answer? look. we are still meeting here without the consent of the authorities — we woke up, journeyed here howsoever we travel, and voila, requesting no permit, we gather a community of lovers. love needs no permission, and certainly black love requires no government approval.

 

2.

true beauty is elegant, a curved exhilaration without an iota of wasted motion or excessive flash. moreover, in an african aesthetic, elegance includes rhythm.

 

a straight line is monotonous, rhythmless. rhythm is but another name for diversity in motion, and in form, diversity is the curve. hence there are no straight lines on a beautiful human body, every would-be straightness arcs, curves.

 

cassandra is all curves. even ric with his honed physique, his steel-cabled arms, rippled with veins and muscular development: curves.

 

senghor said, the negro abhors a straight line. i would add, so does nature, and i would rather be in tune with nature than with rational abstractions. even light bends under the influence of gravity.

 

moreover, beyond the arc and the lean, when dealing with the human, surface prettiness alone does not give you beauty. physical perfection without inner warmth is cold, and all real human beauty is warm, reflects the rush of blood, the healthy heat of a passionate body, a beating heart…

 

cassandra is covered shoulder to toe in a sheath of dusky sorrel material embroidered with a flowered pattern in deep violet. she is holding a bouquet of velvety orchids in what appears to be an invisible basket: the soft off-white blossoms with delicate purple highlights dangle in an arrangement shaped like a stunning cluster of semi-sweet concord grapes. sand’s toenails are lacquered a burgundy to match the purplish-red (or is it reddish-purple) of her form-fitting, backless dress.

 

ric stands on two feet but leans majestically like a pine tree seeking sunlight. he is wearing cream (shirt) and brown (slacks), and i mean “wearing” those colors, in fact, he is wearing them out. plus, his skin has the smooth darkness of a country midnight. he is smiling without moving his lips. the luster of his skin is smiling. i imagine his eyes are smiling, but i cannot see his pupils through his shades. even the men are admiring how beautiful ric is. the women look at him and hold their breath.

 

i bet you two centuries ago, in 1799, on some may day a cool black man stood next to the enchanting winsomeness of a saucer-eyed, dark brown erzulie and their community of friends gathered around them. and smiled deeply felt, seriously contented smiles just like we are smiling now.

 

3.

the formal ceremony, such as it is, is extremely brief—not much was rendered to ceasar on that morning. carolyn jefferson administered the vows and signed the paper the state uses to hold one legally accountable. but the real signification of commitment came not from a mark on paper but from a leap over a rod.

 

sand’s friend vera had crafted a broom done up in french vanilla-colored raffia wrapped on the handle and outer straws spray painted dark purple (what a soothing combination). the matrimonial staff lay in the dust between pale, pale yellow candles. ric lights one, sand lights the other. they stand. hold hands. and jump.

 

why would educated individuals carry on a tradition from slavery?—only those who don’t believe in either ancestors or community would ask such a hopeless question. only those removed from the security of community would sneer at jumping the broom. to jump together is not a reminder of slavery, but rather a declaration of self-determination.

 

4.

afterwards we all went over to ric&sand’s apartment. we set up tables on the sidewalk, chairs on the front porch, and played music inside the house—hard wood floors, shiny with hand applied wax, buffed to an eat-off-the-floor sheen. candles in every room, flickering, some of them scented. here the quiet has a presence you can not ignore, like a precocious child, grinning, hands behind the back: guess what i got, and she stands before you until you tickle her or until he flashes deep dimples and covers his mouth where his front teeth are missing. inside ric&sand’s shotgun apartment, the rooms were happy like that.

 

the walls were bare except for strategically placed photographs hung in carefully selected frames. one frame is green wood. there are two pictures. sand at two with a hat slanted jauntily on her head, and a boyish ric that looks just like mannish ric except the clothes are smaller and from an earlier era. but even then the angle of a budding lean is obvious.

 

there are trays of food on the tables prepared by a local african restaurant: plantain, a spinach dish called jama-jama, a coconut rice, and chicken on skewers with a red sauce on one table, fruit and drinks on the other. a gigantic multi-fruit cream tart in a white cardboard box (the pastry didn’t last beyond a quarter hour).

 

we started the reception with nuptial toasts (libationally, i poured a sip of my juice at the foot of a tree). then we read poems and afterwards toasted some more. sand’s friend vera impishly offers: here’s mud in your eye. we all laugh. most of us are black, but there are latinas here and a sprinkle of americanos who thankfully think of themselves as human rather than the aggressive/impossible purity of white.

 

if you passed us that morning, people lounging on the porch, sipping on juice or beer or wine or sucking the nectar from cold watermelon and chilled cantaloupe, if you had seen us you would have thought this was one of those impressionistic paintings of happy darkies deep in the south circa some idyllic antebellum era, except, we, of course, were culturally afro-centric, in love with life and each other, savoring the day and dreaming about nothing but a peace-filled future.

 

around three in the mid-afternoon, people begin drifting off, their spirits thoroughly rejuvenated, satiated and smiling. before leaving, we exchange hugs. everything beautiful deserves to be embraced.

 

5.

so this is how we avoid insanity and suicide. we fly to love.

 

i had been thinking about ric&sand’s upcoming marriage as i drove around the city. that’s when an image gathered me into its center. you know how you will see something, know that the image is important but not be able to figure the specific meaning. this happened to me a day or so before the wedding. what i wrestled to understand then, is now so clear.

 

three green birds flew by. their feathered emeraldness disappearing into the sheltering palms that line elysian fields avenue. lime-colored bird feathers fusing with the camouflage of  drooping olive-dark tree leaves.

 

in urban climes free beauty is seldom seen. amid regimentation disguised as daily life, true beauty appears but briefly. we spend eight hours working, a hour in transit to and fro the yoke, another hour or so trying to cool out from the yoke, maybe two hours doing things we need to do for the house but can’t do cause we be at the yoke, and, of course, we spend at least six hours sleeping to get ready for, yep, the yoke. the yoke ain’t no joke. and we really think we are free?

 

actually, we are so harassed by being city dwellers in postmodern america that we can hardly be sure what we would be like if we were unyoked, what we would discover in the world. who knows how hip we would be if we were unyoked. at the reception i joke on the porch: if i was in charge, this (sweeping my eyes across the array of relaxing black folk, couples snuggled up, singles sipping red dog or nibbling on jama-jama), this would be what monday is like. well.

 

i have never before seen uncaged green birds flying through the blueness of crescent city skies. the rare wonder of such a sighting almost made me doubt myself. did i actually spy three pea green streaks threading through the plain of weekday? after all, i could have been delusional. optical illusions are far more common than the miracle of genuine beauty on the wing. maybe it was pigeons. maybe i was sun blinded. the day so bright, maybe my sun-stabbed eyeballs were incapable of clarity. maybe my perceptual acuity had been mutated into fantasy and silliness.

 

nah, i was there. clearly these creatures were flying. whatever they were. zip and gone. but that is the way of life in the urban jumble. anything original is rare. everything self-determined is even rarer than originality — and undoubtedly love and beauty had to be on the fly, dodging the black and white manacles of what this society pretends is the lassez faire of living color.

 

and why were there three little birds—not a couple, but a community of birds, free and green? actually the cluster of their existence is the answer to the question of the why of their existence. they were three because it takes a community to be free—one is a goner, and two won’t last long, it takes at least three to be free.

 

6.

we will remember ric and sand’s wedding day—the first day we wore this couple as an amulet over our hearts. ric and sand’s first day becomes another jewel  on the necklace of black love.

 

people get married all the time, but rarely is there this much love quietly shared. these are the days we shall surely remember, the gauge we shall use to determine how good is whatever the next goodness we encounter.

 

thank you ric&sand, for a moment, for a morning when the universe was beautiful, and peace and love were more than a slogan optimistically signed at the end of a desperate love letter sent to someone far, far away.

 

—kalamu ya salaam 

 

 

THE CALL OF THE WILD

            

      Poetry is not an answer

            Poetry is a calling

                        a vision that does not vanish

                        just because nothing

                        concrete comes along, or

                        because the kingdom of heaven

                        is under some tyrant's foot

 

            Poetry is not a right

            Poetry is a demand

                        to be left alone

                        or joined together or whatever

                        we need to live

 

            Poetry is not an ideology

                        poets choose life

                        over ideas, love people

                        more than theories, and really would

                        prefer a kiss to a lecture

 

            Poetry

 

            Poetry is not a government

            Poetry is a revolution

                        guerrillas -- si!

                        politicians -- no!

 

            Poetry is always hungry

                        for all that is

                        forbidden

                        poetry never stops drinking

                        not even after the last drop, if we

                        run out of wine poets will

                        figure a way to ferment rain

 

            Poetry wears taboos

                        like perfume with a red shirt

                        and a feather in the cap,

                        sandals or bare feet, and

                        sleeps nude with the door unlocked

 

            Poetry cuts up propriety into campfire logs and sits

                        around proclaiming life's glories far into

                        each starry night, poetry burns prudence

                        like it was a stick of aromatic incense or

                        the even more fragrant odor of the heretic

                        aflame at the stake, eternally unwilling

                        to swear allegiance

                        to foul breathed censors

                        with torches in their hands

 

            Poetry smells like a fart

                        in every single court of law and smells

                        like fresh mountain air

                        in every dank jail cell

 

            Poetry is unreliable

            Poetry will always jump the fence

                        just when you think poets are behind you

                        they show up somewhere off the beaten path

                        absent without leave, beckoning for you

                        to take your boots off and listen to the birds

 

            Poetry is myopic and refuses to wear glasses

                        never sees no trespassing signs and always

                        prefers to be up touching close to everything

                        skin to skin, skin to sky, skin to light

                        poetry loves skin, loathes coverings

 

            Poetry is not mature

                        it will act like a child

                        to the point of social embarrassment

                        if you try to pin poetry down

                        it will throw a fit

                        yet it can sit quietly for hours

                        playing with a flower

 

            Poetry has no manners

                        it will undress in public everyday of the week

                        go shamelessly naked at high noon on holidays

                        and play with itself, smiling

 

            Poetry is not just sexual

                        not just monosexual

                        nor just homosexual

                        nor just heterosexual

                        nor bisexual

                        or asexual

                        poetry is erotic and is willing

                        any way you want to try it

 

            Poetry

 

            Poetry has no god

                        there is no church of poetry

                        no ministers and certainly no priests

                        no catechisms nor sacred texts

                        and no devils either

                        or sin, for that matter, original

                        synthetic, cloned or otherwise, no sin

 

            Poetry

 

                        In the beginning was the word

                        and from then until the end

                        let there always be

 

            Poetry!

 

—kalamu ya salaam