WordUp - kalamu’s words

FREEDOM—A Haitian Rant

After we ran our oppressors into the sea

You have since never tired trying to run us into the ground

After the earth opened its jaws to swallow us

Your assistance rushed in to bury us

You say we can not govern, our government is corrupt

Who kidnapped Aristide, the president we elected, a priest

who made our world work and not simply prayed for miracles,

in fact, we elected him twice, and twice you took your guns and

made him leave and would not let us vote for anything he represented—

our government is not corrupt, corrupt is the government you put in

our president’s place, our government is in exile

You swear we are not capable of caring for ourselves, perhaps

We are too busy servicing your sex tourists, making your mickey mouse

clothes, and sewing your balls you love to play with

You say everyone envies your freedom

Yet it was our soldiers who saved George Washington’s ass

in Savannah when you were fighting for your freedom but

you never give us credit for helping to create your freedom

and worse yet when you got your precious freedom you did not

give freedom to all your citizens—we in Haiti were the first truly

free country in all of the Americas, everyone was declared free

in our new republic, everyone red, black, white, yellow or brown—

no one was a slave in free Haiti, it took you almost a century

to free your enslaved people, yes not until 1865

did you even halfway declare all your male citizens as Haiti

was free on day one of our birth (tell me I am wrong

but I believe you did not let women vote until 1920)

no one who knows our history envies your 2/5 free history

You say we are poor but when will you give us back the money you sent

marines to steal from us in 1915 when you invaded us and took over

our banks, no matter how long a thief keeps what he stole, no matter how

many generations gone, he is still a thief, which is why

 one of your presidents, the paedophile Jefferson who

took up with a thirteen year old, famously said:

when I think that god is just, I tremble

for the fate of my country

When we think that god is just, we just smile and pray the day of

reckoning will soon come, beautiful as a Jacmel sunrise

We are Haitian, we love freedom

who are you and what do you love?

—kalamu ya salaam

"I Don't Want To Go There"

A man was lost. Everywhere he went, no matter whom he met, he remained lost. He grew tired of not finding his way but everyone he asked where was the way would tell him something different. One said, it is far away, over the mountains, across the seas. Another said, no way exists, we are all lost. A third, smiled and said I am searching too, do you want to come with me. And so on. The search was frustrating.

Finally, he asked a child where was the way? The child asked where do you want to go? The man said to a better place, a place where there is no hunger, no war, no greed; everybody shares and lives together in peace and harmony. The child replied that sounds like heaven but I don’t want to go there. The man was stunned. And why not, he asked the child. Because you have to die to get there and I’ve just started to live.

—kalamu ya salaam

old men dream

at night i pull you through

the waterfall of my desire —

your invisible caress ripples,

cascading touches whetting my skin's imagination

once when i was talking

about learning philosophy

i was actually tasting the browness

of your breast warm in the soft of my mind's mouth

yes, i know what to do with the ephemerality of the erotic

how to turn passion into poems and work—a sub rosa motor

secretly powering metaphorical image boats crisply skimming across

the intimate surface of creativity's lake, or plumbing my emotional depths

every poem is moistened by at least one drop of eros even when

my brain is fully clothed standing starkly still on dry sand

—kalamu ya salaam

I Look But What Is There To See?

look

ing for

you is like

standing

on the track

staring at the space

left

by a slow train

what done long

gone

around the bend

only

the whistle sound

faintly

in the air

and the ground’s

vibration

felt down

to your toes

nothing

more.

—kalamu ya salaam

_____________________

Kalamu ya Salaam – vocals

Stephan Richter – clarinet

Wolfi Schlick – reeds

Frank Bruckner – guitar

Mathis Mayer - cello

Georg Janker - bass

Michael Heilrath - bass

Roland HH Biswurm - drums

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

Open Skies

/for Ua/

even though every body has a nut to crack

some of us are exceptional souls, indigo-shaded fragrant

diaphanous flower petals rather than violet machete fingers

what carnivorous capitalists call weakness is instead the quiet

honor of our refusal to carry their shit inside our smiles

for some of us rejection of the status quo is not a choice

but a necessity by any means necessary

even if we have to flow out the window leaving pre-measured

medication untouched as our silent bodies stay behind

swaying in front of a perplexed battery of physicians

vainly trying to ascertain where to do escaped black minds go

they'll never know the healthy stealth of an  ex-slave

fleeing hell on earth by hurling her spirit straight

into the welcoming blue warmness of open skies

—kalamu ya salaam

HOW DID YOU THINK OF THAT?

every day i wear a new body & fervently pray

via my mother tongue for a fertile mind, i am rejuvenated

by the imaginative capacity to live beyond legislated boundaries

& i am blessed with the magnanimity of baby fingers on both hands

non-judgmental naiveté enables me to freshly finger

the personal rawness of my every intimate emotion

i am clad solely in the serenity of a hurricane's eye & limited only by

the holiness of death--the only reality that seemingly never dies

powered by the vibrant blue magic of our secular/sacred music

contextualized within the expansive blackness of explosive sunlight

i am propelled by forces and feelings deep as the red velocity

of shuddering sex uncontrollable as gut clutching conjugal climax

making my penis scream the semen of me spurting a million sperm

each seeking to pierce the egg of creative experiences

—kalamu ya salaam

he gets off at 4:30 / it's 6:09 now

here...   

an unencumbered softness

my naked breast / taste me

the luminous curve of crimson

lips eager to flutter

across bearded dark fullness / kiss me

the form fitting expectancy

of tense eager arms / embrace me

a moist tangled crescent

immodestly blanketing

my fertility / enter me

none of me is mine

all of me is yours

here am i / where are you?

—kalamu ya salaam

Sand Cycle—Black Shine Rising

(a turning/for Cassandra)

i do not desire to be ordinary nor special

what i seek is the irreducible simplicity of relevance

i am what warm sun is to planted seeds

cloistered in dark earth

do not mistake me for conventional ground

for i am light

i might never reproduce but my transformation

is its own birth

movement is the essential property of my luminosity

i can no more be confined than can a sunbeam be boxed

though despair sometimes assails me, like every good african

i rise from conformity's floor singing, dancing even when

my face be awash with pain tears my shining lucidity remains

free, thank god, of self pity's enchaining tyranny

—kalamu ya salaam

I Thought Of This As I Passed In The Hallway And You Looked Up While Drying Off After Stepping Out Of Your Sunday Shower

in a lover's eye one can see something, perhaps, a glint of the potent

beauty we all long to be when we giddily cast our fate to the whims

of desire, and even if we have never pranced high steeping at the front

of satisfaction's parade most of us have nevertheless stood close

enough to the drumming to reflect the shudder of sensuality coiled

within the trembling of impatient flesh awaiting the release of touch

who needs to apologize for feeling good, for opening the soul

to the bliss experience, especially when we consider our hearts

observe neither stopwatch nor timetable upon tasting the sincerity

sweet of a tear or two when a special person voluntarily confesses

their resolve to attempt to be better than the frailty we all inevitably are

whenever carrying the ball of contradictions commonly called love

in this briefness we transubstantiate, visit the angelic state whose reaching

we humans are capable of grasping but oh so seldom achieve

—kalamu ya salaam

what can i say?

(to friends who have separated)

breaking apart two who had become one seems criminally

wrong nevertheless there are those of us who

can not stay once love has gone

it deeply hurt me to deeply hurt my ex

but i did, and, because i did, i know

the cruel charity of not staying when i realized "i had to go"

there is a loneliness that doesn't desire company

a weariness which sleep can never erase

here we unavoidably lick the lead of our failures, a taste

which poisons the sweetness of every yesterday

i continue to love you both dearly and will miss

your wholeness surely—what more need be said?

when one heart is broken both sides are bloodied—it is

impossible to talk to one without thinking of the other

—kalamu ya salaam