evicted from their graves with no names, identity,

  no race-ticket or skin color has privilege in this space

  of spirits displaced, scattered from former resting places

  of chipped tombstones—also scattered—

  their skulls reminding us of broken teeth of ex-fighters, junkies,

  these corpses grinning teeth set in jaws of cracked bone,

  is a powerful language screaming for redemption,

  if we look deeply into this moment it reveals our true selves

  in these spaces we live in corrupted by greed,

  skin color, class, religion, power at all cost,

  is a definite language

  suffocating in claustrophobia, ethnophobia, no connection

  to the real world, to the flow (caca) flow of humane language,

  poetry inside the most profound beauty of utterance

  sings still inside the deepest grain of that flowering word,

  sound by sound, word by word, speech evolves into beautiful

  architecture, creates a scaffolding of cross-fertilized utterances

  crossbeamed inside poetic sentences fused with music,

  where metaphors spring from deepest sources of community,

  these are the seeds that will link, bond us together

  10.

  after tongues of fierce winds howl full of calamitous journeys,

  ship-wrecked adventures swept astray by circular history,

  where are we going feeble question marks of human embryos

  bloating after the wind’s anger has died down, turned soft & gentle

  as a sweet tongue of breeze caressing the passion of naked lovers,

  where are we going led by troglodytes in dark suits selling wolf

  tickets, tiny metal american flags festooning their lapels,

  violent little chicken-hawk men in seats of power,

  where are we going re-running all this bric-a-brac fear of hitler’s,

  germany, murmuring a language full of evil secrets, murder,

  mysterious as the ocean’s salty sandpaper tongue of screeching

  felines carrying sounds evoking warnings,

  where are we going on this stormy sea full of huge treacherous rocks,

  100-foot waves looming toss our premonitions like match sticks,

  thunderclaps of vowels flooding the peaceful conversations

  we try to evoke within a spiritual connection,

  where are we going carrying this toxic speech full of static

  buzzing like hornets or flies through this pestilential

  space where we live out our lives full of fear,

  trepidation, & hateful loathing,

  where are we going on this stormy sea,

  heading into a space full of huge sharp rocks,

  behind time instead of on time,

  where are we going, going, going

  11.

  thunderclaps of vowels, raging rivers flooding

  conversations, carrying languages, coming & going,

  as the wind blows a mango out of a tree it speaks, too,

  the moment it hits the ground, in the future there will be

  new sounds when buzzing flies start feasting on

  the mango’s sweet nectar as its flesh rots away,

  sinks into a swarm of feverish maggots,

  is a kind of language whispering close to silence,

  speaking inside this moment, it marks an instant

  inside time, like musicians or poets riding the rhythms of wind,

  the ocean’s improvisational breath of misty saltwater, now

  catapulting a fish into the sky, locks us into the moment,

  as does the bootylicious murmur of a woman’s taut flesh

  rubbing bodaciously up against silk, evokes sin-

  ful dreams in men & women eye know—a politically incorrect

  thought eye know, though true in the track of reality flow—

  is seductive as kisses tonguing inside passion sweetly,

  sucking sounds flowering inside locked mouths

  as she pulls you deep into the volcano of her song,

  bodies moving instinctively now, poetically, mysteriously,

  bodies come alive in the moment—on time, not behind—

  as when poetry is poured into language, great sounds of music

  scaffolding up buildings, architraves of syllables

  hanging off edges of pursed lips, like dripping notes there,

  can be heard building into an improvised cadenza as it flourishes

  when sound is thrust into the sky as a inventive idea,

  is like a wondrous sleek building—an eagle soaring above it—

  architecture can create memorable language up there

  pointing fingers up toward where religion swears God is,

  where we know the spirit of great poetry sings & lives

  from

  ERRANÇITIES

  I.

  AN ART OF LOST FAITH

  for Robert Farris Thompson, Maya Deren, & Ishmael Reed

  1. BEGINNINGS: A PLACE OF SILENCE

  in a place beyond our knowing silence reigns, darkness

  perhaps some light, echoes, in this vast space,

  perhaps it is a netherworld, an etherworld of maybe,

  if spirits amongst us know what It is they have never spoken,

  perhaps shadows have, over/underground in some invisible space,

  surrounded by air, water, where spirits of creation exist,

  swimming or zooming outside our comprehension,

  a place where only imagination through prayer can take us,

  to a road, perhaps a passageway stretching long & far,

  deep into the past, perhaps, a doorway leading to nowhere,

  nobody knows, only silence knows the language echoes speak

  & in this vast place beyond our knowing, are bones, teeth, hair,

  ribcages, skulls, toes, fingers here, are maggots here, too,

  do they speak some kind of music in this beyond world,

  do they understand silence, the twilight world of myth, the memory

  of water, earth, sky, wind, the memory of fire, earthquakes, thunder,

  the memory of storms, lightning, ice, the memory of creation,

  birth, death, the memory of everything here & gone, everywhere

  a mystery, is what we know is certain, an idea of something

  without shape or form, pulsating with what we know is power,

  It is a metaphysical presence, a blessing with what we know

  is the ability to heal & destroy this space we live in

  only by Its invitation, sanction, only by Its blessing,

  this place we’ve been born into with so much amnesia

  2. LOOKING THROUGH THE MIST TOWARD AFRICA

  in the beginning was a sound, a crack of light, fissure in the dark

  dome of the sky, earth, from which a resonance of air echoed,

  perhaps something like a note, a sudden sound,

  or wind moving toward expression, a beginning, a seed of language,

  perhaps a hum, a grunt moving toward something clearer, perhaps

  a voice, which became visible later, as a stroke of whatever was needed

  at the time, some kind of music beating like a heart

  in time with a first act of gesture, imitating a shaking

  in the ground, something close to a rhythm,

  a grain of language, something like a word, perhaps a growl, something

  the ears of earth, air & sky might hear & know what was coming was

  a kind of improvisation, a phenomenal act of creation,

  perhaps shadows in a garden, under what we know now are iroko trees,

  moving the way humans would, fusing memories, music

  in a beautiful rhythm, undulating, coming together,

  moving apart, in an act of expression we know as joy,

  perhaps love, a feeling of ecstasy, an act of vital conception,

  invention, making, in fact, an act of copulation

  in the holy Yoruba city of Ile-Ife, where Olorun, god of all things Yoruba,

  (the vital force, neither male or female, the ultimate embodiment of ashe,

  spiritual command, the power-to-make-things-happen)

  slithered down from the sky in the form of a royal python snake,

  bringing with it Eshu, Ogun, Yemoja, Oshun, Oshoosi,

  Obaluaiye, Shango, Obatala, Oko, Egungun, bringing

  the power to give life, take life away, ashé, ashé, ashé,

  as an earthworm, white snail, woodpecker, gaboon viper,

  ashé represented by iron staffs, long-beaked birds, iron sculptures

  of serpents in the form of kings, chiefs, wise old women

  coming in the form of birds, sacred beads on the crowns of kings

  hanging from their masks, covering their faces during moments of prophecy,

  ritualized during times of possession, ashé

  in these forces watching us through spiritual eyes,

  with the power to give life, take life away, ashé

  on an old ceramic bowl, It is the thunder of Shango,

  a meandering patterns of pythons, gaboon vipers twisting through sand,

  lightning zigzagging through space, unzipping the black bowl of the sky

  above an iroko tree, its trunk tied with white cloth as an offering,

  semen at its base, drops of blood sprinkled around too,

  is a gift to the gods, as a person dressed in red is ashé

  then everything was lost in sandstorms of confusion, tribal rivalries,

  blood spilling reduced to ashes civilizations of prophecy,

  divinations began to lose images of faith after Europeans arrived

  with greed in their eyes, storming off ships with guns spitting fire,

  carried away priests, their faith, across the middle-passage, to the New World,

  though these chained holy men still whispered under their breath the holy word

  ashé, ashé, ashé, the rhythms of talking drums held tight in memory

  on wide seas, in the sky lightning flashed, kaboom, gunfire, ashé

  then silence

  3. THE NEW WORLD

  many priests died during the middle-passage, shot, whipped dead,

  their bodies thrown to sharks in the roiling salt water,

  when survivors arrived in the New World ashé was a memory

  under their breaths, the tempo of talking drums transformed to something new

  though it kept old roots beating close to the rhythm of hearts. Gods changed, too,

  transformed through language African prayer fused with Native American Indian,

  Frenchh & Spanish ones, too, ashé grew new animating forces,

  loas, houngans—priests—stirred the pot, rediscovered powers over the soul

  spirit, self, bloomed as new voodoo avatars anchored in old ways though

  transformed here into new ways of bringing spirits down,

  in this New World all manner of tribes, races, metamorphosed into creole

  culture—languages, faiths, music—old drum rhythms innovated new accents,

  added them to ancient measures, fused into newfangled tempos,

  married fresh New World time-signatures—Congo rhythms became Petro beats,

  music/dance of Rara, compas, Rada songs from Dahomey—

  visual arts were expressed through shimmering voodoo flags holding mirrors

  reflecting souls in lakes of glass—whispering poetic rituals of ashé

  married Catholic, indigenous Native American Indian religious mantras,

  the dead began serving the living, ritual became reclamation of the soul,

  everything was transformed as night sounds cooed, undulating

  sweetness found in mangoes, papayas, red flesh of watermelons

  unlocked primal mysteries as hurricanes howled & swirled,

  vèvès invoked loas, retainers f the vital force, mireacle fireflies

  of spiritual command, the power-to-make-things-happen,

  bestow life & take life away through possession,

  black seeds of language loomed in the fresh silence

  4. SOLO

  eye have come to this text to sing the gospel of Neo-Hoodoo

  the rediscoery of self in this new, cruel whirl

  of dilettantes seeking greed through senseless wars, who machine

  gun down any spirot who can dance words across empty white pages

  who refuse to recognize any culture save their own as a vital force

  in the world, who speak with forked tongues,

  who think they know everything when their hisitory is so short

  & bloody, charlatans who raze the world with bombs, spitting bullets,

  whose religion is greed, who cannot hear wisdom or music,

  whose time is finally short, whose storehouse of stolen ideas is empty,

  whose ragtag culture of hobos went up in flames like so much in the West,

  many of us are here now, have been transformed through memory of ashé,

  its drum rhythms synonymous with our own beating hearts,

  we know the lost faith—now recovered—as our own vital force, its syncopations

  reborn in Voodoo/Santeria/Candomble/Neo-Hoodoo in the New World,

  we got High John the Conqueror in lines of our poetry, got mojo hands

  guiding brushstrokes of our paintings, Papa Ogun in our sculpture,

  Yoruba/Petro rhythms infusing blues, spirituals, ragtime, gospel, jazz,

  merengue, salsa, rhythm ’n blues, rhumba, tango, zouk,

  soul, rock ’n roll & rap, we move our feet & bodies to dance

  entranced with recovered rhythms of a lost faith, infused here

  in art of a New World expression probing deep,

  it connects us to an ancestral faith we embrace here as our own

  magic, mystery, power, grace, expressed through our hearts

  as an ever-evolving, powerful Neo-Hoodoo expression, voiced through priests

  like james brown, sly stone, miles davis, jimi hendrix, charlie parker,

  thelonious monk & marie laveau, voiced through every man, woman

  viewing themselves as sacred innovators, improvisers of the spiritual body dance,

  the art of lost faith is not lost when reinterpreted, is everything

  griots & shamans know to be real on earth, surrounded by air,

  phenomenological, Voodoo transformed to Neo-Hoodoo here,

  transplanted in the New World space with magic, faith of the Old World,

  American fusion is iconography rooted in the new/old transmogrification,

  a logo for America, perhaps, a pathway to a future of the new, Neo-

  Hoodoo, perhaps found through the words, ashé, ashé, ashé,

  is perhaps a fresh, innovative life-force gathering in the air

  LAS CRUCES, NEW MEXICO REVISITED*

  for Keith Wilson, Donna Epps Ramsey, Andrew Wall, Charles Thomas, & Thomas Hocksema

  1.

  you have come to this space of light & pure beauty

  from the love-song tongues of ancestors ringing

  you have risen from an earth soaked in human blood

  animal blood bird blood fish blood slicking polluted water

  singing the gospel you have bloomed like a desert flower

  under the cross of crucifixion your pain deep as poetry

  river deep pure as love flowing back to jordan

  blood-holy from africa you have come reborn to us

  with the spirit of healing, you cleanse us now

  baptize us in clear water of your sun-warm words

  & you have carried the holy flame of god through stone rain

  kept it burning like a candle in the church of your heart

  & you have kept the faith with your holy gods with jesus

  with malcolm with martin luther king in everyman

  & you have come wearing the mantle of adam

  your own sermon on the mount in your own throat

  O gentle native man luminous with tenderness,

  your commitment, your faith in love is so very holy beautiful

  as the spirit of ancestors tonguing through your blood

  their pain veining river-deep through your gospel of holy feathers

  your sacred text of healing deep singing in your sacred mountains

  your sermons bringing us here to this clear sweetness of place

  to this space this moment where you are light & beauty

  your words drum-scripts we listen to, see in your dance steps

  carried in hearts throughout the world where you live

  2.

  eye have come here to these sacred great mesas, high up above

  las cruces to sit meditate on these mesas flat as vegas gambling tables

  rock-hard as red dust swirls into miniature tornadoes

  dancing down roads red with silence silent as the faces of solitary

  indians here where white men quick-tricked

  their way to power with hidden agendas

  of bullets & schemes of false treaties

  & black men alone here in this stark high place of mesquite

  bushes white sand mountains colors snapped in incredible

  beauty eyes walking down vivid sunsets livid purple scars slashing

  volcanic rock tomahawking language scalping this ruptured space

  of forgotten teepees so eye listen to a coyote wind

  howling & yapping across the cactused dry high vistas

  kicking up skirts of red dirt at the rear end of quiet houses

  squatting like dark frogs & crows etched silhouettes high on live

  wires popping speech caw-cawing in the sand-blasted wind

  stroked trees caw-cawing all over the mesilla valley

  & here along the rio grande river dry parched tongue bed snaking

  mud cracked & dammed north in the throat of albuquerque

  mescalara zuni apache & navaho live here

  scratch out their fire-water breath peyote

  secret eyes roaming up & down these gaming-table mesas

  their memories dragging chains through these red breathing streets

  while geronimo’s raging ghost haunts their lives with what

  they did not do stretching this death strewn history back

  to promises & hope a hole in the sky a red omen moon

  where death ran through like water whirl pooling down a sink