exit left
when i came to i didn't know where i was
on the ground, prone, near the levee bottom—i blacked out
while jogging, got up, walked home, still laboring a bit
between deep gulps i told nia as much as i could remember
my brother is a cardiologist, nia urged me to call him
tuesday morning early i take an ekg and the results are so disturbing
keith schedules me for a battery of tests an hour and a half later
i still have a meeting to do in between, my blood pressure was normal
i reappear, am radioactively injected, get wired up and climb on
a treadmill, lay under a nuclear camera, chat as though nothing
was wrong, submit to a sonargram, nia is there the whole time,
the results are negative, acceptable, i did not have a heart attack
keith can not determine the etiology of the alarming ekg
but i know the hard truth: at fifty i am almost through
i am dying and perhaps there is a metaphysical reason
no physical break down showed up on the machines this time
as the world unravels around me i coolly center the resulting chaos
within the calm of my karma's core—this is how i exist: i dare to do
all the good i can, i accept the uneveness of chance, i simply love
life for what it is and when my time comes, i am not afraid to exit
—kalamu ya salaam
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Music—"Monk's Mood" by Thelonious Monk
Kalamu ya Salaam – vocals
Stephan Richter – clarinet
Frank Bruckner – guitar
Georg Janker - bass
Recorded: June 14, 1998 – "ETA Theatre" Munich, Germany
—kalamu ya salaam