after you wrote a last poem called “fame and death,”

  you left great poems, allen, poems that fused blues & jewish chants, rock ’n roll

  & jazz riffs, you left behind as gifts to remind us of a life lived fast to the fullest,

  in “absolute defiance,” you were a bridge between the sacred,

  the transcendental, the underground demon & the buddhist-shaman-priest,

  you were the guru speaking of wars when skulls were used to cradle silver coins

  flashing under the light of human skin stretched tight into lampshades

  used to filter heat from glaring lightbulbs—& the silver flashing there

  like gliterring smiles, evil as death—o great bard breathing in & out,

  spoken blues chants coursing through your lines gone home to rest,

  gone home to rest besides your mother & father in spirit & shiva,

  it was a great love you gave us, allen, a great love that makes me remember

  you now with and affection & awe, o great son of whitman, blake, & williams,

  your love of mystery, gemara, your love of flesh & magic, blood of poetry

  coursing through choruses of your river-veins, love

  coursing through memory of chicken soup, roasted eggs, love,

  the smell of challah bread evoking candles burning on the sabbath,

  on the lower east side where you walked hip-di-dip, a little strut & bounce

  in the dip of your stride, you walked amongst jews wearing yarmulkes—

  & though you moved here a little odd down there on passover,

  buddhist that you were, you still moved,

  many of them will still sit seven days of shiva for you,

  many will lift their voices in solemn kaddish prayers—

  so eye baptize you here with rhythms of the black church gospel,

  with rhythms pulled from some of your favorite voices—

  ray charles, bessie smith, ma rainey, charlie parker & john coltrane—

  have washed your memory down with holy cadences—cool & hot

  as water—rinsed in blues & jazz riffs, chanted from voices

  & baptized in holy rivers of cabala, cabala lore

  cabala, cabala lore, cabala, cabala lore

  & blood & choruses, blood & choruses,

  baptized in rivers of blood & choruses

  & cabala, cabala lore, cabala, cabala lore

  coursing through poetry that burst from your river-veins,

  coursing through poetry that burst from your river-veins,

  shalom, o great mystic bard, shalom

  WORDS THAT BUILD BRIDGES TOWARD A NEW TONGUE

  you begin with a sound wrapped around a syllable, or syllables

  a word (or words) like razzmatazz or ratamacue, then you listen to

  a red-boned black man playing a horn like a clue,

  like a train or john coltrane or bird, then you play around with sounds

  your ears done heard, lift them off a rebound, spellbound inside a roux,

  because of a cue your memory remembered & knew

  now you add a few nouns & vowels,

  words singing like birds, flying through a spring wind thunder clapping,

  with roiling, rolling consonants, their feathers echoing colors now

  black or white or blue, as a ranky dank pressing flesh beneath them

  was immune to trailing blues stretched out behind him

  voices that flew rhythmic as queued soundtracks through the night’s

  sweet longing, choo-chewing like wailing engines hurtling down isolated

   tracks, way out in the dead of night’s hushed music,

  around the voodoo, bewitching hour of bats, who liked words

  bruising from a crew of mad hatter good old boys were circling inside

  a hushed cave, where a strange blend of language was fashioning itself now

  from cries & screams, the whooshing of beating wings

  drumming pell-mell clues through

    the dark cinematography of a dream bordering on nightmare

  as it wraps itself inside around you now as would a cocoon,

  you find yourself there inside the cave of your head

  & you are whatever it is you think you are there, brand new,

  you are what you believe in as truth, right then, right there,

  when you hear sheets of sound rushing out of the bell of a saxophone,

  it is a stomp down cornucopia of magic spiraling out of a dream,

  from a golden axe, shaped like an elephant’s trunk, the shape of need here

  is a question bewitching us with breath, power, mystery, stealth,

  is what new language is shaping itself into now inside the neon air

  hip-hopping & rapping in voice rhymes of young people,

  before us right now is what the mind’s ear reminds the tongue of here

  chasing the sound of a freight train moving at full speed, is a syntax,

  the jackety-jack of wheels rolling through the slick flow of tracks bedazzling gears,

  the song of it all beguiling us with amazement, the rackety-rack of steel spinning

  over & down rails, underground or overground, tracks,

  the sound we hear is real when we know it

  coming from the terrifying mystery of a hip shaman’s horn,

  we see the music form in the shape of the hot tongue of a bic flame lighter

  tonguing out gushed heat

  flames as sounds, as words inside the scorched flow of lava,

  inside a tongue that is red, white & blue laced with dues paid in Philadelphia,

  in hamlet, north carolina, where a language was fractured there,

  congealed, until it hopscotched itself to its on own back beat

  conundrum, before it pealed across the air clear as a bell ringing cold

  on Sundays, unleashed a rage in rhythm & tempo, heated voices in sermons,

  became a fire there in flight, was volcanic with syllables aglow, the night

  flaming with embers washing through the breeze like a tribe of fireflies

  swarming the night sky, a voice pure & guttural

  a primal scream looping clues of a prophecy here, blue,

  or sweetly singing as a slew of birds

  tracking across a fondue sky laced with magenta,

  their music heard in ringing silver bells as the wind tongue trills melodic

  as it breezes lilting language through chiming leaves trembling

  like lovers in heat/time, when the air is all aglow & splendiferous

  with greens, yellows, & golds,

  bright reds of bouganvilleas

  jacarandas fragrant as voices of doves cooing, sweet pink of flaring

  rhododendrons that burst into shapes of trumpet bells evoking

  miles playing muted live in memory, clean as a whistle,

  is where a poet stretches rubber sentences into bridges of music now,

  language reinventing itself daily out of lost & found words,

  constructing what it is to speak as a true American here,

  today, right now, words moving through poems as magicians through parades

  clowns dressed up as verbs, adverbs, adjective surrounding nouns with bright

  verve, reminds the senses of sweet odor of frangipani perfume,

  rhymes and rhythms intoxicating the senses,

  this moment sluicing across the air in a rainbow of races

  seductive with music, images moving as quickly as faces in an mtv video,

  across screens blazing fast as beats moved through bebop, urban slick

  as hip-hop brothas, chilling wicked in blooming fubu color schemes

  rad in baggy jeans, their hand jive flicking & stabbing the air, constantly blur-

  ring images—blink & they’re gone like pop goes the weasel—

  their rhythms nicking edges off slick time in stop-gap measures,

  voices locking & leaking into currency, flip & zip,

  on the box locking in the back beat,

  can-you-dig-it, inside blaring boxes clocking back beats stitching threads

  through the culture of hip-hop, attitudes holding everything together there,

  as when a guitar player picks blaze out of funk noise,

  his cadence up inside & outside time,

  as in this poem swinging its voice downwind to cross fragile bridges

  strung together with cadences & words, structures underneath

  form the bass-groove swaying back & forth over deep chasms,

  between mountains of language, where a child hears vocabulary in a swing,

  in the backyard of a favorite uncle waxing real with his sho-nuff-to-god

  hope-to-die-ace-boon-coon-throw-downs,

  the ones that always got his back each & every

  time he smacks scary, wherever he goes, their attitudes high-fivin’ their eyes

  & everything silent here except the wind’s screaming terror,

  words trying to cross over to the other side, to where the nephew swings,

  right here, right now, words flowing through seamless

  as eye (w)rap of my tongue around of johnny ace or nat king cole

  stitching together a profusion of sweet cadences frank

  sinatra & elvis stole, words that breathe inside a living language full of colors,

  as choirs of birds singing atop hot telephone wires carry aretha’s gospel

  a symphonic elocution of elegant voices

  a cecil taylor bedazzlement of lyrical, discordant chords,

  swinging double-blade axes cutting down trees as they slice through all this

  blue air, the bird man still singing now over steel tracks

  snaking through & in between landscapes, where tupac & biggie now sleep

  beside coal train(s) blowing through the night’s voodoo air, sweet

  the feeling here now, still blue as you were, charlie parker,

  & truly American as slow trains choo-chooing twelve bar blues

  through your old stomping ground of kansas city’s twelfth & vine,

  where you first showed your razzle-dazzle,

  your feathers spreading their beauty through wind-chimes,

  aching with your soliloquizing voice, always on edge,

  triple-timing the fire that flowed through your genius ire on time,

  until a chicken bone stuck itself inside your throat & damned up your music

  (like that legendary finger stuck in that dike did to tupac, did to biggie, too)

  pure smack snaking venom through your veins,

  in a deadly slow dance with death you stumbled & scratched,

  poisoned your brain until your head nodded off for real, then the bells tolled,

  but boy did you jam, jam, boy did you jam until you left, no sweat, boy did you

  jam, jambo, jambalaya, gumbo, boy did you jam jam, boy did you jam

  & play that horn for real before the pain jammed vomit in your throat,

  left those hot cadences cold as methuselah,

  fire bird of stricken-heat, chicken-gumbo boy of sound language, boy,

  did you jam, jam, boy did you jam, boy did you jam, jam, boy did you jam

  riffs run through scales & chords, inverting electric

  everything you heard you turned inside out, structures,

  blew past every note—& through them, too—

  rooted them in your own blue expression of turn everything inside out,

  you jambo, gumbo, chicken-liver boy, running up & down jambalaya scales,

  pastiche, a coal train before Coltrane blew down the hushed voodoo night,

  a coal train burning across flat plains of kansas city, flight & barbecue

  sauce up in the flavor of your drenched hot giddiup, scorching as red pepper

  chili sauce, yo boy of bebop phrasing in groovin’ high, you blew:

  bebop, bebop, beedoo beeboli, doodle-li, bebop, bebop

  beedoo beeboli, doodle-li, bebop, bebop,

  beedoo beeboli

  bop baw baw baw bo de baaaaaaaa daaaaaaa . . . . . . . . .

  & you ran it all the way to new york city, minton’s & birdland

  chicken eating boy turned hip man skedaddling choo-choooing chords

  so fast the air could hardly digest them, not to mention some human

  ears, playing salt peanuts, salt peanuts

  you & diz beautiful beyond words tradin’ fours in duet,

  fours in traffic, boppin’ & rappin’ before tupac & biggie were even born

  bird, you uptown in harlem, creating language that reinvented itself again

  & again before rap seduced rhythms down to scratching old records & words,

  skating over samples of james brown & george clinton, toasting & roasting

  the language like you & diz did in a dizzy atmosphere, jammin’

  beedle-loo-beedle-loo-beedle-loo-bop,

  beedle-loo-beedle-loo-beedle-loo-bop,

  beedle-loo, beedle-loo-beedle-loo-bop

  beedle-loo, beedle-loo

  beedle-loo-beedle-loo-beedle-loo-bop

  beedle-loo-beedle-loo-beedle-loo-bop

  beedle-loo-beedle-loo-beedle-loo-bop

  beedle-loo, beedle-loo

  words & sounds building bridges toward a new tongue,

  & it all started back in africa, mixed with europe over here, everything else,

  that found itself here, too, in this gumbo stew, jambalaya,

  this salad bowl filled with all kinds of flavors,

  this pastiche, collage of language reinventing itself everyday,

  every moment giving itself props, wherever words are

  spoken, patch themselves together with sound, form a sentence,

  that becomes a musical line, perhaps lifted from armstrong, bird, or miles

  a phrase snatched & grafted into language of tupac & biggie, buzzing

  in the attitudes of Alanis morrisette or jamiroquai scatting

  phrases metamorphosed into dance when he reaches back

  to grab hold of a language to swing & sing

  today, in this moment in time, when everything is evolving

  right now, from cue tips of tongues, a new language

  is waiting for you to discover, listener, for you to give it some props,

  to speak it, wrap your tongue around it, roll it off your assembly line of new

  expressions too, so give it up for the new, right here, right now, so speak it,

  don’t diss it, give the new some props right now

  freak it out with your own

  dash of flavor,

  say what’s up in the air as sound, now

  know it’s rooted & shaped in the vortex of truth-change,

  constant with language & words, sounds & attitude now,

  say what’s birthing in the womb of air, now

  say what’s birthing in the womb of air, now:

  bustin on the scene clockin benji beastie boys actin like fiends:

  down with the fave, funky jam, the noise up in the legit

  jack up, someone screaming to kill the ill funky noise living large,

  with an ace keepin it real, poppin the rip, doin the nasty to the bump

  breakdown in the bricks, where the homies roll bones

  to clock dollars, chillin hard through the calendar, gangstas flexin

  profiles, while they kick it on the real decked in doo-doo pants

  saggin slow like low riders over their doggy-grips

  as they watch aces ball with the pill takin it hard to the rack,

  skyin down the box, risin up like god to deal, or flash for the count,

  pumpin treys from downtown, nothin but nets

  words that build bridges toward a new tongue

  beedle-loo-grab-a-groove-drop-some-slick-talk,

  jazz-a-phrase-pop-a-blues-new-as-hip-hop,

  cruisin-through-rappin-clues-sprung-from-bebop

  me—&—you, groovin through

  me—&—you, groovin through

  me—&—you, singin new

  from

  TRANSCIRCULARITIES

  New and Selected Poems

  9/11 EMERGENCY CALLS COMING INTO MANHATTAN

  1.

  a crystal clear morning greeted you, dazzlingly blue

  as a sweet water lagoon on some caribbean island

  is blue, blue as the beautiful eyes of some

  swedish woman is blue, as the deep true licks on the guitar

  voice of robert johnson is blue, the alto riffings of charlie yard-

  bird parker is blue, blue as a blue dress,

  lady day’s voice wore, searching for meaning on “strange fruit,”

  blue as miles davis on “blue in green” is blue, coltrane on “alabama,”

  blue as the sky death flew & turned into a flying missile,

  a flying coffin, a heartless bomb glinting silver after sun rays

  struck it, glanced off as it flew low in the blue sky just above roof tops

  & chimneys, flying true as an arrow aimed true

  at the heart of new york city, this first glinting missile coming

  straight in from the north is blue, as it struck the world trade center

  north tower, high up, is blue, blue as a fireball igniting tonguing

  flames turning to smoke billowing upward, outward, blue as screams

  wailing & piercing through the darkness, flames eating through steel,

  flashing teeth of heat chewing, blue as horror of people

  stunned for the first time into panic, into real fear after leaving loved ones

  at home & somehow & somewhere behind them the terrible slow

  feeling begins creeping through the bones, seizes the heart

  with the terrible possibility that this could be it,

  but it couldn’t be, because some of you have just arrived

  & it’s morning & it’s dazzlingly clear & blue, a brighter blue even

  than the policemen in uniform downstairs who just greet you

  blue & beautiful & warm as caribbean waters are crystal blue

  this time of year, when you look out into blue space

  you see the second coffin of death arriving out of the south,

  it strikes the heart of the twin spirit of the skyline, you watch it erupt,

  become a twin fireball, then you know, all who have seen it now know

  what terror is, really feels like, is the dread you are thinking of now,

  what is running like madness through your heart & brain,

  horror is what you feel suddenly now in all of this,