Wicked Enchantment

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Wicked Enchantment Page 5

by Wanda Coleman


  the first stone shall be the last

  the voice of our millenium is a niggah junky

  gagging on stage

  to heart-felt bass & trombone

  pissing rhythmically in his jock

  snot running into his forbidden funky os

  now that machines have finally taken over

  we can get into something serious

  like art

  i have my one-way ticket

  to the moon

  i am inculcated with the dangers

  of incriminating love

  after riding the desert in her ’63 cherry cad

  she uncovered herself beneath the sphinx

  rut on her breath

  the t.v. is preaching my children hibakusha

  i am in love with a fuck freak who

  lives in my alley

  the constant preoccupation of a sphere

  is in traversing the Möbius strip

  i throw the symbols. i make reverberations

  myth/my girlchild and me

  cackle joyfully in the kitchen

  as we make cookies

  for the party of the world

  Bottom Out Blues

  you scoot along the bottom

  think you goin’ somewheres

  you scoot around on bottom

  think you gonna go somewheres

  you walkin’ in the darkness

  see daylight everywhere

  boll weevil in your cotton

  gettin’ fat down in the hole

  boll weevil in your cotton

  got his nose down in the hole

  you fishin’ in the darkness

  with a broken fishin’ pole

  refrain: 3x6 i left my man for somethin’ new

  3x6 i left my man for somethin’ new

  so tired of fuss ’n struggle

  don’t know what to do

  love’s like cotton sleepers

  takes a lot of wear & tear

  love’s jes’ like cotton sleepers

  takes a lot of wear & tear

  abuse them rags too often

  gonna leave your behind bare

  Ms. Pac Man

  video fever comes late. i am found

  in the neighborhood family arcade dropping quarters

  i race the phosphorescent yellow critter across the diagram

  eating dots as she zooms

  something in this computer chase sweats me

  it’s not a game i’m good at—neck and arms tensed

  tongue against teeth

  i’ve gulped the cherry raspberry, orange and pretzel

  once i scored the apple, but the pear and banana elude me

  i can’t stand being watched by better players

  when the pastel spooks trap my glowing yellow self

  i curse loudly and ignore the stares

  i’m careful not to blow many quarters—even this

  engrossing little chase is luxury—

  my metaphor my life (the harder i play the lower i score)

  as the board promises a goal of 5000 points plus free game—

  too little for too much effort i pursue my dramas/those

  tasty shimmery blue spooks bursting into points i’m certain

  will put me over

  but don’t

  Bruno

  washing six-months’ worth of dirt & the devil off

  the old car

  is cheap stress therapy

  the front window on the passenger’s side

  was shattered by a vandal

  twice this year

  the first time we had the money to get it

  replaced. the second

  time we didn’t

  we keep it parked across the street in front of

  the movie studio

  sound stage

  it’s a 1968 Buick Skylark we bought together but

  it belongs to me

  it was towed away once. we had to cough up a

  few hundred to

  cover tow fees

  delinquent registration and a ticket gone to warrant

  what’s she doin’ drivin’ a rogue’s car?

  it used to have a stylish vinyl top which has

  cracked and

  peeled off

  when driving the jagged edges make a strange

  flapping noise like

  retreads about to blow

  what’s left of the paint job suggests metallic green

  now it’s primer gray

  cracked and blistered

  dented in spots

  the tires have been borderline flats for some time

  we’re careful never

  to drive it unless

  absolutely necessary. the transmission has a leak

  it needs fluid

  every 7–10 days

  the rear brakes are shot, the radio/tape player defunct

  altho the black leather

  interior is still nice

  if dusty and worn at the rear window deck & speakers

  i maintain it minimally until the day when we can

  afford to either

  restore or replace it

  i wonder how long it’ll be before it’s stranded

  in an intersection

  and has to be junked

  like my raggedy hand-to-mouth

  Emmett Till

  1

  river jordan run red

  rainfall panes the bottom acreage—rain

  black earth blacker still

  blackness seeps in seeps down

  the mortal gravity of hate-inspired poverty

  Jim Crow nidus

  the alabama the apalachicola the arkansas the aroostook

  the altamaha

  killing of 14-year-old

  stirs nation. there will be a public wake

  works its way underground

  scarred landscape veined by rage

  sanctified waters flow

  go forth

  the bighorn the brazos

  along roan valley walls blue rapids

  wear away rock

  flesh current quickly courses thru

  the front page news amber fields purple mountains

  muddies

  the chattahoochee the cheyenne the chippewa the cimarron

  the colorado the columbia the connecticut the cumberland

  waftage

  spirit uplifted eyes head heart

  imitation of breath chest aheave

  that grotesque swim up the styx

  level as rainwater culls into its floodplain

  the des moines

  blood river born

  2

  ebony robe aflow

  swathed hair of the black madonna

  bereft of babe

  the flint

  that hazel eye sees

  the woman

  she fine mighty fine

  she set the sun arising in his thighs

  the hudson the humboldt the illinois

  and he let go a whistle

  a smooth long all-american hallelujah whistle

  appreciation. a boy

  the james the klamath

  but she be a white woman. but he be

  a black boy

  the maumee the minnesota the mississippi the missouri

  the mohican

  raping her with that hazel eye

  the ohio

  make some peckerwood pass water mad

  make a whole tributary of intolerance

  the pearl the pesos the pee dee the penobscot

  the north platte the south platte the potomac

  vital fluid streaming forth in holy torrents

  think about it. go mad go blind

  go back to africa go civil rights go go

  the red the white the green

  run wine

  3

  silt shallows the slow sojourn seaward

  they awakened him from sleep

  that early fall morning

  t
hey made him dress

  they hurried Emmett down to the water’s edge

  the roanoke

  after the deed

  they weighted him down

  tossed him in

  for his violation

  the sacramento the salt the san juan the savannah

  the smoke

  from the deep dank murk of consciousness a birth

  oh say do you see the men off

  the bank dredging in that

  strange jetsam

  the tennessee the trinity

  a lesson

  he had to be taught—crucified (all a nigger

  got on his mind) for rape by eye that

  wafer-round hazel offender plucked out

  they crown him

  the wabash

  cuz she was white woman virtue and he

  be a black boy lust

  the yazoo the yellowstone

  oh say Emmett Till can you see Emmett Till

  crossed over into campground

  spill tears

  nimbus threatening downpour

  sweetwater culls into its soulplain

  come forth to carry the dead child home

  4

  at my mouth forking

  autumn 1955, lord!

  kidnapped from his family visit

  lord!

  money road shanty

  lord!

  his face smashed in

  lord! lord!

  his body beaten beyond cognition

  river mother carries him

  laid in state

  sovereign at last

  that all may witness true majesty

  cast eyes upon

  murder

  the youth’s body too light

  was weighted down in barbed wire & steel

  dumped into the river agape a ripple a wave

  (once it was human)

  aweigh. awade in water. bloated

  baptized

  and on that third day awaft

  from the mulky arm of the tallahatchie

  stretched cross cotton-rich flats

  of delta

  on that third day

  he rose

  and was carried forth to that promised land

  Auguries

  pied-eyes rhythm sticks & ginger root

  a black bird with one red feather

  yellow drapes

  immediate revelations of unsolicited intimacies

  a movie recalled one day

  on television the very next

  dropsy

  an epidemic of spaced-out street people talking

  to angels

  calls out of name

  a black baby succumbed to fire that finds its way to the crib

  from the slumlord’s faulty fuse box

  nystagmus

  sudden eruptions on the upper torso which appear

  disappear reappear and disappear

  forty giant squid beached the death day of

  a poet

  missing chapters

  blank billboards above sunset boulevard

  are you watching the skies

  even my dreams have dreams

  African Sleeping Sickness

  for Anna Halprin

  1

  four centuries of sleep they say

  i’ve no memory

  say they say they i talked quite coherently

  i don’t remember

  four centuries gone

  i walk eternal night/the curse of ever-dreaming

  sing me a lullaby

  2

  my father hoists me over his shoulder, holds me

  snug to him. i cannot walk

  we move thru the sea of stars in blue

  i love my father’s strength

  i love how blue the blue is

  and the coolness of stars against my face

  he sings me “my blue heaven”

  3

  i am tied hand and foot

  astraddle the gray county hospital bed on the basement floor

  my scream smothered in 4x4 adhesive

  nothing on but the too short too thin cotton gown

  above a naked saffron bulb in socket

  nothing else in the ward but empty beds row upon row

  and barred windows

  i do not know why i’m here or who i am

  i see my wounds

  they belong to the black child

  4

  giant green leech-dinosaurs invade the city

  superman flies to rescue but weakened by kryptonite

  can’t stop the havoc

  the slug creatures destroy the city, ooze into the Sierras/

  along my back into my spinal cord leaving a trail

  of upper Jurassic slime

  (it gets down to skin and bones. skin/the body’s last line

  of defense. when awakened the impulse to become—a

  cavernous hunger unfillable unsated

  bones/the minimal elements

  of survival)

  “who am i?”

  the physician observes my return to consciousness

  the petite white man with sable hair and clark kents

  makes note. he is seated in front of a panorama

  hills and A-frames sloping to the sea

  “who am i,” i ask again

  “who do you think you are?” he asks

  “i’m not myself,” i say

  5

  the encephalopathy of slavery—trauma to racial cortices

  resulting in herniated ego/loss of self

  rupture of the socio-eco spleen and

  intellectual thrombosis

  (terminal)

  sing me rivers the anthem of blue waters the hymn of

  genesis

  6

  lift up your voice and

  the tympanic reverberation of orgasmic grunt

  ejaculatio praecox

  traumatized. infected. abrupt behavioral changes

  the vomitus/love-stuff

  he watches me masturbating with the Jamaican dancer

  whose hand is up my womb to the elbow

  and starts to cry

  the weight swells my heart/cardiopulmonary edema

  doubled in size it threatens to pop

  i ask the doctor why things are so distorted

  “we’ve given you morphine

  for the pain of becoming”

  7

  chills. sing to me fever. sing to me. myalgia. sing to me

  delirium. sing to me. fluid filled lungs

  i walk eternal night

  in the room done in soft maroon warm mahogany amber gold

  we disrobe to the dom-dom-dom a heady blues suite

  i pity the man his 4-inch penis

  then am horrified as it telescopes upward becoming a

  2-quart bottle of Coca-Cola

  i talk quite coherently they say

  8

  fucking in the early dark of evening

  mid-stroke he’s more interested in being overheard

  i go back into my trance as we resume the

  6 o’clock news

  the car won’t start. the mechanic is drunk

  i can’t break his snore. the engine whines sputters

  clunks shutters in the uncanny stillness

  they’re coming for me. i’ve got to escape

  angry, i lash out at the steering wheel, strike

  my somnambulate lover in his chest

  he jumps out of bed yelling

  “what’s wrong?”

  the curse of ever-dreaming

  sing to me, i say. sing to me of rivers

  American Sonnet

  the lurid confessions of an ex-cake junky: “i blew it

  all. blimped. i was really stupid. i waited

  until i was forty to get hooked on white flour

  and powdered sugar”

  white greed black anger

  * * *

  X

  * * *

 
=

  socio–eco dominance socio–eco disparity

  a) increased racial tension/polarization

  b) increased criminal activity

  c) sporadic eruptions manifest as mass killings

  d) collapses of longstanding social institutions

  e) the niggerization of the middle class

  the blow to his head cracks his skull

  he bleeds eighth notes & treble clefs

  (sometimes i feel like i’m almost going)

  to Chicago, baby do you want to go?

  The First Day of Spring 1985

  polemic for Tim & Kathy Joyce

  lust for liberty sprouts seventeen dead

  blackest black South Africa

  camera action: blood & shoes. (remember the mountains of shoes?)

 

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