Beneath the bridge
(A 2006 eulogy for North Claiborne Avenue
from Canal Street down to Elysian Fields)
beneath the bridge on claiborne avenue, there,
where the mardi gras indians used to go and offer up their colorful vows to never bow down as they trodded around mean streets, freely treating our eyeballs to the most prettiest, feathered, multi-hued suits that any man could ever hope to sew and wear in any given lifetime, they hollered the chants of saints, their eyes burning with the fire of the guardians of the flame sounding out sacred syllables in a language without name, words whose meanings we could not specify but whose dynamic intentions none of us could deny;
where once tall oaks grew spreading magnificent branches that embraced whole families of revelers joyfully enjoying a home-cooked holiday brunch, iron horseshoes clanging as poppa p threw a dead ringer and junior dug a serving spoon into aunt juanita’s mustard-colored potato salad while ambrose sat with his latest girl friend snuggling in his lap, lying through his gold-capped teeth about how much money he won betting on the ponies last week and how he was paying for this whole spread out of just a small portion of the purse he achieved when he selected a horse whose number was the same as this girlfriend’s birth date or was it the thirty-something double digit that was both her bust and her butt tape measurement?;
where the concrete construction of a federal expressway created a sound-box that high school bands rolled through inter-threading the ebony thighs of teenage girls with aural ribbons of raucous marching music played with a buck-jump beat the song’s composer never intended or imagined, shouted out with an upful, youthful swagger whose chocolate sweetness was so deep that all you could do was smile, and smile as the parade provided a sonic prescription for whatever ailed you;
where along either side of the street used to thrive haberdasheries (which offered everything worth wearing, from congressional sky pieces to tailored peg-legged pants dyed a diversity of tints & shades selected from a rainbow of pigments that made technicolor seem dull, not to mention stacy adams shoes whose shine was so gleaming you did not need a mirror);
where doctor’s offices and pharmacies, grocery stores and mortuaries, flower shoppes and butcher stalls testified to the industriness of an urban community still shaking country dust off its boots, run right up next to passé-blanc dynasties that had been resident in these homes since the slavery time placages that produced their pale-skinned lineages;
where houston’s school of music was on one side and the negro musicians’ union was on the other, and barbershops and hair salons hosted weekly informal town hall meetings at which every manner of contemporary problem was advised and analyzed in betwixt the salacious shoo-shoo of who did what to whom and why;
where a veritable smorgasbord of eateries such as levatas seafood which specialized in chilled half-shelf oysters deftly shucked as you stood at the rail exchanging mirthful curses with a man whose one good eye could unerringly spy the seam in a tightly sealed oyster’s shell, and the lemon juice squeezed and rubbed onto working hands to eradicate the smell of sucking on and swallowing warm crawfish washed down with quarts of cold beer, or the two huge italians that had a grill called pennies where the sizzling hot sausage was so good, so hot the cap never had to come off the tobasco bottle, and the french bread was fresh and the lettuce crisp and the tomatoes so sweet you lifted a slice and slid it into your mouth grinning in delight at the wonderfully tart taste bursting forth, alerting your salivary glands to the poboy treat shortly to follow;
where music factories called nightclubs and music emporiums better known as joints like the fabled club 77 at which the sunday night sets lasted til monday morning wherefrom some patrons would head straight to work without seeing their homes which they had left on saturday not to return until late after-work on monday where upon one fell out totally oblivious to anything until tuesday morning, hang-outs and haunts in which a young man feeling himself saw a fine woman from the rear, figuring that was all he needed to know, rushed over to her, tapped her on the shoulder and was semi-shocked to see, when she turned around, that this fox was his twelfth grade teacher, and though clearly a bit embarrassed, neither of them was really surprised that the other was there;
where protest marches and marcus garvey celebrations, spring festival carriage and limousine parades with little freckled-faced future creole queens shyly waved a gloved hand at ruffians with holes in their pants as their manhood throbbed at the thought of knocking the little man out of those young girl’s boats;
where tambourines fanned us, sudan regaled us, and the avenue steppers showed how our feet would not fail us as long as we stuck one to the other high stepping and kicking them up, all up and down the way with everyone on the one and yet at the very same time each and all of us, the young, old, short and tall of us, exactly and precisely doin’ what we wanna and only what we wanna;
where fleets of second-liners have carried so many of us off to the great beyond in ceremonies during which coffins were sat on bars and shots of scotch were poured atop the casket, a libational commemoration of another man who done gone to glory or how the unforgettably gorgeous sight of a mother dancing atop the box that held the remains of her son was a socially sanctioned and totally acceptable way to both memorialize a life as well as say her last goodbyes accompanied by the bravado of some young dimple-cheeked trumpeter dueling with an elegant grey-bearded cornetist, the both of them trying to out blow the other, one could have been named Joshua and the other might have been called Gabriel, as their brass notes rang out the strains of i’ll fly away, oh lordy, i’ll fly…;
there, where a once proud avenue is now nothing but a site of sadness, a cemetery for the rusted corpses of flooded cars covered only in the flimsiest scrim of katrina dust caked on like filthy rings in the toilet bowl of a superdome bathroom;
there, beneath the bridge, on north claiborne avenue.
—kalamu ya salaam
