raising flame prayers to sun gods

  offering up sacrifices of trees

  animals  reptiles  insects  villages

  seeds of water-spirit

  sunbird of birth in flight

  burning from guitar strings

  of Jimi Hendrix   climbing from

  saxophone bell of Ohnedaruth

  mystical birds high in the water-spirit night

  & in hot pitch-dark a black cat

  carrying two suns in the eclipse of his head

  swallows two fireflies climbing eyes

  in the cavern of night

  & the fire-ball that is swallowed

  by the Pacific Ocean each sunken dusk

  & who burns through earth spirit-water

  leaps now from tips of devastated cities

  leaps now from delicate Chinese finger paintings

  leaps now from spitting barrels to coughing volcanoes

  leaps now into sunbird of birth in flight

  & burns like a one-eyed black cat eclipsed

  in hotpitch-dark   in hotpitch-dark

  climbs a firefly born in the night

  poetry of birth in motion

  sunbird of love in flight

  seed of water-spirit

  RHYTHMS

  COME SING A SONG

  Come sing a song, Black Man,

  sing of Blind Joe Death,

  sing a blues,

  sing a black-blues song,

  sing a Blind Joe Death blues song,

  sing a work song,

  sing a prison chain gang

  southern blues work song

  sing jazz, rock, or R & B

  sing a song, Black Man

  sing a “bad” freedom song

  PROFILIN, A RAP/POEM

  for Leon Damas

  People be profilin.

  People be profilin like

  stink on shit,

  like come/sweat for money,

  like toe-jam doodoo smell

  barbecue-wine stains

  on picnics in july,

  people be profilin everyday

  of their lives

  People be profilin.

  People be profilin like

  slick stylin pimps leanin bent

  at forty-five degree angles

  behind mink covered steerin wheels

  of cold-gold laméd el dorados

  with golden brown velvet roofs for tops

  wide-brimmed apple hats

  pulled rakishly down

  slashes their scowling mugs

  (& the sun don’t melt

  the “ice” these frozen nigga

  mackmen wear

  on their manicured fingers!)

  People be profilin.

  People be profilin every day

  of their lives

  People be profilin like

  whores on midtown Manhattan street corners,

  like Wall Street executives in their sterile

  looking

  dark, conservative suits,

  their brains wrapped in green mothballs,

  like big time “Media” intellectuals

  styled off

  behind their gold wire rimmed

  expensive clear-lens shades

  People be profilin.

  People be profilin everyday

  of their lives

  People be profilin.

  People be profilin like

  Sad media stars who say:

  “Oh, no, dear! Don’t take that

  side of my face.

  It’s bad for my public image!”

  (& can you dig where that

  whole thing is coming from?!)

  People be profilin.

  People be profilin like

  when you stick a camera

  into someone’s face,

  be they Kings, or Queens,

  or the President of these United Snakes,

  watch how they react to the camera!

  (unless they be too old or too tired,

  or too dead for this daily crazy shit)

  People be profilin.

  People be profilin everyday

  of their lives

  People be profilin.

  MIDTOWN TRAFFIC

  Black jazz piano

  struttin’ across

  Central Park

  flowing from hidden

  Park Avenue radios

  & further down

  cars jammed down

  into mid-town traffic

  musicians layin’ down their

  own original tunes of

  toot toot & honk loud horns

  Between dissonance of being

  screamed on by plenty ugly

  lookin’, cursin’ cold

  purple red bastards

  pushin’

  beat up

  growlin’ trucks,

  beetle-sized,

  hog-sized

  cars

  dartin’ & slashin’

  feintin’ wise

  dented

  schemin’

  cars movin’ through

  new york city claw of traffic

  crowded with the lives

  of beautiful, stylin’ ladies

  odd schizoids,

  people talkin’ constantly

  to themselves

  ’long side nose runnin’

  junkies doin’ a

  grotesque sag dance

  in search of a scratch

  for an itch

  Fast movin’ traffic

  black jazz piano struttin’

  high, creating blues

  anchored breezes

  filled with cocaine

  & rock guitars

  CHICAGO

  for Howlin Wolf

  1.

  the wind/blade cutting in

  & out, swinging in over the lake

  slicing white foam from the tips

  of delicate water fingers

  that danced & weaved

  under the sunken light/night;

  this wind/blade was so sharp & cold

  it’d cut a four-legged mosquito into fours

  while a hungry lion slept on the wings of some chittlins

  slept within the blues of a poem that was formin’

  We came in the sulphuric night drinkin’ old crow

  while a buzzard licked its beak atop the head of tricky nixon

  while gluttonous daley ate hundreds of pigs that were his ego

  while daddy-o played bop on the box

  came to the bituminous breath of chicago

  howling three-million voices of pain

  & this was the music;

  the kids of chicago have eyes that are older

  than the deepest pain in the world

  & they run with bare feet over south/side streets

  shimmering with shivers of glass

  razors that never seem to cut their feet;

  they dance in & out of traffic—

  the friday night smells of fish

  & hog maws, the scoobedoo

  sounds of bo diddley

  2.

  These streets belong to the dues/payer

  to the blues/players/drinking whiskey on satdaynight

  muddy waters & the wolfman howlin’ smokestack lightnin’

  how many more years down in the bottom

  no place to go moanin’ for my baby

  a spoonful  of evil

  back door man

  all night long   how many more years

  down in the bottom   built for comfort

  BLOOD RIVERS

  THE SYNTAX OF THE MIND GRIPS

  the syntax of the mind grips

  the geography of letters

  the symbol burns, leaves black

  ocean bleeds pearls/washing the shore

  darkness crawls in alone like a panther

  all luminous eyes watching us make

  love, under trees the beautiful

  woman in the grass curls

  her pulling legs

  around my shoulders

  the old maid weeps in the window

  covers her face with blue veined white hands,

  her fingernails painted red

  gouges out her love-shattered eyes

  while the mirror breaks in the bathroom

  falls like razors to the floor

  where a junkie is sprawled

  with a death needle in his arm

  a child cuts his feet in the streets

  screams for the old maid

  who makes the flags

  who is weeping in the window

  because the stars have fallen from the flags

  she does not hear anything

  but her own weeping

  hanging the flag has become a garrote

  choking the breath/love of a people

  whose hero is the armless/legless/brainless

  vegetable who sits upon his bandaged stump

  in a wheel/chair, in a veteran’s

  hospital in Washington;

  he cannot speak—tell the blood

  he has swallowed;

  he cannot see for the death

  his eyes have seen;

  he cannot hear for the screams

  his ears have heard; but he feels

  the sorrow of the old maid

  who is weeping because the stars

  have fallen from the flag

  and because of the love scene

  in wet grass beneath her window

  WEATHER REPORT IN LINCOLN NEBRASKA 2/8/71

  “It is the coldest night in 23 years in Lincoln Nebraska

  Outside my see-through mirror

  snow was piled in frozen sculpture

  grotesque along the bleak streets

  of Lincoln Nebraska

  while on television, Apollo 14

  streaked through unconquered space

  after photographing holes

  and collecting weird rocks on a moon

  that did not welcome them, also on this day

  america was invading Laos disguised

  as south vietnamese troops (they recruited

  a lot of slant eyed american dwarfs and hired

  america’s best makeup men to pull off

  this standard american hat-trick.)

  And in Lincoln Nebraska the temperature

  was twenty-three degrees below zero

  but it was colder than that

  within the pentagoned ruled executive tombs

  in Washington; it was so cold that nobody

  as yet has recorded the temperature,

  and this suited

  richie just fine

  as he walked around naked

  took a sauna bath in a tub

  filled with Laotian blood while his

  handmade, good-old melvin, scrubbed

  his brain clean with a redwhiteandblue

  soapbar of pure nitroglycerin

  WHITE WEEKEND

  April 5–8, 1968

  They deployed military troops

  surrounded the White House

  and on the steps of the Senate building

  a soldier behind a machine gun

  32,000 in Washington & Chicago

  1900 in Baltimore Maryland

  76 cities in flames on the landscape

  and the bearer of peace

  lying still in Atlanta

  Lamentations! Lamentations! Lamentations!

  Worldwide!

  But in New York, on Wall Street

  the stock market went up 18 points . . .

  WOKE UP CRYING THE BLUES

  Woke up crying the blues;

  bore witness to the sadness of the day;

  the peaceful man from Atlanta

  was slaughtered yester/day.

  Got myself together

  drank in the sweetness of sun/shine

  wrote three poems to the peace/ful lamb

  from Atlanta; made love

  to a raging Black woman

  drank wine

  got high; saw angels

  leading the lamb to heaven?

  the blues gonna get me

  gonna get me for sure!

  went to the beach/to forget

  if only eye can

  about the gentle soul from Georgia;

  ate clam chowder soup and fish sandwiches;

  made love in the sand

  to this same beautiful woman

  drank in all her sweetness;

  lost future child in the sand,

  saw the bloody sun falling

  behind weeping, purple clouds;

  tears fell in rivers for this gentle lamb

  who eye can’t forget.

  The bloody star sinking

  into the purple grave: blackness falls.

  Go out into the decay of day;

  copped three keys;

  the key of happiness,

  the key of creative joy,

  the key of sadness.

  Came back, watched the gloom on the tube

  at her house; which was disrupted.

  Kissed her went home by the route

  of the mad space ways; dropped tears in my lap

  for the lamb from Atlanta

  Home at last.

  Two letters under the door;

  a love letter from the past

  grips at the root of memory

  at last another poem published!

  good news during a bad news weekend;

  lights out;

  drink of grapes;

  severed sight closes

  another day

  in the life.

  IN TEXAS GRASS

  all along the rail

  road tracks of texas

  old train cars lay

  rusted & overturned

  like new african governments

  long forgotten by the people

  who built & rode them

  till they couldn’t run no more,

  they remind me of old race horses

  who’ve been put out to pasture

  amongst the weeds

  rain sleet & snow

  till they die, rot away,

  like photos fading

  in grandma’s picture book,

  of old black men in mississippi/texas

  who sit on dilapidated porches,

  that fall away

  like dead man’s skin,

  like white people’s eyes,

  & on the peeling photos,

  old men sit sad-eyed

  waiting, waiting for

  worm dust, thinking of

  the master & his long forgotten

  promise of 40 acres & a mule,

  & even now, if you pass across

  this bleeding flesh

  changing landscape,

  you will see fruited

  countryside, stretching, stretching,

  old black men & young black men,

  sittin’ on porches, waiting

  waiting, waiting for rusted

  trains in texas grass

  THREE FOR THE BIAFRAN WAR

  1.

  the wet eye

  of a woman

  in love is both

  beauti/ful

  glorious

  sad

  2.

  a man

  is the sun

  of his son

  & rain most

  time falls

  where it’s

  the warmest

  3.

  a child

  is the voice

  closest to

  the past

  & the ancestors

  who are pure

  African spirits

  & love

  everyone

  & every

  thing

  BLOOD-RIVERS

  for K. Curtis Lyle

  as the ancient black rhythm

  as the goat-skin drums

  seeking life’s pure music

  hears the deep feeling,

  touches the heart-beat source,

  probes earth pulsations,

  records the river’s endless spirit

  as by God’s elliptical magic

  as the clock turns centuries

  through the bones falling to dust

  as the life keeps whispering

  through ashes

  where summers are reborn

  blood-rivers always evoking

  the heart-bred flames of creation,

  as the poem plunges into itself

  the goat-skin drum sings

  history of freedom,

  freedom  freedom drums the goat-

  skin voice of the drum

  as the winds embracing Mt. Kilimanjaro

  the sound of Ohnedaruth’s horn

  drums the goatskin voice of the drum

  as an action is the thought

  as love keys the keeper

  poetic expression is liberation,

  & we are sounds of wind-music,

  pumping blood into the heart, transforming,

  as new rituals

  paint flames against the night

  the changing music liberates itself,

  as in blood-felt rhythm

  as in heart-felt rhythm

  the genius of the singing

  as breath falls drum-deep into another

  as into clay embrace of the mother

  we weld our joys  linking

  the intergalactic barrier

  the rhythm liberating fire

  EMBRYO

  IN SEVENTY-FIVE SYLLABLES

  we are here in this space,

  as life is locked to air,

  welding seeds of our singing,

  as black day weds the night,

  moon plays infinite rituals,

  as gold clouds devour the stars

  black minotaurs bleed the blues,

  eat eggs, white with eclipse,

  where music fucks the easel

  pure rhythm paints the day

  in seventy-seven syllables

  IN THE MANNER OF RABEARIVELLO*

  on a sea without motion

  a man holding a thousand skies

  on his black head that has no color

  a man on the blue flame of suicides

  finger tips & glides/turns/yearns

  always to be more

  than simple man with anchored thighs

  night comes with its leopard hide like counterpoint

  wraps around today’s wingless promise shipwrecked

  at the bottom of scooped out oceans

  & the day vomits out without music

  where blood drips up from the sky/eye

  the earth disappears beyond the edges

  & at the bottom of white volcanoes 1000 sharks

  struggle to swim free of the grip

  of a hundred boneless skeletons

  while at high/noon

  amongst invisible tree/poems in madagascar