where you met yourself going

  & coming, spit on it

  that same spot where you passed over

  in the road, spit on it, to soften up enemies

  walk backwards along any road you have passed over

  before, a red moon, like a one-eyed

  wino’s stare,stuck in bone

  shadowed trees, throw dirt over

  your left shoulder, spit down on it

  in the road, on that same spot where your terror

  locked itself into another enigma

  where someone’s footprints leave their signatures

  of weight, define shapes of worn soles

  speak to raw head & bloody bones

  great-great-great grandmama

  make a hoot owl screaming death

  take his case all the way home

  screaming, all the way home

  make a hoot owl screaming death

  take your death slip all the way home

  THE ABSOLUTENESS OF SECONDS

  there is time still to consider the absoluteness of seconds

  time still even to hear time bombs ticking within words

  the metaphors of power swollen

  fat behind chewed-up ends of smoldering cigars

  the bogus ten of surgically repaired apple-pie white women playing

  jane in ever more stupid tarzan movies, red omens circling overhead

  like bloodshot moons cocked behind scopes of rifles

  zeroing in on stars & bright eyes of babies

  time still to recognize those who swear their computerized egos dance

  for art instead of money & who sing of cloning as a sacred religion

  in place of passion in the wet, sucking bloom

  & whose art springs from legacies of crosses & ashes

  & whose prophecies produce wars & chains & even more bullets

  time, still, even to reconsider the trip upriver

  from new orleans to st. paul, Mississippi-ing the lynched history

  passing natchez, st. louis to lacrosse, rolling vowels sewn deep

  within voices, invisible ghosts whispering along bottoms of the big muddy

  the sky above full of blue rhythms & catfish hanging from hooks

  barracudas sleeking through the slippery wash underneath the river

  time still to listen to those africans

  who came here singing

  learned here to gut-bucket, fuse bloody syllables into mysterious

  hambones, learned here to shape a sho-nuff american blues

  into a song full of genius, into a song that embraces love

  FOR MALCOLM, WHO WALKS IN THE EYES OF OUR CHILDREN

  for Porter, Solomon, Neruda & Assiatou

  he had been coming a very long time

  had been here many times before

  malcolm, in the flesh of other persons, malcolm

  in the flesh of flying gods

  his eyes had seen the flesh turned to stone

  had seen stone turned to flesh

  had swam within the minds of a billion great heroes

  had walked amongst builders of nations

  of the sphinx, had built with his own hands

  those nations, had come flying across time

  a cosmic spirit, a notion, an idea

  a thought wave transcending flesh fusion of all

  centuries, had come soaring like a sky break

  above ominous clouds of sulfur, wearing

  a wingspan so enormous it spanned the breath

  of a people’s bloodshed, had come singing

  like coltrane, breathing life into miles

  into stone-cold statues formed from earthworms & lies

  malcolm, cosmic spirit who still walks back-straight

  tall among us, here, in the words of nelson mandela

  in the rap of public enemy number one, ourselves

  deep down, we hear your lancing voice splitting wide open still

  the pus-filled sores of self-hatred covering our bodies here

  like scabs infested with AIDS—the poisoned

  blood running out of us still stains the ground here, malcolm

  creates bright red flowers of art everywhere—we stand up

  our love for you & are counted in the in open air—

  hear your trumpet voice breaking here, like miles

  zigzagging through the open prairie of our minds

  in the form of a thunderbolt splitting the sky—& just before

  your tornado words dip down inside an elephant trunk

  conveying winds carrying the meaning of your words

  shattering all notions of bullshit here—

  we see your vision still in the life force of men & women

  see you now in the high-flying confidence of our children, malcolm

  who spread their enormous wingspans & fly through their minds

  with confidence, mirroring the beauty you stood for, brother—

  your spirit, malcolm, burning in the suns of their eyes

  POEM FOR MY FATHER

  for Quincy T. Trouppe, Sr.

  father, it was an honor to be there in the dugout with you

  the glory of great black men swinging their lives as bats

  at tiny white balls burning in at unbelievable speeds

  riding up & in & out

  a curve breaking down wicked like a ball falling off a high table

  moving away snaking down screwing its stitched magic

  into chitling circuit air, its comma seams spinning

  towards breakdown, dipping like a hipster

  bebopping a knee-dip stride in the charlie parker forties

  wrist curling like a swan’s neck

  behind a slick black back

  cupping an invisible ball of dreams

  & you there, father, regal as an african obeah man

  sculpted out of wood from a sacred tree of no name no place origin

  thick roots branching down into cherokee & some place else lost

  way back in africa, the sap running dry crossing

  from north carolina into georgia inside grandmother mary’s womb

  who was your mother & had you there in the violence of that red soil

  ink blotter news gone now into blood & bone graves

  of american blues sponging rococo

  truth long gone as dinosaurs

  the agent-orange landscape of former names

  absent of african polysyllables dry husk consonants there now

  in their place, names flat as polluted rivers

  & that guitar string smile always snaking across

  some virulent american redneck’s face

  scorching like atomic heat mushrooming over nagasaki

  & hiroshima, the fever blistered shadows of it all

  inked as body etchings into sizzled concrete

  but you there, father, through it all a yardbird solo

  riffing on bat & ball glory breaking down all fabricated myths

  of white major league legends of who was better than who

  beating them at their own crap game with killer bats

  as bud powell swung his silence into beauty

  of a josh gibson home-run skittering across piano keys of bleachers

  shattering all manufactured legends up there in lights struck out

  white knights on the risky edge of amazement

  the miraculous truth slipping through

  steeped & disguised in the blues confluencing

  like the point at the cross

  when a fastball hides itself up in a shimmying slider

  curve breaking down & away in a wicked sly grin

  curved & broke-down like the back of an ass-scratching uncle tom

  who like old satchel paige delivering his famed hesitation pitch,

  before coming back with a hard high fast one rising

  is sometimes slicker, slipping & sliding,

  & quicker than a professional hitman—

  the deadliness of it all, the sudden strike

  like that of the “brown bomber’s” short crossing right

  or the hook of sugar ray robinson’s lightning cobra bite

  & you there, father, through it all catching rhythms of chono

  pozo balls drumming like cuban conga beats into your catcher’s mitt

  hard & fast as “cool papa” bell jumping into bed

  before the lights went out

  of the old negro baseball league, a promise you were,

  father, a harbinger of shock waves soon come

  MALE SPRINGTIME RITUAL

  for Hugh Masekela

  it’s hard on male eyeballs walking new york streets

  in springtime, all the fine, flamingo ladies

  peeling off everything the cold winter forced them to

  put on, now breasts shook loose from strait-jacketed overcoats

  tease invitations of nipples

  peek-a-boo through see through clinging blouses

  reveal most things imagination needs to know about

  mystery; they jelly-roll, seduce through silk

  short-circuit connections of dirty old men

  mind in their you-know-what

  young men too, fog up eye glasses, contact lens, shades—

  & most of these sho-nuff hope to die lovers

  always get caught without

  their portable windex cleaner bottles

  & so have to go blind throughout the rest of the day

  contemplating what they thought they saw

  eye mean, it can drive you crazy walking behind one of those

  sweet memorable asses, in springtime, when the wind gets cocky

  & licks up one of those breeze-blown slit wraparounds revealing

  that grade A sweet rump of flesh moving like those old black

  african ladies taught it to do & do

  eye mean, it’s maybe too much

  for a good old boy, staid Episcopalian, christian chauvinist

  with a bad heart & a pacer

  eye mean, what can you expect him to do—

  carrying that kind of heavy baggage around—

  but vote for bras to be worn everyday

  & to abolish any cocky wind whose tongue gets completely out

  of hand, lifting up skirts of fine, young, sweet thangs

  eye mean, there ought to be a law against some things

  eye’m sure he would say, “reckless eyeballin,”

  eye’m sure he would say

  anyway, it’s hard on menfolk streetwalkers in springtime

  liable to find your eyeballs roaming around dazed

  in some filthy new york city gutter

  knocked there by some dazzling sweet beauty who happened along

  your field of vision—who knows, next thing you know

  they’ll be making pacers for eyeballs—

  who cares if you go down for the whole ten count

  & never pull your act back together again, & so become

  a bowery street, babbling idiot, going on & on

  about some fine, flamingo lady you thought

  you saw, an invitation, perhaps

  who cares if her teasing breasts shook you

  everwhichaway but loose

  it’s springtime in the old big apple

  & all the fine flamingo ladies are peeling off

   everything the cold forced them to put on

  their breasts shake loose from overcoats

  tease invitations of nipples

  it’s all a part of the springtime ritual

  & only the strongest eyeballs, survive

  III.

  UNTITLED

  speed is time clocking itself

  birth to death

    seconds beating quick

  as heartbeats thumping

  drums in cadences

  imitating breath

  SAN JUAN ISLAND IMAGE

  ride chuckanut drive

  through mist rolling off Puget

  sound, san juan islands

  pushng through fog, humpback whales

  rocks sat down on a mirror

  LA JOLLA

  living out here, calm, on the edge of the streaking western whirl

  where most sunsets leave vivid stains on the thin black line

  separating the pacific from the plunging ocean of flight

  above it, time stretching as a peacock’s tail feather

  through a landscape crisscrossed with colors of bright rainbows

  stitched & weaved through green light luminous with complexions

  where kite strings split in half a swallowing blue sky leaping

  as blue music heard anywhere, voices buried deep in hushed distances

  beneath windswept pines whose leaves serenade throughout valleys

  & dipping hillsides, as overhead hot air balloons cruise

  like great bowhead whales swimming underneath serrated edges

  of bouffant gray-white clouds that look like huge battleships

  & where the eye locates on the brow of some precipice a glass

  house, that is an atrium—& wondrous beyond all comprehension—

  where the sky is a roof, the pacific a glittering blue veranda

  swelled with surfers & salt waves terracing in one foaming wave

  after another, swimmers bobbing up there like red apples in a tub

  at a halloween party, just offshore, while up verdant hills

  golden with light, runners jog up & down streets as nervous people

  behind walls & signs reading “armed response,” sit fingering triggers

  of shotguns, their eyes boring in tight as two just-fired bullets

  THE FLIP SIDE OF TIME

  there is nothing on the flip side of time but more time

  yawning, like a cat’s wide open mouth of space

  above us, around us, dilating like our mother’s womb

  just before we came out screaming catching our breath

  & found ourselves breathless, bent out of shape with rage

  after being cooped up asleep for so long & now all this light

  searing here where before all was darkness & now this slap

  that wakes us up with such a start, as if it were necessary

  since most of us sleepwalk all our lives until death

  anyway & sometimes we find ourselves somewhere

  hanging from the spur of the moment, barely awake, caught

  between twilight & pitch black, perhaps hanging there

  from the spur of some island somewhere off the cowboy boot

  of italy, looking at a full moon submerged beneath crystal blue

  green waters of the mediterranean, ionian seas & the moon

  laughing there, like an alka-seltzer tablet winkling at the bottom

  of a clear glass of water, our eyes telescoping from above

  trying to decipher the mystery smiling from that magical face

  but mystery & magic is what pulls our lives towards meaning—

  beauty & wisdom discovered inside all heartfelt joy

  what journeys reveal, poetry there inside every moment

  BIRTH FORM: TERCETINA

  underneath a still life snapshot of grass & rocks, probing light

  reveals layer after layer of buried history, there, under beds

  of earth’s terraced graves, skulls & bones out of sight

  in darkness, where a symphony of silence echoes the dead

  after sonorous beauty of their voices took flight

  after the dna of their flesh melted away, after all speech was said

  & done, the drumscript light fingers played on skinheads pulled tight—

  as music improvised anywhere—faded away old rhythms inside our heads

  as drums insinuated on the other side of this circular moment, right

  here, underneath this place, where a choir of trees stand now & lead

  is a soft vein of gray & blue beneath & inside the earth’s hot night

  where history can be an echo of itself after fleeing time bled

  throughout the concave dome breath lost to the great sheer height

  of night, where now a new form is being born, this tercetina that sheds

  light & birthskin in the process of being torn from this slight

  moment time gives us, the uncertainty of creation here, form wedded

  inside the blood of ancestral language, this terror of shape, this fight

  to keep alive a memory, before sweet tenderness bled

  itself to death, staining this concrete modern place of blight

  & ice, here where music filling skies is thunder & gunshots played

  all around our children, their eyes wide open in fear, but bright

  THE VIEW FROM SKATES IN BERKELEY

  for Oliver Jackson, homeboy & painter

  the clouds were mountains that day, behind the real mountains,

  sideways, from san francisco, across the tossed bay, the beauty we saw

  from skates, in berkeley, was real there, stretched out, behind sailboats

  the wind-driven waves buckling, like rodeo horses carrying cowboys

  breaking across the frothing, gray water, like sand dunes

  rippling across an empty expanse of desert, mirrored & beautiful

  here, near sunset, we looked out through the wide, open windows & took in

  the view, unbroken from here, under sinking sunlight, the hills breasts,

  the gulls resembling small planes, banked over the waves, searching for fish

  they snapped up in their beaks, under fleecing clouds

  streaming up high, crossing the jet stream, the pricking mist hung low

  over angel island, like the day after too many drinks fogged up your head

  in an afternoon sunlight, on a day far back in cobwebs than you care

  to remember, but there anyway, as a still life you clung to once

  deep in a long-gone memory, the skyline changing now

  behind the tumbling clouds, the architecture trembling through the mist

  of the “shining pearl by the bay,” grown up from split-open gums of the land

  like chipped shark teeth, or tombstones leaning white & bright

  into the light, shimmering, like the friendship of this meeting is shimmering

  here, because we knew we were what we always thought we were

  homeboys on top of our games laughing like joyous paint in sprayed mist