WordUp - kalamu’s words

Echoing Eshu's Love Songs

 (for "eshu" ethelbert miller)

man, the relevance of coincidence is a motherfucker

just today, walked down commercial street

the business end of provincetown

in and out of shops, paused here, there

entered where attracted by something

backed out and continued

found this used bookstore (found? 

must be careful of my verbs

i am not a white man

the store was there before i

got there) entered 

they had a poetry bookcase

bought 4 books: sam cornish - songs

of jubilee, kimiko hahn - air pocket,

akua lezli hope - embouchure, and

e. ethelbert miller - where

are the love poems

for dictators? / before midnight

had read, scanned or run thru

them all. yes, of course

i knew about dictators,

have run into a few before

on an occasion or two

or should i say ill-occasion

have even been one, but

i do not own the book on that

there are no love songs

for dictators, not even

i'll be glad when you're dead

you rascal you, cause even that

has a bit of affection, anyway

i think it one of your better books

you were on to something

or maybe simply on something

or was it someone

who had your mind so open

you could feel the impress

of another's smile, another's

grimace, and you could walk that

shit home backwards and blind

like a beggar going back and forth

between their favorite corner

and the poor piece of space 

they call a crib

so then i get this email from you. and all i can say is damn, and look out the window a second into the dark and know that either god is laughing or i should be because the universe sure enough knows how to confound the wisdom of we poor wretched fools who make the mistake of trying to understand it—the universe, that is—and i started to wondering if anyone ever really knows why their lover loves them, actually that's not quite true, 'cause where i started with was wondering does nia know why i love her, do i know, is love knowable or simply, if we are lucky, embracable? like who knows where the song comes from or goes to, we just lucky when we can hit the notes and carry a tune... like that, and now i'm free typing this without knowing where it's coming from or where i will end up, just knowing i wanted to let you know, that i hear you, brother, i hear your songs and echo the rhythms: ain't no love song for dictators, for love is beyond the frequency of the ears of those who consciously hurt others

—kalamu ya salaam

Emilio Santiago 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—kalamu ya salaam

Some Thing I Saw 

When You Were Not Looking

a sadness as you laughed

a look old soldiers

permanently scarred by war have

an elegance (you clasped

your skirt as you climbed

the steps) equal parts

weariness

and endurance, a stubborn

grace

under pressure

a smile deep & oh so knowing

as if to say this too, this brief joy,

will pass, and then you turn aside

look askance, lower your eyes 

momentarily before unflinchingly

facing whatever music might be playing

in the quietness of your heavy

voice glows a tough candle

determined to flame

even though life is no

gentle breeze

a dance of raw emotions 

flickers across your face

as i move away

your shoulders shake

from the back i can not tell,

are you laughing or shuddering

 why am i saying this

i don't know, i think maybe

it is just my way

of trying to comprehend

the bittersweet beauty

of something i saw

when you were

not looking...

—kalamu ya salaam

I LIVE IN THE MOUTH OF HISTORY

i live in the mouth of history

but wish that civilization would spit me out

modernity's split tongue lies, progress' white teeth bite

& the ancient seed of my blackness is never swallowed

though my weary bones are cracked and tender marrow sucked

i live in the belly of genocide

the acid of injustice daily eating away at my gentleness

separating me into useful proteins, vitamins & invaluable

human fibers which nourish the blood of a body which rejects

the bulk of my being & shits me out of the ass of a demented society

which self righteously accuses me of smelling up the place

i live for the day when i can wake up

without voices of morality telling me to hate being who i am

without images of consumption suggesting the brightest life is white

without broadcasts of commercialism prostituting my womanself

without sirens of authority seeking to incarcerate black male genitalia

without bullets of unfriendly fire lacerating the social air

i live for the day when i can wake up

& see morning smiles blackening my mirror

& caress the intimate nudity of all whom i love

& inhale a bouquet of communal unity aromas

& hear a liturgy of love & respect chanted every hour

& taste tomorrow in all its bittersweet complexity

i live for that day & love the night

even as a prisoner in the skin of humanity

whether as ancestor, advocate or spirit unborn

i was, am and will continue to be

a dangerous rock in the mouth of this century's history

—kalamu ya salaam

KISS THE FROG

(A Poem With Substance But Without Form/

It Made Itself As It Went Along)

            "There is never any end. There are always new sounds to imagine, new feelings to get at. And always there is the need to keep purifying these feelings and sounds so that we can really see what we've discovered in its pure state. So that we can see more and more clearly what we are. In that way, we can give to those who listen the essence, the best of what we are. But to do that at each stage, we have to keep on cleaning the mirror."

                                                                        —John William Coltrane

i am not certain what i am writing, where this task will take me, why and from whence the words stream forth, even what impels me to open my skin to the radiation from a computer screen--my style is such that i now reach for a keyboard before a pencil or pen, there is a sensation pleasingly tactile for me in tapping the keys, tactile in the same way i have heard others who don't like computers describe the manual motion of noting, the heft of the fountain pen, ink flowing, or the scrape of graphite as the pencil marks the page, you can actually hear the pencil point swoshing bumpily over the paper without benefit of the liquidity of ink to smooth its moving—but i write anyway because beyond the creativity, the profession, the hosannas i sometimes receive for something i've written, beyond the mundane, exploration itself is exciting, especially when i am exploring what is presumably the known yet is ever changing and never accurately charted, when i am uncovering the interior me.

who—or should i say what writer, what serious artist?—does not know the self, has not examined closely, with or without aid of some kind of mirror, the mind being the chief reflector, but really candid talks with lovers, children, parents and lifelong friends giving a more true image, talks when words just tumble forth without the constraint of consideration weighing them, those freewheeling conversations where we actually say everything, withhold nothing, and leave with our mouths atingle, sort of like a sip of carbonated water rinsing away whatever taste was already there. what i'm saying is that—i mean what i'm writing, it's just that for me writing is a form of "saying," a textual sounding of what i feel or think or both—anyway, what i'm trying to get to is not only the old saw about the unexamined life not being worth living, i am going further, i am blowing trane's tune when trane spoke about keeping the mirror clean, that's what i want: unrelenting honesty with myself, the facing of all my foibles and fantasies, my accomplishments as well as my failures, especially my omissions when, for whatever reason, i lay back when i should have propelled myself forward. the exploration of the self is the intrepid journey, or at least one would like to think of oneself as being intrepid in investigating the self, but isn't it true that if there is one spirit we all fear it is the shadow self, that part of us which usually goes unexamined, the persona whose face we deign not kiss for fear our lips land on the warty countenance of the frog that croaks inside everyone of us, the frog, the secret-knowing, fly-eating, maladjusted, toad-ugly, anti-social night creature who resides at the bottom of our personality wells, splashes around in our deepest water and just waits, just waits...

—kalamu ya salaam

Weigh Anchor

it's moving

on time, the skies are clear

the tattered sails are mended, those same

sails which would not, or so it seemed,

carry us any further, your look

in the car outside the park

after the interview on the radio, my

weary weight sagging into the passenger

seat beside you, head thrown all the way back,

eyes closed and nobody, not even you, knowing

where i was at that moment, there was a hole

in me below the water line, i had to stop

to repair and though you rode proudly

high in the water your rudder was gone

this bay

of us shown nowhere on our maps

suddenly found on our transitional coast, we look

up and see we, you plug holes, i fix rudder,

and when we are through what do we do,

linger, no, this is harbor but not home,

what we have shared it is now time to leave

we weigh emotional anchors and set sail

each to another place that the other

is not going

—kalamu ya salaam

My Shoes Are Off

when i think of you

i take my shoes off, would take

off all my clothes, but then if someone

walked in the door they might

not quite understand

why

i sit

reared back in my chair

nude

perfectly relaxed

smiling

and thinking

about

the sound

of your voice

a thousand miles away

—kalamu ya salaam

It Is Raining

the rain comes down very slow

& consults with the night

& brightens the sidewalks,

& makes allusions to a beautiful feeling inside;

i see it

& imagine some magnificent slow dance we do

all over the air is getting good,

the raindrops are making curious

cross rhythms on the window panes

it is raining; thinking of you

—kalamu ya salaam

Whenever/

though ununited on a daily basis

we remain close as skin, significant

as dreams wherein

one could never be untwinned

as long as the other lives

even when connections come infrequent

as the rouge arrival of comets

the relation remains constant

—the recycle

of sun warmed water

uprising

            out of life's surging sea

            & returning eventually

            a gentle falling

            translucent 

            rain

            wetting

            the dark

            of our

            receptive

            earth

—kalamu ya salaam

down to earth

         /in house

yr silent smile is feeding

the tender screams

of my emerging ecstasy

i float above you &

eloquently flow

into the receptive wet

of yr patiently powerful

sensuality, the deep suck

of yr wide lips, yr

insistent nibble

of my hard male nipples

i am running for the border

but you are enfolding me into

the limitlessness of yr

wide open spaces

& when i can no longer steer

the controls of my soaring, i

collapse into the safety

net of yr laughing arms ready

to receive and caress my breathless

body, thrashing and heaving, urgent

as a dark fish flailing

outside the security of water

over my head

there is a roof

yet stars nonetheless

are exploding in my eyes,

yr irresistible gravity

has gripped all my strategic

satellites & enforced the

joyous disintegration of reentry

my burly, black & bearded face falls

slow floating to yr undulating earth

and effortlessly buries itself

into the welcoming nude

warmth of yr pulsing brown

breasts which invite me to pause,

to dream, to rest, reflect

within the wonderful

world of women

man is an alien

constantly seeking

to revisit the moment

of his birth

—kalamu ya salaam