then after the second plane hit people started jumping from windows

  doing grotesque dances of black ghost shapes, clothing flapping around them

  as they fell like shot crows, then step-by-step the buildings began to fall,

  crumple down & you saw in your mind the painting you would create later,

  a black, bloody pyramid shape you lifted off the dollar bill, jack, blood money,

  so you bought gallons of blood, splashed it all over your painting,

  dropped bone fragments, silica, debris, rusted material into it,

  brought a lifetime of creation to this massive, stunning painting & it shows,

  9.11.01 is a monumental achievement, grotesque, with four large blades

  thrusting upwards from the sides of a massive dark pyramid,

  it is a work that will survive in its tragic power & beauty,

  the calamitous political madness that led to its glorious birth

  2008 TO 2015

  the pulse of a comet streaking through the sky

  between twilight & midnight, a whiplash

  tail slicing red, yellow, pink, or grey, curving,

  forming a woman’s breast, thrusting a nipple

  forward

  before plunging off your canvas of waves,

  echoes, jack whitten,

  it was never enough for you to hope or dream,

  you had to see hope or dream in the music of paint

  birthed from your cutting up of acrylic colors, sweeping,

  cutting across canvases or paper, echoing

  whatever solo,

  spectral flight you heard/saw in your fertile brain,

  whiplashing through the way the day’s flight sprung

  light, sunk deep in the darkness of night,

  perhaps glowing red as the passion of jayne cortez

  you evoked in eight donut circles, one absent a hole

  dark in the middle you dedicated to her,

  again red, pink, blue, green, black against a sea—

  a sky?—washed with waves of blood—mankind’s?—

  sluicing across the cosmos, a fiery glow after sunset,

  what did those other 47 white spectral donut circles

  represent in gray & black waves of cupcakes 1 & 2,

  all those different colored circles of various impulses

  breaking through the midnight canvas

  as if they were there by remote control

  again reminding of spectral probings from outer space,

  echoing, replicating the same firmament underneath the libyan sea

  where you were always diving, all of it now in your paintings,

  then there is the shadowbox for children

  from sandy hook elementary school, reminding of lollipops

  pulsing various sweet colors of a child’s appetite

  the imagination wants to suck

  these visuals of dreamscapes floating

  at the very edge of the world,

  the outer limits of space travelling through unusual

  imaginary landscapes—real or imagined—

  bordering on what dreams conjure up in sleep,

  music pulsating, probing from the ether,

  voices there throbbing, blooming from deep

  inside the galaxy of the mind, space

  artists like you, jack whitten, dream alive beauty

  onto canvases from sleep, magical, mysterious flights

  through paint, possibilities awakening power there

  emanating from your art in waves washed in music—

  monk, the “prince of darkness,” john coltrane—

  birthing beats, rhythms of the heart’s voice speaking

  a visualized language breathing onto your canvases,

  you be flying through the process living with colors

  in the whiplash tail-end wash of paint language

  evolving through premonitions, of rhythms

  mirroring what’s up ahead deep in the matrix,

  riding musical syncopations whirling from monk’s world,

  coltrane’s spiritual voice, the prince of darkness up in your head

  alongside ornette coleman’s harmolodic music, scats, colors,

  ideas whiplashing spilling out in vivid hues, some muted,

  emerging from edges of cut up paint skins

  forever evolving in moments of creation, the cutting

  edge of a cleaver chop chopping shredded skins of paint,

  reborn in your art again & again on surfaces of number 10 cotton

  canvases, you are remaking in paint on a soul map (2015) image,

  a photograph in your head, you are mapping a spiritual metaphor,

  a terrain of humans here on earth, galvanizing now as a creation,

  birthed out of black & white shards of chopped up acrylic,

  evolving inside your ever changing imagination, chop chopping

  every day through reinvention, chop chopping, chop, chop,

  every day you rise, jack whitten, go inhabit your studio to work

  LUSTING AFTER MANGOES NUMBER 3

  for Margaret

  eye wake up before the sun becomes a burst of fire

  high above my house up on a hill in lush goyave,

  guadeloupe, overlooking the caribbean sea

  full of curling foam washed waves carrying histories

  whispering memories of the transatlantic slave trade

  & the devil’s eye above casts off towering orange flames,

  ignites huge explosions of cascading tongues of light,

  sweeps all wavering shadows into deep secret corners,

  where bright finger-glows burn but cannot go

  because of the opaque darkness blooming there,

  despite the luminous light surrounding me here

  everywhere, it must be—as miles davis once told me—

  all about timing, which leads me to know to arrive

  precisely behind my house, in the yard, under the blooming

  haloed trees full of ripe mangoes dangling seduction there,

  a split second before the rooster arrives leading his posse

  of hungry hens followed by cute little voracious chickadees,

  right after flinty-eyed rats have abandoned the feeding table—

  which is my abundant, sprawling, tropical backyard—

  where fresh mangoes fall onto in season, succulent,

  fragrant beyond belief, they remind me of alluring breasts

  swollen with sweetness, plump lips, soft, inviting, luscious

  when opening to kiss, suck sugar from the tongue inside

  swelling in the mouth of someone you love, deeply

  it’s a race against time to win the day in my backyard,

  soon after field rats take their fill, nature swarms the prizes—

  those mouthwatering, delectable griffy mangoes

  lying there on the moist ground—eye must get to before

  tiny sharp teeth bite, pointed beaks peck, then penetrate the hard

  green skin brushed with rose & yellow blush of the mangoes

  lying there, coveted on feeding grounds, they are scrumptious

  prizes eye must get to after rats take their healthy bites,

  the rooster & his brood peck holes in skins ants can stream through

  en masse, wherever they find openings, then surge, advance

  like a well-trained army, swarm all over the yellow

  stringy flesh sweet with nectar in a frenzy, then gobble up

  the treasure, leave behind only dried up leather-brown husks

  resembling corpses on battlefields all over the earth

  so eye must be there on time, as the prince of darkness

  told me, because who gets there first enjoys the fruits of their labor,

  the sweet golden nectar of a mango’s ripe flesh, succulent,

  beyond belief—to gather up all that saccharine fruit,

  taste those wondrously lush mangoes when they fall right after

  the sun’s first light explodes through yawning darkness,

  the sky opens up everything it sees with its can opener laser beams,

  offers in my yard a splendid spread of delectable fruit—

  not only mangoes, but papayas, bananas, maracujas—called

  passion fruit too in new york city—for me to feast on, fresh

  here, everyday, where most things pop on my taste buds,

  open them up, it seems so new when eye wake up, find this

  radiant beauty surrounding me, love breathing there

  so warm, softly next to me, ripe & succulently sweet

  as a fresh griffy mango eye am just about to eat

  LESSONS IN SEDUCTION

  in a blink extreme tropes can be embraced, measures,

  language filled with scherzos, seemingly alluring

  images, metaphors blooming loose as muumuu skirts,

  or dresses wrapped around hour-glass bodies of young women

  in hawaii, these moments can be as sweet as honey at first glance,

  the attraction might tempt you with outrageous acts of flim flam,

  chiaroscuro dreams languishing inside

  gripping intoxicating schemes caused by wordplays,

  fears, delusional performances, some spoken, others

  unspoken gestures of rolling hips reminding of sea waves

  mascaraed eyelashes batting sideways after

  creating tears that snake black down cheeks after winking,

  fluttering bold promises of sex after midnight

  secrets can reveal profound unknown mysteries

  like a tendency to fully embrace lust, strip off

  all pretense in the act of feverish copulation,

  when trembling sounds woo male or female transgender

  suitors who know what’s up with all these locked up,

  hidden secrets with the key of a probing tongue,

  but eye tell you now, reader, it’s about seduction

  when you think of the push & pull of carnal desires

  it’s enticing to wrap your tongue around words

  ravenous as plums bursting through sentences, they can be

  sometimes bittersweet as broken love affairs are, though

  vexing when someone you love deeply drifts away like a leaf

  blown airborne across a beautiful blue summer day,

  when a breeze can elicit memory, arouse deep passion

  then love’s seducing tongue can lick across your face,

  wondrous as that moment remembered, exploding—

  then & now—in a climax together, your faces

  flush, beautiful as a sentence of garcía márquez

  PASSING BY LA CASA OF “GABO” MARCH 7TH, 2014

  (Gabriel García Márquez died April 17, 2014 in Mexico City, Mexico)

  the sienna colored terra-cotta house of gabriel garcía márquez

  jumped into my eyeballs like a dolphin in the act of leaping

  out of the sea, into my sight, it looked out over the ancient stone wall

  wrapped around old cartagena, northwest over the caribbean sea

  towards kingston, havana, miami, the house sat in front

  of the legendary, magnificently appointed santa clara hotel—once a convent—

  where the rich come to gather (mostly white, baby whales fat cigars stuck

  in their mouths, goofy caricatures of what they think rich

  manhood should be, look like, draped on their arms lissome trophies,

  well-endowed mulatto latin beauties, long silky black hair cascading

  down their backs, while other trophies—mostly american

  or european ladies—with bleached blond hair shaking from side to side,

  strutted around—slender, too—haughty

  as well-kept bejeweled mascots)

  it is beautiful, “gabo’s” house, walled away from prying eyes—

  like mine—who would drop by just to look at the man who wrote

  One Hundred Years of Solitude

  now the great man, once full of words flooding out in conversations

  with friends through his great books, is said to be silent on his 87th birthday—celebrated

  yesterday—& all eye can do is have photographs of me

  taken standing in front of his wondrous sanctuary,

  terraces jutting out

  for him to see the sea better, a birdhouse like a retreat

  perched on top—

  at the highest point of “gabo’s” casa—surrounded with fresh blooming

  flowers bobbing their perfumed bouquets in the air—in the front yard too—

  where he used to go too think, write, meditate,

  looking at his beloved sea, watching all the rainbow people passing by—

  some of them waving when they saw him sitting there

  when they strolled the old stone walkway topping the wall—

  the walkway here reminds me of havana’s malecon—it protects the city

  from onslaughts of the sea, conquering armies too in the past,

  perhaps is where “gabo” hatched the idea for the worn out palace full of goats

  chewing the curtains, where the 200 year-old tyrant in Autumn of the Patriarch lived with

  his double in absolute sloth, looking out to sea,

  saw his enemies approaching with an armageddon of ships

  now the mind of “gabo” is said to be empty—he has written this

  himself, though he still is the trickster supreme, might have

  another sleight of hand wizardry up his sleeve,

  though eye doubt it—

  friends say he cannot understand words of love from his admirers,

  cannot read the eyes of sacred alchemists, who evoked

  the acrid smell of african sorcerers, witch-doctors who could cure the vacant

  look of those suffering from deep hallucinations, self-hatred, sleep deprivation,

  who made love to pit bulls in their own backyard with people

  watching in horror, they say he cannot smell the sweet seductive odor of women

  who eat dirt jam-packed with feces of wild boars & panthers, who drive men

  crazy with lust, say he cannot recognize blood flowing through streets

  in gutters next to curbs of sidewalks, duplicating the river of blood

  he created once in macondo, after its owner had been shot,

  before the blood climbed up steps like a snake to enter the house

  where he was born, ran across the floor terrified of the death he saw coming,

  screamed under the woman’s chair, who birthed him into this hellhole

  without a future, in the last seconds of his life

  they say “gabo” cannot hear

  the words of his great friend, fidel castro, he only knows gestures,

  showing kindness, a macaw’s squawking talk, a bird singing

  at sunrise of joy, when light & a breeze caress the feathers of its wings

  when it lifts off in flight, after the sun breaks through night’s sleep,

  rumor has it “gabo” still knows the scent of rain tickling his nostrils,

  in the knowable, eternal language history speaks through language

  winds speak when the tongue of a storm approaches from the east,

  carrying jagged swords of lightning thunder-clapping within the immense

  dark clouds carrying the source of calamitous storms—hurricanes,

  cyclones, tornadoes, furious rainstorms full of kettle-drum languages,

  howling high-pitched voices, deep-down moaning of tribal women

  mourning the loss of loved ones, culture, their homelands—

  then rumor has it

  “gabo” will perk up, rise up from his muteness recognizing his own life

  in this language full of fierce, awesome storms, then a smile might break

  briefly across his lips, his eyes flashing recognition one more time

  before darkness comes, when he remembers familiar voices

  from long ago in his head filled with cobwebs & they speak to him in a familiar

  tongue—before media speak, the internet, iphones, ipads, computers, corporate

  sanitized bullshit dominating the airwaves with false creativity & intelligence—

  in this moment he might recognize echoes breaking through cobwebs—

  like his old friend, the columbian painter, alejandro obregón—

  rising from the past again, a place of blood-deep friendship

  & he might speak to them in silence without even moving his lips, then

  perhaps “gabo”will drift away again, enter the realm of joyous oblivion

  as it embraces him in silence, forever, leaving us

  with all these wondrous words & books he created

  BLUE MANDALA

  for Xenobia Bailey

  you can catch a clean number 7 subway train from 42nd street,

  times square, head south, arrive at a gleaming bright stop

  in new york city, get off at the 34th street/hudson yards station,

  walk through turnstiles, see people craning necks upwards to snatch

  a glimpse of a miraculous marvel—a wondrously blue mandala

  embedded in the roof above their heads, translucent,

  take in how the healing powers of light in this new creation dance here,

  magical, circles spin, radiate through prismatic flight, pool inside spirits,

  the beauty of this blue-tiled multicolored mandala locked in place

  above the subway entrance, where people riding up or down the long

  crawling escalator, remind of those conveying metro passengers

  underground in paris, france, to believe inspiration lives

  somewhere in a promised future, if only for a moment, now

  this blue miracle hatched, born, flew from the imaginative brain nest

  of xenobia bailey, like an eagle soaring like dr. j flying through space

  for one of his eye-popping windmill, tomahawk dunks—making a statement—

  uptown in harlem at rucker’s legendary basketball court

  back in the day when huge afros & short basketball trunks were the rage,

  & you, xenobia bailey, a genius throwback too, weave your artistry clear,

  here mirroring the mysterious power of sun ra,

  one of his little beany caps emblazoned with secret codes,

  helicopter blades, otherworldly objects, perched atop his head,

  over gold lamé robes, mysterious as african hoodoo expressions,