Cat comes in finally, the muslim. Tall brother splits to the bedroom lays on the bed under the cover, stiff as wood pole. (Remember I described him befoe??) Hostess pins him almost faints. Muslim chick, OPuretwat the black beauty, pulls it all off, except for a second she fades into the bedroom for a suck off a burning joint. Frozen for a second, in tableau,
the shit is run successfully
muslim chick and her husband
leave
another frozen moment (EXCEPT THE RUSH OF ALL THINGS IS THE RUSH OF ALL THINGS AND ON IS STILL EVER WAS AND IS NOW OMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM THE ENDLESS)
Then everybody unfreezes and a loud cackle of success in America rises up from this not really humble abode. Lil brother is happy, and puts on his newest record. Hostess titters walks around touching her guests on the arm. Tall brother finally comes out of the bedroom sez, “Shit, that cat cdn’t seen me anyway, even if he’d come in there. I was really a ghost.”
Exactly before the laughter.
Answers in Progress
Can you die in airraid jiggle
torn arms flung through candystores
Touch the edge of answer. The waves of nausea
as change sweeps the frame of breath and meat.
“Stick a knife through his throat,”
he slid
in the blood
got up running toward
the blind newsdealer. He screamed
about “Cassius Clay,” and slain there in the
street, the whipped figure of jesus, head opened
eyes flailing against his nose. They beat him to
pulpy answers. We wrote Muhammad Ali across his
face and chest, like a newspaper of bleeding meat.
The next day the spaceships landed. Art Blakey records was what they were looking for. We gave them Buttercorn Lady and they threw it back at us. They wanted to know what happened to The Jazz Messengers. And right in the middle, playing the Sun-Ra tape, the blanks staggered out of the department store. Omar had missed finishing the job, and they staggered out, falling in the snow, red all over the face chest, the stab wounds in one in the top of a Adam hat.
The space men thought that’s what was really happening. One beeped (Ali mentioned this in the newspapers) that this was evolution. Could we dig it? Shit, yeh. We were laughing. Some blanks rounded one corner, Yaa and Dodua were behind them, to take them to the Center. Nationalized on the spot.
The space men could dig everything. They wanted to take one of us to a spot and lay for a minute, to dig what they were in to. Their culture and shit. Whistles Newark was broke up in one section. The dead mayor and other wops carried by in black trucks. Wingo, Rodney and them waving at us. They stopped the first truck and Cyril wanted to know about them thin cats hopping around us. He’s always very fast finger.
Space men wanted to know what happened after Blakey. They’d watched but couldn’t get close enough to dig exactly what was happening. Albert Ayler they dug immediately from Russell’s mouth imitation. That’s later. Red spam cans in their throats with the voices, and one of them started to scat. It wigged me. Bamberger’s burning down, dead blancos all over and a cat from Sigma Veda, and his brothers, hopping up and down asking us what was happening.
We left Rachel and Lefty there to keep explaining. Me and Pinball had to go back to headquarters, and report Market Street Broad Street rundown. But we told them we’d talk to them. I swear one of those cats had a hip walk. Even thought they was hoppin and bopadoppin up and down, like they had to pee. Still this one cat had a stiff tentacle, when he walked. Yeh; long blue winggly cats, with soft liquid sounds out of their throats for voices. Like, “You know where Art Blakey, Buhainia, is working?” We fell out.
* * *
Walk through life
beautiful more than anything
stand in the sunlight
walk through life
love all the things
that make you strong, be lovers, be anything
for all the people of
earth.
You have brothers
you love each other, change up
and look at the world
now, it’s
ours, take it slow
we’ve long time, a long way
to go,
we have
each other, and the
world,
dont be sorry
walk on out through sunlight life, and know
we’re on the go
for love
to open
our lives
to walk
tasting the sunshine
of life.
Boulevards played songs like that and we rounded up blanks where we had to. Space men were on the south side laying in some of the open houses. Some brothers came in from the west, Chicago, they had a bad thing going out there. Fires were still high as the buildings, but Ram sent a couple of them out to us, to dig what was happening. One of them we sent to the blue cats, to take that message, back. Could W dig what was happening with them? We sent our own evaluation back, and when I finished the report me and Pinball started weaving through the dead cars and furniture. Waving at the brothers, listening to the sounds, we had piped through the streets.
Smokey Robinson was on now. But straight up fast and winging. No more unrequited love. Damn Smokey got his thing together too. No more tracks or mirages. Just the beauty of the whole. I hope they play Sun-Ra for them blue cats, so they can dig where we at.
Magic City played later. By time we got to the courthouse. The whole top of that was out. Like you could look inside from fourth or fifth floor of the Hall of Records. Cats were all over that joint. Ogun wanted the records intact.
Past the playgrounds and all them blanks in the cold standing out there or laying on the ground crying. The rich ones really were funny. This ol cat me an Pinball recognized still had a fag thing going for him. In a fur coat, he was some kind of magistrate. Bobby and Moosie were questioning him about some silver he was supposed to have stashed. He was a silver freak. The dude was actually weeping. Crying big sobs; the women crowded away from him. I guess they really couldn’t feel sorry for him because he was crying about money.
By the time we got to Weequahic Avenue where the space men and out-of-town brothers were laying I was tired as a dog. We went in there and wanted to smoke some bush, but these blue dudes had something better. Taste like carrots. It was a cool that took you. You thought something was mildly amusing and everything seemed interesting.
I talked with Pinball and the blue leader about Ben Caldwell’s paintings . . . the one where the guy is smoking the reefer. We thought about the changing reference, of our new world. As it stood already in the old ruins. And we all felt like Bird. The old altosaxophonist . . . but the limits opened out into the pure lyric tone of powerful beings. But when the Sun-Ra tape came on this blue dude really opened up. He dug the hell out of it. Perfect harmony these cats had too. Boooooo—Iiiiiiiiiooooooooooooo . . . daaaaa ahhhhhhhh aaaaahhhhhh . . . booooo OOOOOOOOOOOOO oooooooooaaaaaaaaaoooaaaaa
Claude McKay I started quoting. Four o’clock in the morning to a blue dude gettin cooled out on carrots. We didn’t have no duty until ten o’clock the next day, and me and Lorenzo and Ish had to question a bunch of prisoners and stuff for the TV news. Chazee had a play to put on that next afternoon about the Chicago stuff. Ray talked to him. And the name of the play was Big Fat Fire.
Man I was tired. We had taped the Sigma. They were already infested with Buddhas there, and we spoke very quietly about how we knew it was our turn. I had burned my hand somewhere and this blue cat looked at it hard and cooled it out. White came in with the design for a flag he’d been working on. Black heads, black hearts, and blue fiery space in the background. Love was heavy in the atmosphere. Ball wanted to know what the blue chicks looked like. But I didn’t. Cause I knew after tomorrow’s duty, I had a day off, and I knew somebody waitin for me at my house, and some kids, and some fried fish, a
nd those carrots, and wow.
That’s the way the fifth day ended.
March 1967
AMIRI BARAKA/LEROI JONES (1934–2014) was the author of numerous books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. He was named poet laureate of New Jersey by the New Jersey Council for the Humanities, from 2002–2004. His short story collection Tales of the Out & the Gone (Akashic Books) was a New York Times Editors’ Choice and won a 2008 PEN/Beyond Margins Award. He is also the author of Home: Social Essays, Black Music, and The System of Dante’s Hell.
Also available from Amiri Baraka
and Akashic Books
Tales of the Out & the Gone,
by Amiri Baraka
Controversial literary legend Amiri Baraka’s new short story collection—an Essence Magazine best-seller—will shock and awe.
“Baraka is a poet down to his bones . . . [The stories] evoke a mood of revolutionary disorder, conjuring an alternative universe in which a dangerous African-American underground, or a dangerous literary underground—hell, any kind of an underground—still exists . . . In his prose as in his poetry, Baraka is at his best a lyrical prophet of despair who transfigures his contentious racial and political views into a transcendent, ‘outtelligent’ clarity.” —New York Times Book Review, Editors’ Choice
“These stories are so out there that at times they leave you wondering what you just read, but in a good, this is how a truly singular voice sounds way . . . The difficulty and strength of Baraka’s writing is its sincerity. It is the memory of all that has passed, reflecting all he has seen and been told . . .” —San Francisco Chronicle
“Baraka remains a prodigiously skilled writer . . . Ultimately, those most familiar with Baraka as a rabble-rousing poet may be surprised that his prose can so readily make one squirm as well as smile.” —Time Out New York
“Baraka has a rich and distinctive voice . . . The collection records a marvelously vital and creative mind at work.” —Library Journal
“A- . . . [A]n eccentric brew of sci-fi and social commentary.” —Entertainment Weekly
“4 stars.” —Time Out Chicago
“In his signature politically piercing and poetic staccato style, Baraka offers a perspective on social and political changes and a fresh view of the possibilities that language presents in exploring human passions . . . Fans and newcomers alike will appreciate Baraka’s breadth of political perspective and passion for storytelling.” —Booklist
“Throughout, Baraka makes his prose jump with word coining—’outtelligent,’ ‘overstand’—and one-liners. But the humor and off-the-wall jaunts, however whacked-out, tackle real issues of race, otherness and power with pointed irony.” —New York Press
“Baraka unabashedly steps on toes, but does it in such a way that you close the book thanking him for it . . . [R]efreshing from both ideological and technical perspectives. His books cannot be read casually.” —Idaho Statesman
“Amiri Baraka’s writing possesses a remarkable balance of poetry and politics, passion and polemic. His voice is unmistakeable. His point of view uncompromising. This collection just adds to his imposing legacy.” —Nelson George, author of The Death of Rhythm and Blues
“What can be said about Baraka’s work that would be new? That the energy is unremitting, the focus unwavering, the anger burning into a crystal rage, the questions disquieting and unnervingly raw? Perhaps that there is also tenderness here, something like light breathing on a New York street. In this groundbreaking collection of stories—vintage, new, and previously unseen—the words don’t play nice, they demand that you listen, and you do and you are glad for it.” —Chris Abani, author of Becoming Abigail and GraceLand
Comprised of short fiction spanning the early 1970s to the twenty-first century—most of which has never been published—Tales of the Out & the Gone reflects the astounding evolution of America’s most provocative literary anti-hero.
The first section of the book, “War Stories,” offers six stories enmeshed in the volatile politics of the ’70s and ’80s; the second section, “Tales of the Out & the Gone,” reveals Baraka’s increasing literary adventurousness, combining an unpredictable language play with a passion for abstraction and psychological exploration.
Throughout, Baraka’s unique and constantly changing literary style will educate readers on the evolution of one of America’s most accomplished literary masters of the past four decades.
Table of Contents
War Stories
New & Old (1974)
Neo-American (1975)
Norman’s Date (1981–82)
From War Stories (1982)
Mondongo (1983)
Blank (1985)
Tales of the Out & the Gone
Northern Iowa: Short Story & Poetry
The New Recreation Program (1988)
Mchawi (1990–91)
The Rejected Buppie (1992)
A Little Inf (1995)
Dig This! Out? (1995)
Heathen Technology at the End of the Twentieth Century (1995)
Rhythm Travel (1995)
Science & Liberalism (1996)
What Is Undug Will Be (1996)
Dream Comics (1997)
A Letter (1998)
Conrad Loomis & the Clothes Ray (1998)
The Used Saver (1998)
My Man Came by the Crib the Other Day . . . (1999)
A Monk Story (2000)
Retrospection (2000)
The Pig Detector (2000)
Post- and Pre-Mortem Dialogue (2003)
Tales of the Out & the Gone is available in paperback from our website and in bookstores everywhere. The e-book edition is available wherever e-books are sold.
The System of Dante's Hell,
by Amiri Baraka
A reissue of a 1965 novel, a remarkable narrative of childhood and youth, spiraling out of Dante’s Inferno.
“Much of the novel is an expression of the intellectual and moral lost motion of the age . . . the special agony of the American Negro.” —New York Times Book Review
“A fevered and impressionistic riff on the struggles of blacks in the urban North and rural South, as told through the prism of The Inferno. . . . Other writers addressed race more directly, but for all its linguistic slipperiness, Baraka’s language conveys the feelings of fear, violation, and fury with a surprising potency. A pungent and lyrical portrait of mid-’60s black protest.” —Kirkus Reviews
With a new introduction by Woodie King Jr.
This 1965 novel is a remarkable narrative of childhood and youth, structured on the themes of Dante’s Inferno: violence, incontinence, fraud, treachery. With a poet’s skill Baraka creates the atmosphere of hell, and with dramatic power he reconstructs the brutality of the black slums of Newark, a small Southern town, and New York City. The episodes contained within the novel represent both states of mind and states of the soul—lyrical, fragmentary, and allusive.
The System of Dante's Hell is available in paperback from our website and in bookstores everywhere. The e-book edition is available wherever e-books are sold.
Home: Social Essays,
by Amiri Baraka
A seminal Jones/Baraka literary land mine that launches AkashiClassics: Renegade Reprint Series.
“Jones/Baraka usually speaks as a Negro—and always as an American. He is eloquent, he is bold. He demands rights—not conditional favors.” —New York Times Book Review
“In Home, Amiri Baraka, the master hunter, aims for the hearts and minds of his readers, and hits both targets dead-center. The result, here in the twenty-first century, is no different than when the book was originally published more than forty years ago.” —Kenji Jasper, author of Dark
In 2007, Akashic Books ushered Amiri Baraka back into the forefront of America’s literary consciousness with the short story collection Tales of the Out & the Gone. Now, this reissue of Home—long out of print—features a highly provocative and profoundly insightful collection of 1960s social and politica
l essays.
Home is, in effect, the ideological autobiography of LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka. The two dozen essays that constitute this book were written during a five-year span—a turbulent and critical period for African Americans and whites. The Cuban Revolution, the Birmingham bombings, Robert Williams’s Monroe Defense movement, the Harlem riots, the assassination of Malcolm X . . . each changed the way Jones/Baraka looked at America. This progressive change is recorded with honesty, anger, and passion in his writings.
Home: Social Essays is available in paperback from our website and in bookstores everywhere. The e-book edition is available wherever e-books are sold.
Black Music,
by Amiri Baraka
The long-awaited reissue of the sequel to Amiri Baraka’s seminal work, BLUES PEOPLE, and latest selection in the AkashiClassics Renegade Reprint Series. This collection of essays by Amiri Baraka/LeRoi Jones includes a new introduction by the author and Q&A by Calvin Reid.
“Jones has learned—and this has been very rare in jazz criticism—to write about music as an artist.” —Nat Hentoff
In 2007, Akashic Books ushered Amiri Baraka back into the forefront of America’s literary consciousness with the short story collection Tales of the Out & the Gone. Now, this reissue of Black Music—long out of print—features a highly provocative and profoundly insightful collection of essays on jazz criticism, the creative process, and the development of a new way forward for black artists.
Black Music is a book about the brilliant young jazz musicians of the early 1960s: John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, Archie Shepp, Sun Ra, and others. This rich and vital collection is comprised of essays, reviews, interviews, liner notes, musical analyses, and personal impressions from 1959–1967.
Tales Page 10