A MAN WALKS IN SLOW MOTION

  for Usain Bolt in 2008

  a man walks in slow motion as through a dream,

  above the sky listens to blue heat waves

  rolling across the miracle of its deep expanse

  as pulsating clove-rhythms of music come & go,

  improvising as they please, voices sashay

  through syncopated beats, dreams suddenly

  appear naked & clueless all over the globe,

  time dressed as a sleek jamaican thunderbolt zips

  quick as a blink through shot-gunned meter dashes,

  cracking like a whiplash he flashes down chutes

  lined with white, red lanes on a track, shoots

  like a bullet through dazed sprinters bunched in

  an arm-flailing group behind him dropping tears

  sprinkling like bombs detonating in their blues-

  drenched dreams, as they watch the thunderbolt

  zap to victory in awe, dashing their hopes of glory

  as he slingshots across the finish line, suddenly

  he is their fear, a lightning bolt/flash zapping black

  through a blue sky deepening above thoughts

  when a mumbling man stumbling like a drunk

  inside slobbering, flummoxed speech, where

  a poetic thought was just chopped off

  (reminds of surprise in the eyes of a guillotined

  head after the sharp blade slices off

  the neck clean) and quick as a laser beam

  scalpel inside the man’s brain, leaves him silent

  as a rock looking mute at a coconut cracked

  open rolling mysteriously by his feet

  & the moment is heavy when the blue heat wave

  surrounding him vacillates its rhythms of love

  just when an oscillating storm cloud appears above,

  exploding the sky, darkening the pulsing music,

  joggers get wet from God’s sweat falling from the cloud,

  then everything for the man becomes confusing,

  flows, though syncopations still come & go as they please

  improvising upon rhythms of speech

  the man hears inside his frazzled brain words grooving now,

  beats flashing quietly quick as blinking strobe lights

  through his thoughts, he sees the thunderbolt zap—

  a whiplash across the sky in a moment

  of speed—then truth enters his spirit when he moves

  as through a dream, walking in slow motion

  as a breeze tongues in as a song in a voice,

  the sun breaks through clouds again much brighter than hope

  people swirling around chaos in the world feel

  walking through a dream a man hears music surrounding

  his spirit, senses it syncopating end to tend

  through the day, chords whiplash athwart a lucid blue sky

  as rhythms come & go inside heartbeats as they please,

  around the globe smiles break across people’s faces

  replicate daybreak cracking through night’s deep longing

  CONNECTIONS #2

  1.

  eye look out my window, see mangoes hanging sweet

  on tree branches starting to block my view of the sea

  as they grow larger, somewhere a man sits with a rifle

  pointing it at someone’s head or heart without sentiment,

  without knowing who they are before shooting them,

  in the same moment a bird lifts off a branch

  where it just hatched an egg above the crouching man

  who just pulled the trigger, now someone else who doesn’t know

  who the sniper is locks in on his head—X marks the spot

  in the center of his forehead—with a rifle scope, pulls the trigger,

  time is always changing across the globe, around the clock

  seconds are constantly moving tick-tock about its face,

  tick-tock measures time, moves the bottom line

  of the balance sheet, what do we really know of shifts,

  crack crack happening in mini-seconds, onomatopoeia

  clocking intervals brief is what senses recognize

  when music changes tempo, rhythm moves the body,

  somewhere else a fault line shifts the ground underneath our feet,

  deep under the earth there is movement, violence we will not know

  until we see dirt opening up in front of us, concrete streets,

  sidewalks splitting, buildings shaking to rubble

  is a message from God connecting us all to an awesome, avenging

  power, is an omen from a God we have never really known,

  would not recognize if the Spirit sprung up in front of us

  2.

  what are the connections between people waging war,

  who have never met each other in the flesh,

  who drop bombs on people making love in their bedrooms,

  drop bombs on children playing in their own backyards,

  doom doom from somewhere high in the blues, doom doom

  explosions because someone said they are our enemies,

  who said what to whom, what did they do to us

  we didn’t do to them first before we doomed them

  as in iraq, afghanistan, libya, panama,

  why do they hate us so we said after blowbacks on 9/11

  there are connections that bind us each to our actions,

  everywhere images cross wires in mini-second errançities,

  somewhere some/body is a walking time bomb

  about to go off, explode, do whatever it takes

  to destroy, at the same time a climbing wisteria blossoms

  a purple drooping flower around santa fe,

  at the foot of the sangre de christos (blood of the Christ)

  mountains, spathiphyllum, blue hydrangeas bloom

  in the sonora desert, a brightly beaded gila monster looms,

  slowly hunts for small animals, with a keen sense of smell

  digs for bird eggs beneath evaporational graves

  where earth metamorphoses into fine grains of sand

  3.

  throughout the world there are people who know secrets,

  balancing competing agendas they use words of yin & yang,

  in the world all people are equally human,

  everybody’s heart beats in their chests like metronomes

  until they stop, most things in nature seem symmetrical

  inside their violent forces housing harmonious discord

  as in an exploding volcano spewing lava is the seed for birthing land,

  as a lioness runs down a wildebeest, killing it inside the serengeti

  ngorongoro crater, a woman births a genius child somewhere in light

  as an anaconda crushes then swallows a large dog in the amazon

  & it all seems so asymmetrical until you consider

  every living thing has to eat something for survival,

  is perhaps an act of mercy rather than killing for malice,

  revenge, or murder because of skin color, or something

  equally stupid like torturing for worshipping different gods,

  slaughtering entire families for fear of difference, anger,

  with machine-gun fire

  is different than flames devouring dream mansions

  of those who live knowingly in danger zones,

  where rivers flood, conflagrations rage through hot zones,

  though pain is the same for these hearts who go back

  to sift through ashes—their lives suddenly gone up in smoke,

  swept away by surging rivers, tsunamis,

  blown apart by hurricanes, tornado winds, earthquakes swallowing

  lives cracked to smithereens by fear—as any other pain,

  compassion is still here as an act of mercy when hearts embrace

  the possibilities of love through healing

  4.

  during moments of deep pain some experience healing, resurrection,

  perhaps feel them deeply in their hearts as a flash, like duende,

  wisdom might pave the way to insight, beauty, a blessing, duende,

  perhaps is a life-changing force as in the instant you know

  death is truly possible, as daybreak will most certainly come

  if there is no world-ending conflagration after darkness,

  flowers at the bottom of the sky will bloom, duende,

  in some place where two people will make love with their hearts,

  children will be born, old enemies may embrace differences

  & life will go on in harmonious discord until it ends

  perhaps this is all we can dream of, hope for,

  a few moments when there is clarity in our lives,

  instances of mercy that reveal beauty, truth, as in watching

  the mango tree growing outside my window beginning to ripen,

  delicious fruit hanging like swollen breasts from its branches,

  blocks my view of the sea—though eye know it’s there anyway—

  & eye can be thankful high up in those branches birds still sing

  joyously every day, my heart sings with them

  every time eye hear their music, the moment my eyes open wide,

  eye breathe in whatever the day brings, time full of holy acts—

  duende—profoundly impacts these sacred connections

  we have one to another, each to each,

  these blessed gifts we share as in breathing

  SENTENCES

  movement of time through the music of space,

  eye hear a bell ringing blue in sentences

  the language spoken in sleep becomes an echo here,

  a translation when written down on white paper

  in the air, when spoken, words seem like a dream

  pulsating through ether in blue melodies of tongues

  weaving inside sentences, saturated with local

  idioms, carved from blues spaces by human breath

  sounds rooted in voices here evoke metaphors

  coursing blood-deep, form ancient tribal gestures

  where words fixed in geographic locations repeat

  through reverberating memory, bring recognition

  ricocheting through a collective truth, perhaps

  then language can evoke a shared history

  when sentences might mirror rhythms of drums

  & a rising sun could birth a circle of love

  GHOST VOICES

  A POEM IN PRAYER

  GHOST VOICES

  for Oliver Lee Jackson, Mildred Howard, Allison Hedge Coke, Margaret Porter Troupe, and to the memory of my mother, Dorothy Smith Marshall

  I.

  CHORUS SONG OF CROSSING THE BIG SALT WATER

  we are crossing, we are crossing, we are

  crossing the big salt water of huge waves,

  shipwrecks, monumental storms, we are crossing

  we are crossing, we are crossing under a sky

  with no guilt of what we are going through,

  what we are suffering, why we have left our homes,

  though we know we will go back there some day,

  see people as we knew them,

  we have left everything back behind there

  now we are seeking new homes somewhere,

  somehow, we are seeking to dream somewhere,

  somehow; where? we don’t know where, though

  we know our dreams are out there somewhere

  we are seeking to find a way, we are searching,

  we will look everywhere seeking It, though

  we don’t know where It is, but we will find It

  somewhere out there, we will look for It

  wherever our journey takes us, we are going

  wherever time takes us, we are going,

  we are going somewhere; where?

  we don’t know where, but we are going,

  we are going wherever It beckons,

  speaks to us, we are looking for It

  everywhere, we are going where time

  & this journey takes us, we are seeking,

  we are looking for It everywhere,

  seeking to find It everywhere,

  we are seeking, looking for It everywhere

  we are crossing, crossing the big salt water,

  we are crossing under colossal waves

  above us, ship loads of slaves, blood relatives

  who survived our deaths but found another death

  crossing through monumental storms

  sardine-packed into stinking holds of ships

  we are crossing over spirits beneath them

  riding backs of african ghost crabs

  under the mighty salt water, gray skies

  with no remorse, no guilt of our suffering,

  we are crossing, we are crossing over

  together with relatives, though separated—

  we are spirits down here, they are flesh up there,

  sardine-packed into stinking ships—another death—

  is why we follow ravenous packs of sharks

  strung out for miles behind the ships we pursue

  to rejoin them somewhere in the future,

  fused to backs of african ghost crabs riding west,

  on backs of humping, dipping dolphins bucking

  waves rolling west from our lost homelands—

  driven by churning, whiplashing winds—

  like we used to ride bare-back back home

  on galloping, snorting horses, we are goin;

  where?, we don’t know where but we know

  we will find them somewhere out there

  we have left our homes, memories,

  ethos we carry with us where we are going,

  after crossing we will fly back home again,

  we will go back as shadows, not strangers

  though we won’t know what words to speak,

  what language we hear, though we will know

  sound, cadence, will recognize faces, certain

  gestures, rhythmic ways of walking rolling hips,

  but we will not know evolving local tongues,

  secret codes hidden in everyday nuance,

  though we will speak through eyes,

  touch, speak through seeing, music

  drumming language in our ears

  we are crossing, we are crossing over,

  & we will won’t go home as we knew it,

  we are crossing & when we go back we will go

  as shadows, we are crossing,

  we are going, where? we don’t know where,

  but we are going & we are seeking It

  where we are going; where? we don’t know

  where, but we are going, somewhere

  & we are going seeking It,

  we are going somewhere seeking,

  going there looking to be reborn

  II.

  FIRST TAKE

  from my terrace in goyave, guadeloupe, eye listen,

  listen to sea waves washing in on shore,

  whispering lullabies in low, hushed voices swirling

  in whirlpools there, voices combing through sand, rocks,

  salt water foaming, licking with lapping finger tongues

  curling, then dredging as hissing syllables spray,

  lisping in the wind roaring over the sea,

  sound becomes a language scripting lost memory,

  riffing through undertones of history

  murmuring rumors, secret, coded utterances sigh

  eye am hearing wailing journeys

  crawling across time to guadeloupe,

  this volcanic butterfly island rising

  from the dark, howling bottom of the atlantic ocean,

  where flesh reduced over centuries to bone

  scream as spirits, their gale-force presence now,

  haunted voices climb on shore whistling

  allegories, reveal treks, recollections,

  terror of a middle-passage so deep & dark,

  so terrible, translucent ghosts

  covered their black holes for eyes with diffuse hands,

  could not speak of what they saw,

  blew out lights of their sights until now,

  400 years later

  now you hear a few speaking, playing lost rhythms

  scripted through skins of talking drums, raising voices

  through sounds transferred inside blood recall

  locked within african spiritual voices,

  now, here, they evoke metaphors

  lost in antiquity replays each time you hear them,

  their antiphonal music recreated over time

  through wooden sticks raising rhythms from drum

  skins, rooted within a cultural dna memory,

  listen closely, you hear madness tempered there—

  anger too from horrors they saw, listen closely,

  you will catch survivors enrapturing us

  with hypnotic wailing, caterwauling language spoken

  through pulsating glissandos, vibrating,

  tuning-fork

  tomes, cross-fertilized with mysterious reverence;

  eye hear them now throbbing, calling through my dreams—

  & you hear them calling out too, reader/listener,

  listen closely, you hear them calling you too

  across time & space their caterwauling voices

  speaking directly to our hearts listen/hear

  III.

  THE ARRIVAL OF GHOST VOICES

  in the dead of night ghost voices come, surround me

  here in sleep, caressing spirit-lover, seduces me—

  you also, reader/listener, if you are attentive—deep

  in the dark, thoughts prowl outer limits of space, hover, cajole

  inside dreams, hold nothing back from cocked ears that know

  words sometimes are imprisoned inside—

  correct speech lacerated with fawning taste—still there

  are nuances, as the sharp blade of a knife reveals

  hidden sweetness slicing through pink-green

  blush of a mango’s skin, reaches

  the golden flesh of stringy nectar what

  the palate sometimes evokes in complex similes,

  metaphors, a rapier authority is unleashed

  inside moments of pleasure here

  reading poetry finds meaning confused inside

  pure wordplay, linguistic puzzles, hidden without sound,

  voices can replicate themselves within effete circles,

  severed tongues flap without surprise, song,