Shake Loose My Skin
Page 6
This is not a small voice
you hear this is a large
voice coming out of these cities.
This is the voice of LaTanya.
Kadesha. Shaniqua. This
is the voice of Antoine.
Darryl. Shaquille.
Running over waters
navigating the hallways
of our schools spilling out
on the corners of our cities and
no epitaphs spill out of their river mouths.
This is not a small love
you hear this is a large
love, a passion for kissing learning
on its face.
This is a love that crowns the feet with hands
that nourishes, conceives, feels the water sails
mends the children,
folds them inside our history where they
toast more than the flesh
where they suck the bones of the alphabet
and spit out closed vowels.
This is a love colored with iron and lace.
This is a love initialed Black Genius.
This is not a small voice
you hear.
Like
Listening to the News
Like
All i did was
go down on him
in the middle of
the dance floor
cuz he is a movie
star he is a blk/
man “live” rt off
the screen fulfilling
my wildest dreams.
Like.
Yeah. All i did
was suck him in tune
to that’s the way love goes
while boogeying feet
stunning thighs pressed
together in rhythm cuz he
wanted it and i wanted
to be seen with him
cuz he’s in the movies on the
big screen bigger than life
bigger than all of my
hollywood dreams
cuz see
i need to have my say
among all the unsaid
lives i deal with.
Like.
Yeah.
Haiku 1
i have died and dreamed
myself back to your arms where
what i died for sleeps.
Haiku 9
the sprawling sound
of my death sails on the wind
a white butterfly.
FATHER’S VOICE
the day he traveled to my daughter’s house
it was june. he cursed me with his morning nod
of anger as he filtered his callous
walk. skip. hop. feet slipshod
from 125th street bars, face curled with odd
reflections. the skin of a father is accented
in the sentence of the unaccented.
i was a southern Negro man playing music
married to a high yellow woman who loved my unheard
face, who slept with me in nordic
beauty. i prisoner since my birth to fear
i unfashioned buried in an open grave
of mornings unclapped with constant sight
of masters fattened decked with my diminished light.
this love. this first wife of mine, died in childbirth
this face of complex lace exiled her breath
into another design, and i died became wanderlust
demanded recompense from friends for my heartbreak
cursed the land for this new heartache
put her away with a youthful pause
never called her name again, wrapped my heart in gauze.
became romeo bound, applauded women
as i squeezed their syrup, drank their stenciled
face, danced between their legs, placed my swollen
shank to the world, became man distilled
early twentieth-century black man fossilled
fulfilled by women things, foreclosing on my life.
mother where do i go before i arrive?
she wasn’t as beautiful as my first wife
this ruby-colored girl insinuating her limb
against my thigh positioning her wild-life
her non-virginal smell as virginal her climb
towards me with slow walking heels made me limp
made me stumble, made my legs squint
until i stopped, stepped inside her footprint.
i did not want to leave you son, this flame
this pecan-colored festival requested me
not my child, your sister. your mother could not frame
herself as her mother and i absentee
father, and i nightclub owner carefree
did not heed her blood, did not see my girl’s eyes
shaved buckled down with southern thighs.
now my seventy-eight years urge me on your land
now my predator legs prey, broadcast
no new nightmares no longer birdman
of cornerstone comes, i come to collapse the past
while bonfires burn up your orphan’s mask
i sing a dirge of lost black southern manhood
this harlem man begging pardon, secreting old.
i was told i don’t remember who
i think i was told he entered his sister’s house
cursed me anew, tried to tattoo
her tongue with worms, tried to arouse
her slumbering veins to espouse
his venom and she leaned slapped him still
stilled his mouth across early morning chill.
rumor has it that he slapped her hard
down purgatorial sounds of caress
rumor has it that he rushed her down a boulevard
of mad laughter while his hands grabbed harness—
like her arms and she, avenger and she heiress
to naked lightning, detonated him, began her dance
of looted hems gathering together for his inheritance.
blood the sound of blood paddling down the road
blood the taste of blood choking their eyes
and my son’s body blood-stained red
with country-lies, city-lies, father-lies, mother-lies,
and my daughter clamoring to exorcise
old thieves trespassing in an old refrain
conjured up a blue-black chord to ordain.
wa ma ne ho mene so oo
oseee yei, oseee yei, oseee yei
wa ma ne ho mene so oo
he has become holy as he walks toward daresay
can you hear his blood tissue ready to pray
he who wore death discourages any plague
he who was an orphan now recollects his legs.
wa ma ne ho mene so oo: he is arising in all his majesty
oseee yei: a shout of praise
Dancing
i dreamt i was tangoing with
you, you held me so close
we were like the singing coming off the drums.
you made me squeeze muscles
lean back on the sound
of corpuscles sliding in blood.
i heard my thighs singing.
Haiku
(for you)
love between us is
speech and breath. loving you is
a long river running.
Tanka
i thought about you
the pain of not having
you cruising my bones.
no morning saliva smiles this
frantic fugue about no you.
Blues Haiku
let me be yo wil
derness let me be yo wind
blowing you all day.
Blues Haiku
am i yo philly
outpost? man when you sail in
to my house, you docked.
Haiku
my womb is a dance
of leaves sweating swift winds
i laugh with guitars.
> Love Poem
(for Tupac)
1.
we smell the
wounds hear the
red vowels
from your tongue.
the old ones
say we don’t
die we are
just passing
through into
another space.
i say they
have tried to
cut out your
heart and eat
it slowly.
we stretch our
ears to hear
your blood young
warrior.
2.
where are your fathers?
i see your mothers gathering
around your wounds folding
your arms shutting
your eyes wrapping you in prayer.
where are the fathers?
zootsuited eyes dancing
their days away.
what have they taught you
about power and peace.
where are the fathers
strutting their furlined
intellect bowing their
faces in the crotch
of academia and corporations
burying their tongues
in lunchtime pink
and black pussies
where are the fathers to teach
beyond stayinschooluse
acondomstrikewhilethe
iron’shotkeephopealive.
where have the fathers buried their voices?
3.
whose gold is carrying you home?
whose wealth is walking you through
this urban terror? whose greed
left you shipwrecked with golden
eyes staring in sudden death?
4.
you were in
a place hot
at the edge
of our minds.
you were in
a new world
a country
pushing with
blk corpses
distinct with
paleness and
it swallowed
you whole.
5.
i will not
burp you up.
i hold you
close to my heart.
Mrs. Benita Jones Speaks
Why?
You asking me why I’m moving. You reporters are something else you know. Why do you think? I was gonna tough it out. Thought all of this commotion would die down. Thought the people living here could understand a woman, a mother wanting to give her children a better life. Look. All I’m looking for is a nice house for my kids. A safe place to bring them up.
What?
What do I think about my neighbors? These people. These people who have sprayed the word nigger on my door. These people who finally threatened my children. My children did you hear me? Have you ever held a child in your arms while she shook her insides out? She was so scared I cried her to sleep. How do you ever tell a child again that she’s safe? Huh?
What do I think of these people? Huh? What should anyone think? What should you reporters think? What should the city think? What should the mayor think? What should the country think?
A woman came to my door yesterday and said these people here wasn’t bad. They was just concerned about their neighborhood. They had worked so hard so they didn’t want it messed up with people who didn’t know what it meant to live in a decent neighborhood. She said they keep their neighborhood clean. She said they had no crime in their streets. She said they keep their houses clean. She said they keep their children clean. She said they keep themselves clean. She said there were no bad guys here. Just people protecting their neighborhood and property.
Huh? Did she say clean? Clean? You wanna see clean? Do you wanna see my floors? They so clean you could eat offa them. And I scrub my children. I scrub them every day. Hard. So hard that some of the black almost come offa them. But it don’t you know. Hee hee.
What do you guys want me to do? Huh? Call them names too? My God won’t let me do that. My God won’t let me become indecent like them. My God. . . . And I don’t know how their God can let them do what they do.
What do you guys think about her saying “There ain’t no bad guys here”? Am I the bad guy for wanting to move into a place I can afford? Am I the bad guy for being black and female and a single woman with three children? Am I the bad guy because I don’t look like them?
What do you think? They look like y’all. You know they could be your mommas and fathers. Your sisters and brothers. You know. But you know what I really can’t figure out? It’s their eyes. I can’t figure out what to make about their eyes and mouths so framed with hatred. Their tongues full of worms you know. Their bodies anxious to do damage to children’s eyes. Their hands poised to paint obscenities; their thumbs curled to hurl stones at my windows.
Huh?
What am I gonna do? What am I gonna do? I’m gonna move in with my mama. She lives in Mt. Airy. I’ll probably stay with her for a while. Try to figure out where else to go. Where else I can live. What do you think I should do? Huh? You got a house in your neighborhood I can move into? You got a house for a respectable hard-working, underpaid black woman who can buy a house on her own?
Me. This Black woman. Staring out at you. You got a neighborhood for her and her three kids? With furniture paid for. With clothes paid for. With a decent job that pays the mortgage and utilities and a few bills. Not enough money for a car payment. But we manage.
Answer me. Where does a Black woman go when she is me, trailed by myths that this country has invented about her? Where to go to, when all of you have been there already, and claimed the turf as your own and you watch the rest of us shipwrecked by circumstance and color, looking. Waiting. Needing.
What?
Am I angry? Angry? About this? Are you angry about this? No. I am surprised again. I am surprised that the good folks in Philadelphia and the country would continue to allow this to happen. I am concerned that my children have seen other children look at ’em like they was dirt. I am alarmed that people didn’t come out in a peace vigil. That the Christians didn’t come out in a Christian vigil. That the educators did not come out to educate. That the athletes did not come to play the real game. I am amazed that God disappeared from their eyes. That God disappeared again in this city with so many churches. So many schools. So many people wanting just to be clean in their own neighborhood.
Morning Song and Evening Walk
1.
Tonite in need of you
and God
I move imperfect
through this ancient city.
Quiet. No one hears
No one feels the tears
of multitudes.
The silence thickens
I have lost the shore
of your kind seasons
who will hear my voice
nasal against distinguished
actors.
O I am tired
of voices without sound
I will rest on this ground
full of mass hymns.
2.
You have been here since I can remember Martin
from Selma to Montgomery from Watts to Chicago
from Nobel Peace Prize to Memphis, Tennessee.
Unmoved among the angles and corners
of aristocratic confusion.
It was a time to be born
forced forward a time
to wander inside drums
the good times with eyes like stars
and soldiers without medals or weapons
but honor, yes.
And you told us: the storm is rising against the
privileged minority of the earth, from which there is no
shelter in isolation or armament
and you told us: the storm will
not abate until a just distribution of the fruits of
the earth enables men (and women) everywhere
to live
in dignity and human decency.
3.
All summerlong it has rained
and the water rises in our throats
and all that we sing is rumored
forgotten.
Whom shall we call when this song comes of age?
And they came into the city carrying their fastings
in their eyes and the young 9-year-old Sudanese
boy said, “I want something to eat at nite a
place to sleep.”
And they came into the city hands salivating guns,
and the young 9-year-old words snapped red
with vowels:
Mama mama Auntie auntie I dead I dead I deaddddd.
4.
In our city of lost alphabets
where only our eyes strengthen the children
you spoke like Peter like John
you fisherman of tongues
untangling our wings
you inaugurated iron for our masks
exiled no one with your touch
and we felt the thunder in your hands.
We are soldiers in the army
we have to fight, although we have to cry.
We have to hold up the freedom banners
we have to hold it up until we die.
And you said we must keep going and we became
small miracles, pushed the wind down, entered
the slow bloodstream of America
surrounded streets and “reconcentradas,” tuned
our legs against Olympic politicians elaborate cadavers
growing fat underneath western hats.
And we scraped the rust from old laws
went floor by floor window by window
and clean faces rose from the dust
became new brides and bridegrooms among change