knowing all the while it will come quick

  sooner than expected

  & nothing

  absolutely nothing

  will have been undone

  LES CAYES, HAITI & RELIGIONS ON PARADE: 1984

  1. VOODOO

  on good friday, fronting the square

  rara called the few old faithful here through

  bamboo, the drum masters stroking their signatures

  rooted clues deep beneath the surface, voodoo

  found its medium in lulu

  the lithe, loa dancer

  baton twirlers, beyond the blues

  that lightning spoke in a mojo hand

  a mojo hand, a sequined loa called through

  sluicing, bamboo clues, voice deep

  in voodoo, a mojo hand, calling

  somewhere, somehow, old

  lightning hopkins knew

  came close to playing

  what this was all about

  2. CATHOLICISM

  the catholic parade hustled many through

  droves moved through the dark streets of les cayes

  mixed bloods & pure bloods walking shoulder to shoulder

  the crucifiction myth nailed in all their heads

  nailed in their hearts, bloods

  bearing up the cross through the dark

  the hymns of jesus christ’s blood running

  through their voices up ahead, pulling

  blood of three nails hammered down

  through centuries of His blood

  running like ribbons through these streets

  reining ropes pulling His invisible image, here

  through these litanies of blood

  & bloody all these bodies snaking through

  les cayes, full of nails driven through

  open palms & feet, screaming

  their bloody, burdened, invisible voices

  of mythical blood flowing invisible through

  these dark, narrow streets

  the many faithful meet, shoulder to shoulder

  mixed bloods & pure bloods, carrying

  their crosses in their voices

  shoulder to shoulder, snaking through les cayes

  les cayes, spirit to spirit, on this good friday

  evening, & all of them deep in voodoo, too

  3. THE PROTESTANTS

  the protestants were silent on this day

  & perhaps their silence spoke for them, too

  whatever their numbers

  silence spoke this evening for them, too

  who were not there

  IN MEMORIAM

  for James Baldwin (1924–1987)

  it’s like a gray dreary day, wet with tears & mourning

  when someone you love ups & goes away

  leaving behind a hole in your laughter, an empty space

  following you around like an echo you always hear & never see

  high up in the mountains

  the spirit gone & left, circling there its diminishing sound

  a song looking for a place inside this gray day of tears

  to lay down its earthly load,

  to drop down its weary voice among the many blue ones missing

  there, who are elbowing their clacking bones rattling like false teeth

  loose in a jelly jar up against each other, their voices

  dead as lead & silence yawning

  with the indifference final breaths acheive

  & the open mouths are black holes framing endless space

  words fall through like stars sprinkled through the breath

  of your holy sentences, jimmy,

  up there now with the glorious voice of bessie

  the glory hallelujah shouting gospel

  you loved so deeply, wrote it out in your blood

  running like dazzling rivers of volcanic lava blood

  so dazzling your words blooming van gogh sunflowers

  you planted as sacred breaths inside our minds & hearts

  the image of the real deal going down funky & hard

  & so we celebrate you, holy witness, celebrate

  your skybreaking smile infectious laughter

  hear your glory hallelujah warnings everywhere we look

  see clearly the all-american scrubbed down button down

  greed rampant in these “yet to be united states”

  & so we take heed, beg for your forgiveness that you might

  forgive us for our smallness for not rising up with you

  for being less than our awesome pitiful needs

  forgive us now in your silence, jimmy,

  forgive us all who knew & were silent & fearful

  & forgive us all, O wordsaint, who never even listened

  forgive us for all the torture, for all the pain

  AVALANCHE AFTERMATH

  for Earl Maxie

  outside lake tahoe we see scorched white bones

  of stake-like trees, felled (they remind of crude war

  weapons, sharpened & hidden & pointing up from pits)

  cutting a wide swath through murmuring green

  pines, pointing their branches accusingly up at a steel blue

  spring sky, crystal clear above our voices, where the highway once

  loped & looped back, winding down from echo summit

  the year before half the mountain walked clean across the american river

  intact, to the other side of the road, thrown there after an avalanche

  triggered abrupt & permanent change in the way things were

  like a track of train rails, switching up directions, after

  the juice is thrown at the main power station: & it reminds

  us that destinations are always in the hands of God

  PORTER, AT 18 MONTHS

  for Porter Troupe

  you slipped down into this world, porter

  during the dead hours of night

  slipped down in a form already perfect

  kicking & screaming & bursting

  from your new ballooning lungs

  older than time though young

  in this miraculous moment of celebration

  & you are the mysterious meaning of magic, porter

  the fused dialectic of passion alchemized

  a sweet miracle beyond all words

  & now already you speak

  in a strange tongue to birds & ants

  now already terrorize the cat from its sun-nap

  & draw your imagination exploding

  over all the clean walls

  reject all helping hands you go about

  your own business in your own way

  full of wonder we watch you

  grow into yourself charting your own course

  like an explorer discovering new worlds

  opening up like flowers before you

  & we are both amazed & afraid, knowing the way

  in front of you will be treacherously beautiful

  having travelled this road before

  so now, we teach you bonding

  principles absent of miracles but soon

  very soon we will stand aside & let you go

  CHANGE

  for Margaret & Porter

  use to be eye would be lying there

  in margaret’s lap, longside her sweet

  soft thighs on sunday mornings, sipping

  champagne, sucking on her soft open lips,

  drinking in the love from her moist brown eyes

  now, porter’s there giggling twenty month old

  squirming squeals—a tiny spitting image of me

  his eyes kissing everyone including me, & me?

  well, eye’m sitting here apart from them

  hungry, alone in my favorite chair

  watching television & listening to them

  & watching them, watching me

  EYE WALK

  eye walk liquid footsteps of my words

  across tongue bridge to where you stand

  just now, offer you these bittersweet syllables

  pregnant with history of what

  we have seen together, metaphors,

  as in the color of sea breezes & wind, rustling

  hairdos of trees tossing & turning in the ebb & flow

  of meaning between us, the rhythms of your seduction

  flowing into sound of your body breathing

  just outside my ears where your licking

  tongue—a breeze, blowing softly—teases

  your voice a mere whisper & your pouting lips

  shaping a kiss succulent as a plum, bursting

  TOUT DE MÊME—NICE & MALIBU

  the cote d’azur is

  like the coast of malibu

  a necklace of lights

  21 LINES TO CARNOT, GUADELOUPEAN MASTER DRUMMER

  his wood & zinc house hard by the bay in goyave

  carnot, master of traditional guadeloupean le woz

  drumming, six other palm to skin rhythms, he of the flying

  hands cracking thunder, he splits the silent speech of night

  machete fingers cleaving a passageway

  voices flowing through ancestral

  cadences pulsating lyrical voodoo sewing breezes

  painting pastel music from deep inside itself

  a secret language swells the way to magic, ritual,

  whose ears have heard the mystery of love unfolding

  holding the history of doves, a sea crab scuttles over

  the stone floor cold & hard as poverty, carnot leans strong

  his body an exclamation mark—

  & sharp as a honed sword’s blade the edges torn & jagged

  as starpoints screwed into his peasant catfish eyes

  the electric boring up deep simmering coals burning from within

  the steady gaze hawk-like holds the sky

  cruising through his two brown lagoons—

  leans into the sea salted wind where he goes,

  a fisherman drumming his life, the last of his kind here—

  african roots dropping secret notes from his palms

  POEM FOR THE ROOT DOCTOR OF ROCK N ROLL

  for Chuck Berry

  & it all came together on the mississippi river

  chuck, you there riding the rocking-blue sound wave

  duck-walking the poetry of hoodoo down

  & you were the mojo-hand

  of juju crowing, the gut-bucket news—running it down

  for two records sold to make a penny

  back then in those first days “majoring in mouth”—

  a long gone, lean lightning rod

  picking the edge, charging the wires

   of songs, huckle-bucking “roll over

  beethoven” playing “devil music” till white devils stole it from you

  & called it their own “rock n roll”

  devils like elvis & pat boone

  who never duck-walked back in the alley with you

  & bo diddley, little richard & the fatman from new orleans

  all y’all slapping down songs meaner than the smell

  of toejam & rot-gut whiskey breath

  back there in them back rooms

  of throw down

  back there where your song lyrics grew like fresh corn

  you, chuck berry, an authentic american genius of barbecue sauce

  & deep fried catfish licks, jack-salmon guitar

  honky-tonk rhythms

  jangling warm, vibrating sounds choo-chooing train

  whistles fiddling & smoking down the tracks of the blues

  motivating through “little queenie,” “maybelline”

  decked out in red on sarah & finney

  alarms rolling off your whipping tongue

  in the words of “johnny b good”

  you clued us in, back to the magical hookup of ancestors

  their seamless souls threading your breath

  their blood in your sluicing strut

  & too much “monkey business” the reason for their deaths cold & searing

  your spirit reaching down to the bones of your roots

  deep in the “show me” blood of missouri soil

  your pruned hawk-look profiling

  where you rode your white cadillac of words cruising

  the highways of language (what we speak & hear even now)

  breathing inside your cadences

  you shaped & wheeled the music

  duck-walking the length of the stage

  duck-walked your zinging metaphors of everyday

  slip-slide & strut, vibrating your hummingbird wings

  your strumming style the cutting edge

  you were what was to come

  so hail, hail, chuck berry, root doctor of “rock n roll”

  authentic american genius

  tonguing deep in river syllables

  hail, hail, chuck berry, laying down the motivating juju

  you great american mojo hand

  root doctor, spirit of american “rock n roll”

  REFLECTIONS ON GROWING OLDER

  eye sit here now inside my fast thickening breath

  the whites of my catfish eyes muddy with drink

  my roped, rasta hair snaking down in coiled salt & pepper

  vines twisted from the march of years, pen & ink lines etching

  my swollen face, the collected weight of years swelling

  around my middle, the fear of it all overloading circuits

  here & now with the weariness of tears coming in storms

  the bounce drained out of my once liquid strut

  a stork-like gimpiness there now, stiff, as death

  my legs climbing steep stairs in protest now, the power gone

  slack from when eye helicoptered through cheers

  hung around rims threaded rainbowing jumpshots

  that ripped popping chords & envious peers

  gone now the arrogance and the belief that hard-ons would swell

  here forever, smoldering fire in a gristle’s desire

  drooping limp now like wet spaghetti the hammer-head

  that once shot ramrod straight into the sweet

  kiss of a wondrous woman’s sucking heat

  wears a lugubrious melancholy now like an old frog wears

  its knobby head croaking like a lonely malcontent

  & so eye sit here now, inside my own gathering flesh

  thickening into an image of humpty-dumpty

  at the edge of a fall, the white of my hubris gone

  muddy as mississippi river water

  & eye feel now the assault of shot-gunned years shortening

  breath, charlie horses throbbing through cold tired muscles

  slack & loose as frayed old ropes slipping from round necks of executed

  memories see, now these signals of irreversible breakdowns

  the ruination of my once, perfect flesh as medals earned

  fighting through holy wars of passage, see them as miracles

  of the glory of living breath, pulsating music through my poetry

  syncopating metaphors turned inside out

  see it all now as the paths taken, the choices made

  the loves lost & broken, the loves retained

  & the poems lost & found in the dark

  beating like drumbeats through the heart

  FALLING DOWN ROADS OF SLEEP

  we are falling down roads into sleep

  falling into sleep from blues

  posing as the sky, the eye of the Creator moves

  black cataracts of clouds around pointillist as clues

  wet as when a bad knee tells us that rain is coming

  before night floods down the streets

  sleep is seducing, as the light

  slips from the night, slips from our eyes

  & slides across the sky like feet over ice

  the lances of our intentions glancing off moons

  slicing the edge of noon

  we remember a sky blue & deep with light

  remember the wings of birds turning around hours

  burning off suns, flights of music diving toward night

  like warring elements, our speech thunder-clapping

  down streets lugubrious with sleep

  deep down we leap back into sleep so steep

  then fall back into blues

  we forget the fading of night coming,

  begin climbing up ladders of song rung by rung

  sleep falling between our language, now lifting

  toward flight, rain clouds like circling crows

  cruise under light, under the bold

  gold polished coin of the sun, holding

  FOLLOWING THE NORTH STAR BOOGALOO

  for Miguel Algarin

  following the north star boogaloo

  the rhythm takes

  back to where music began

  to percolate language like coffee in another form

  back before frederick douglass laid it down

  heavy on abe lincoln

  when music was breakdancing old hottentots

  throwing down mean as bojangles as did

  now jump forward through history’s dice game

  pick up the steps of james brown

  michael jackson moonwalking

  the old blues talking about yo mama

  now fast forward down the lane

  pick up the dance of five brothers

  skateboarding the court

  out in the open, one closes the break

  doing a 180 degree phi slamma jamma dunk

  stamping their footprints all up in the paint

  up in this poet’s word dribble

  a drummer’s paradiddle

  word up, yo bro, hip hop, rappers

  skateboarding the go go out in the open

  court of macking the holy ghost down

  hey, you diddle-diddle voodoo griot, take me

  back to when eye was black & hitting proud

  out on the slick bop thoroughfares

  back before the mean homeboys rolled snarling

  duckwaddle down the middle, eyes empty with death

  before the alley-oops wore their lives as chips on shoulders

  in stratospheric attitudes, hung hip from wall to wall

  chained gold, caps on heads quaking sideways

  muscling up bold masterblasters

  checking out reeboks

  chillin’ dead up in the cut “fresh as death”

  after “mo money,” “mo money,” “mo money”

  check it out, bro, pharmaceutical wizards