in this music, faster than the blink of an eye

  the rhythm is somewhere else seducing hearts

  through beats, pulses entering our ears, music,

  earthquakes of sound arriving in a split second,

  before we know it’s there—a tingling in the air,

  just like when an animal, a bird knows it, leaves,

  splits in the instant earth shakes, they are already

  in flight—& it’s already too late for us who are

  too slow to react quickly in that precise moment,

  but then we hear music trembling its voice,

  making love to antennas in our ears,

  its tongue probing our senses, caressing,

  seducing the sound already formulated

  in a musicians brain, rhythm has already been

  launched into motion when we mere mortals

  hear it touching us as spirit, movement, a flame,

  improvisation, a solo launched as an arrow piercing

  the moment, is real when it strikes the heart,

  as genius music does in miles davis, jimmy cobb,

  bill evans, cannonball adderley, john coltrane,

  paul chambers on kind of blue, all blue, blue in green,

  there too later—wayne shorter, herbie hancock,

  ron carter, tony williams in the second great quintet—

  all that shape-shifting, improvisational magic,

  mystery created before we knew it was being played,

  arrived here like an earthquake, changed the way

  some of us listened to, heard music, altered the manner

  many of us lived our lives in hermetic bubbles before

  we followed heartbeats of improvisation switching

  back & forth, the rhythms beyond normal

  heartbeats, skipping to my loo, discovering new

  shape-shifting solo modes, melodies created instantly

  when we heard musical licks flying through

  the eruption of space, earthquaking—in any place—

  dipping & diving, then soaring like black birds,

  doing whatever they have to too keep on keepin’ on,

  riding darts of notes in solos high up in space

  EYE WANT TO GO TO BUCARAMANGA, COLOMBIA

  on my way to cartagena, colombia, flying from panama

  on copa airlines, the name of a city in the southern

  region of that country catches my eye & ear when it pops

  up on the screen in a tv map, on the back of the seat in front me,

  the city was called bucaramanga & eye want to go there instantly,

  want to visit bucaramanga, because eye love the music deep

  in the word, how it rolls off my tongue like the thumping

  in my own heart, reminds me of beats of hummingbird hands

  flying over tightly strung skinheads of drums

  eye want to go bear witness, see bucaramanga,

  check it out for myself, find out what’s happening there,

  south of aracataca,—the birthplace of gabriel garcia marquez—

  catagena, barranquilla, sincelejo, santa marta, cucuta, turbo,

  all sounding rhythmic as sharply accented drumbeats

  in caribbean spanish, echoing african mother tongues

  eye want to go there to hear if bucaramanga people

  speak caribbean rhythms, like the name of their city

  is the musical language of african rooted indio

  rooted mestizo sounds, eye want to roam the streets,

  look into the eyes of the people, eat their food,

  listen to whatever music is played there, want to go,

  see for myself the architecture, whatever is up in the air,

  eye want to go to bucaramanga, listen to the words,

  syllables rolling off tongues of its people, want to know

  if the sound of the language is the heart of the city’s name

  beating with rhythm, like that of hummingbird winged

  hands flying over tightly strung skin-heads of drums

  III.

  POEM FOR POETS HOUSE

  for Jane Gregory Rubin, Stanley Kunitz, and Lee Briccetti

  there are lines of words that stretch across white pages,

  gather themselves into structures some call poetry,

  from time to time the poetic sentences fly off pages into the air,

  remind us of lines in the drawings of an architect

  sketched onto another white page, spread out across a desk,

  promising to become a building rising from a plot of land

  near an historic river, where it will house books of poets,

  sometimes the words blooming in these poetic lines

  leap into space as songs, sprout wings after leaving poets’

  mouths & people who hear them flying through space,

  fall in love with rhythms breathing in some of these cadences,

  like they do hearing notes of music in voices miles davis, mozart,

  james brown, alanis morissette, aretha franklin, leontyne price,

  michael jackson, youssou n’dour, salif keita & the beatles,

  the music & words might become birds circling through

  dreams, fly across the world to enter hearts of those dreaming

  everywhere there are places for poetry to sing & bloom

  like flowers in a garden surrounding a beautiful house,

  like the glass & steel homes constructed from words of poets

  reaching into the sky near the hudson river,

  with windows wide open, clear, to allow the sky to sweep in,

  is a metaphor celebrating the spiritual beauty of language,

  the enduring wonder of poetry embracing us all

  POEM FOR LOLA, ECHOING DEREK WALCOTT’S, “SIXTY YEARS AFTER”

  for Lola Bluiett

  eye remember long lines of boys snaking up greer avenue

  circa the mid-1950’s, back in st. louis, missouri,

  when heat was scorching furnace flame in summer days,

  when a fiery sun hammered high up in the blue looked down—

  a golden coin, a cyclops eye—evoked in me

  the legend of a dragon’s lethal

  tongue searing us young black bucks queued up back then,

  one following the other, just to get a glimpse of the wondrously seductive,

  beautiful lola bluiett, sitting up on her porch, a fabled queen to all of us,

  across the street from my friend, donnell reid,

  who never queued up to look at her

  because he saw her most every day,

  lola was an absolute temptress for all us young black studs queued up

  like ducks in a row back then on greer avenue, she was the cat’s meow

  singeing our maddening, adolescent sexual desires, burning

  like blowtorch dreams of plunging deep into lola’s imagined sex

  wet, though laced with fire inside our fevered imaginations,

  she seared us all back then, each and every day

  sweet lola did,

  with the ancient fire most grown-up men knew

  as rivers of lava coursing through bodies, causing our penises

  to become blocks of wood in our pants each time we saw her—

  a female enchanting as our blooming local flower

  lola bluiett was back then—

  that’s when we knew the first pangs of puppy love welling up in us,

  scorching as heat wrapped tightly around our new focus holding first love

  we wore on dazed faces all during those years, it seemed so dangerous,

  even then, these new throbbing, uncontrollable, sudden desires bulging

  the front of our pants with an aching longing we could only soothe

  with our hands wrapped tightly around our throbbing gristles

  when we went home at night & caressed the fever away,

  released ourselves from this strange new pain, this mysterious

  aching we endured every single day, each time we saw lola

  perched up on her porch, or moving her incredibly sensuous, body,

  as she walked down some neighborhood street, beautiful,

  seductive as any desire imaginable in our tortured imaginations

  & when she deigned to look our way, licking her tongue across

  her full, sweetly red, open wet lips, her wide, open large doe eyes

  teasing under incredibly long lashes, we all could have rose up & flew

  straight up to heaven in our imaginations, right then & there—

  sweet lola bluiett, where did you go carrying all our puppy love,

  where sweet fire of my young years, O where have you gone

  A SINGER’S SIREN CALLING IN MARCUS GARVEY PARK: AUGUST 24, 2013

  for Cecile McLorin Salvant

  her voice reminds of a great dancer’s body, supple

  the way it bends itself into syllables, grace notes

  extend into flight, phrases spin high during moments

  her voice cruises light through space creating melodies,

  improvising solos so stunningly elastic, so different,

  though her voice echoes familiar clues—bessie, ella, billie, sarah,

  abby—threads through our ears sassy as it eases sex into lyrics

  wanting someone to be a lollypop she could suck & lick,

  then she pulls back to naughty, french kisses—oo la la—

  sounds of lascivious jelly rolls ala josephine baker,

  then, for one so young, she turns on a dime,

  becomes magical, changes again into a bright flower

  blooming mysteriously right before our eyes,

  suddenly her hypnotic light captures our attention,

  won’t let go when she soars, dips back down to earth, becomes

  a spiritual song growling deep in the blues dark, she is a lover

  moaning heat, trembling—soaked to the bone with sweat—

  then passion leaps into the moment, flips her tongue risqué,

  risky, elongates her vocal sounds into stretching possibilities

  steep in a language of outrage, before switching quickly to tender,

  love, we come to know now in her ancient voice

  an urgent calling, a siren’s song igniting cleansing flames,

  it was a commanding performance, fierce, compelling,

  unafraid, a searing light beckoning us hours after midnight

  A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN PUTTING ON MAKEUP ON THE DOWNTOWN NUMBER 3 NEW YORK SUBWAY TRAIN

  a woman dabs a little of this, a bit of that with a brush,

  caresses her lovely face, smooth as any

  honey-brown female temptress’s countenance

  she holds a small jewel-encrusted mirror in her right hand

  so as to see her best reflection in glass preening there

  no matter her rapturous beauty, the woman isn’t satisfied with what

  her eyes decipher inside the reflecting glass, so

  she applies a fresh coat of sweet candy-apple-red gloss to her lips,

  purses them, sticks her tongue out as if about to lick

  her splendor caught there as in a photograph,

  still, she is not pleased yet

  so she licks her left index finger lovingly, wipes it over her wet lips

  until they glisten as if seducing desire

  (as when a female movie star opens herself up

  in a seductive scene when kissing a co-star with an open, damp mouth,

  before their two pink tongues probe sensuously

  evocatively between two orifices wet with heat)

  now she is satisfied with her image in the glass,

  so she rises alluringly, knowing all eyes are upon her in this moment,

  smiles sweetly to herself, struts off the train when the doors open—

  like the mouth of one of the lover’s in the movie—

  then she disappears, a dazzling illusion floating through the teeming

  rush hour crowds gathered here, causing countless heads to turn—

  swivel on shoulders like spinning tops—

  our eyes following her now as if in a trance

  HIGH UP IN MY IMAGINATION

  For Margaret

  high up in my imagination

  eye am thinking of you

  love, serene there in your space

  filled with butterflies, luminous

  hibiscus flowers, waving

  when the wind tongues calm

  through slats of blinds bringing light

  with its companion of luminous gold

  rays, bathing the moment with beauty

  when our lips meet, soft, tender,

  you are the warming sun

  embracing my passion

  SOMETIMES WHILE SITTING ON A BENCH IN CENTRAL PARK

  sometimes you sit here thinking of full-lipped

  women strolling around naked inside

  your active imagination, then you feel guilty

  for even going there in your lascivious head

  because you have a wonderful wife, margaret,

  who looks at you, seems to know all you’re thinking,

  so you just drop the ball of that thought, since

  you are afraid of getting caught with the lurid

  droppings of this musing spotting the heap of pants

  hanging down around your skinny ankles, because,

  like miles once said, “margaret is a voodoo woman”

  and she is, so with that thought scaring your mind

  you go somewhere else inside your noggin,

  like what do you think of when time strikes

  the midnight hour, you hear sounds of bells ringing

  in beautiful smiles, splendid as daybreak,

  the arch of polished steel bending up over blue skies—

  eye call it the upside down question mark—curving

  above st. louis, missouri, the mississippi river

  snaking muddy there, north or south, wherever

  your voice takes you seeking poetry, it breaks

  in all directions, long roads ahead following

  clues, lengthening inside tongues seducing,

  echoing blues—joy too—through new days,

  voices whiplashing past you, squatting here

  with words in your mouth you cannot speak

  out loud sitting on this bench in central park,

  because the man sitting next to you,

  reading the wall street journal’s conservative

  editorial page, will surely think you are crazy

  TELEPHONE CALL FROM SAMON FOR MILES DAVIS

  the voice came in from nowhere over my telephone, it was samo,

  the radiant black sorcerer of startling indelible images,

  he came sluicing in on a scatological brush-stroke,

  improvisational art-speak, risk-taking at its highest level,

  an unconditional mack shot out into the dark

  inside hip verbal word-play of street language

  when the voice can be used as high-jinks rapology, cool jazz

  scatting slick downtown riffs, harlem bebop, scag when it flew through

  veins skipping signatures of white-girl time-changes, which was what

  bebop lived through back in the day, is what samo needed now

  to know as a key to unlock magical impulses of 1940’s attitudes,

  what mystery provided in surprise back then,

  which is where all great music survives—

  great visual art, poetry & dance too—

  inside sequences of luminous metaphoric rhythms,

  the happenstance of transcendent colors, images thrown together

  on canvas, a sheet of paper—filled with notes, words, sentences flying

  as bird wings—full of imagination, dancing into our lives as clues,

  wake-up calls, signals fusing our attention, focuses it,

  then wrapping everything all up within a rapturous moment of incandescent

  beauty, like a yardbird, dizzy solo

  now samo’s voice was reaching out to me to meet miles davis,

  “the prince of darkness,” master of rhythmic nuance,

  the golden trumpet voice of quicksilver mood changes,

  unreconstructed black man not giving a fuck

  what anyone thought was not inside his dna

  creating music there, with the power to move, innovate through

  risk-taking rhythms dancing on the head of a needle, mystery ingrained

  in his voice, magic was where he was, just like samo through brushstrokes,

  images colliding with colors, his voice laid down with visuals depicting

  a contemporary language of history through duende, like miles

  hendrix, spoken through both these black sorcerers rooted in hoodoo

  now, in this moment meeting miles was necessary for samo,

  for his paintings to keep getting up on the magical one,

  he had to know the spirits of hendrix, bird & dizzy—all dead now

  but living in the disposition of the prince who knew their darkness & light,

  because he held the key to unlocked secrets of the underworld,

  where ancestors lived without flesh but flew as pure spirit matter

  through that dark, unknowable space, bug-eyed,

  their invisible arms beating wings without feathers, their breaths

  as legacies still creating brilliant music full of colors in others,

  swimming everywhere in the world, drenched in light

  & this was what samo needed to know now, to transition to the ether

  world he had so often dreamed of since he heard the calling of sorcery

  pulsating through rhythms & colors he imagined in a long-gone dream,

  where he collaborated with these radiant magical sorcerers,

  with the prince of darkness whispering music in his ears

  DEATH ALWAYS COMES

  time always comes stealing breath as it blows

  hot or cold across our nostrils, we smell

  death there with the scent of decomposing flesh

  wafting through breezes with putrid rumors

  hanging around lunchtime at the beach, everyone there

  talking shit about a dead whale washed up on the sand,

  its rotten carcass smelling like holy hell

  in the middle of august, when heat extracts drenching