Everyday Mojo Songs of Earth

by Yusef Komunyakaa

  almost honest, tangoing with wives of despots

  entranced by stolen light in his eyes & hair.

  He never wanted to believe a pinch of salt

  for a pinch of sugar is how scales are balanced.

  UNLIKELY CLAIMS

  This is my house. My sweat is in the mortar

  & hewn wood. This garden of garlic blooms

  is mine too, said last night’s pale ghost.

  I know every crack where cold & light

  try to sneak in, & where the past tongues

  & grooves the future. I own every rusty nail.

  This fence wasn’t here when hobnailed boots

  marched us into the night. I remember all

  the cat’s-eye marbles would roll to this corner

  of the kitchen. This tree limb my uncle cut

  to make a witching rod. Here’s the mark

  an anniversary candle left on the counter,

  said the ghost, slowly fingering

  the deep burn like an old wound.

  Now dirt-bike trails crisscross

  the apple grove my father planted.

  The goat tied beside the back gate

  belongs to my progeny of beautiful

  goats. You sold the mineral rights

  under our feet, but the bird we hear

  singing overhead in a Yiddish accent

  owns the morning. These roses are mine

  because I’ve walked through fire.

  Go & tell your drinking buddies

  & psychoanalyst your neighbor

  has risen from the ashes. I wonder

  if I should tell you about the love letters

  hidden behind the doorjamb. This house

  still stands among my lavender flowers.

  Tell your inheritors to think of me

  when they smile up at the sky.

  WHEN EYES ARE ON ME

  I am a scrappy old lion

  who’s wandered into a Christian square

  quavering with centuries of forged bells.

  The cobblestones make my feet ache.

  I walk big-shouldered, my head raised

  proudly. I smell the blood of a king.

  The citizens can see only a minotaur in a maze.

  I know more than a lion should know.

  My roar goes back to the Serengeti,

  to when a savanna was craggy ice,

  but now it frightens only pigeons from a city stoop.

  They believe they know my brain’s contours & grammar.

  Don’t ask me how I know the signs engraved

  on a sundial, the secret icons behind a gaze.

  I wish their crimes hadn’t followed me here.

  I can hear their applause in the dusty citadel.

  I know what it took to master the serpent

  & wheel, the crossbow & spinal tap.

  Once I was a leopard beside a stone gate.

  I am a riddle to be unraveled. I am not

  & I am. When their eyes are on me

  I become whatever is judged badly.

  I circle the park. Hunger shapes

  my keen sense of smell, a lifetime ahead.

  They will follow my pawprints

  till they’re lost in snow at dusk.

  If I walk in circles, I hide from my shadow.

  They plot stars to know where to find me.

  I am a prodigal bird perched on the peak

  of a guardhouse. I have a message

  for fate. The sunlight has shown me

  the guns, & their beautiful sons are deadly.

  BEGOTTEN

  I’m the son of poor Mildred & illiterate J.W.

  But I sit here with Ninsun’s song in my mouth,

  knowing the fantastic blue Bull of Heaven

  because I’ve cried at a woman’s midnight door

  clouded by sea mist. Grief followed me, saying,

  Burn your keepsakes, or give them to Goodwill

  or the Salvation Army, & then live on the streets.

  But I couldn’t forget a half-dead, ugly prickly pear

  breaking into twenty-three yellow blooms.

  Namtar’s bird of prey perched on my shoulder

  as I wandered darkness searching for light,

  knowing, finally, I was born to be hooked

  quickly as a fish. To spend an hour in Uruk

  tonight is to awake in the Green Zone

  with another dictator’s lassoed statue

  pulled to the ground. The gods count

  the dead, running eyes over folly, guilt,

  & restitution, saying, Now, dear one,

  you are bread. They tally grain & stock

  noted in cuneiform, & I hear a whisper:

  Bread for Neti, the keeper of the gate,

  bread for Ningizzida, the serpent god

  & fat lord of the ever-living tree,

  & bread for Enmul, bread for all of them.

  We dream of going from one desire

  to the next. But in the final analysis,

  a good thought is the simplest food.

  Ninhursag is the mother of creation,

  & the ants her most trustful servants

  because they are always on their way.

  BLUE DEMENTIA

  In the days when a man

  would hold a swarm of words

  inside his belly, nestled

  against his spleen, singing.

  In the days of night riders

  when life tongued a reed

  till blues & sorrow song

  called out of the deep night:

  Another man done gone.

  Another man done gone.

  In the days when one could lose oneself

  all up inside love that way,

  & then moan on the bone

  till the gods cried out in someone’s sleep.

  Today,

  already I’ve seen three dark-skinned men

  discussing the weather with demons

  & angels, gazing up at the clouds

  & squinting down into iron grates

  along the fast streets of luminous encounters.

  I double-check my reflection in plate glass

  & wonder, Am I passing another

  Lucky Thompson or Marion Brown

  cornered by a blue dementia,

  another dark-skinned man

  who woke up dreaming one morning

  & then walked out of himself

  dreaming? Did this one dare

  to step on a crack in the sidewalk,

  to turn a midnight corner & never come back

  whole, or did he try to stare down a look

  that shoved a blade into his heart?

  I mean, I also know something

  about night riders & catgut. Yeah,

  honey, I know something about talking with ghosts.

  GRUNGE

  No, sweetheart, I said courtly love.

  I was thinking of John Donne’s

  “Yet this enjoys before it woo,”

  but my big hands were dreaming

  Pinetop’s boogie-woogie piano

  taking the ubiquitous night apart.

  Not Courtney. I know “Inflated Tear”

  means worlds approaching pain

  & colliding, or a heavenly body

  calling to darkness, & that shame

  has never been my truest garment,

  because I was born afraid of needles.

  But I’ve been shoved up against

  frayed ropes too, & I had to learn

  to bob & weave, to duck & hook,

  till I could jab my way out of

  a foregone conclusion, till blues

  reddened a room. All I know is,

  sometimes a man wants only a hug

  when something two-steps him

  toward a little makeshift stage.

  Somehow, between hellhounds

  & a guitar solo made of gutstring

  & wood, I outlived a stormy night

 
with snow on my eyelids.

  GREEN

  I’ve known billy club, tear gas, & cattle prod,

  but not Black Sheep killing White Sheep.

  Or vice versa. I’ve known water hoses

  & the subterranean cry of a Black Maria

  rounding a city corner on two angry wheels,

  but couldn’t smell cedar taking root in the air.

  I’ve known of secret graves guarded

  by the night owl in oak & poplar.

  I’ve known police dogs on choke chains.

  I’ve known how “We Shall Overcome”

  feels on a half-broken tongue,

  but not how deeply sunsets wounded the Peacock Throne.

  Because of what I never dreamt

  I know Hafez’s litany balanced on Tamerlane’s saber,

  a gholam’s song limping up the Elburz Mountains—

  no, let’s come back first to now,

  to a surge of voices shouting,

  Death to the government of potato!

  Back to the iron horses of the Basijis

  galloping through days whipped bloody

  & beaten back into the brain’s cave

  louder than a swarm of percussion

  clobbered in Enghelab Square,

  cries bullied into alleyways & cutoffs.

  Though each struck bell goes on

  mumbling in the executioner’s sleep,

  there are always two hands holding

  on to earth, & I believe their faith

  in tomorrow’s million green flags waving

  could hold back a mile of tanks & turn

  the Revolutionary Guard into stone,

  that wherever a clue dares to step

  a seed is pressed into damp soil.

  A shoot, a tendril, the tip of a wing.

  One breath at a time, it holds till it is

  uprooted, or torn from its own grip.

  THE HEDONIST

  I pull on my crow mask.

  Butterflies & insects rise

  in the ether of remembrance.

  I suck all the sappy nectar

  from honeysuckle blossoms

  fallen in last night’s scuffle

  between gods & human shadows.

  I’d die for October’s last juicy plums

  beside the shady marsh at the brink.

  I’d stand on an anthill to learn

  the blue heron’s treatise on agony.

  Every joy & sorrow are mine.

  I bow to kiss a whipping post

  so I can taste salt & contrition.

  I know all the monsters lurking

  in Lord Byron’s verses. I follow

  beauties up & down Broadway

  till their masks own me.

  I walk through the city,

  saying, What did Kierkegaard know

  about love & the God-worm?

  After eating quail eggs & fish tongues,

  I don a snarling dog mask

  & pursue a would-be lover

  into the hanging garden

  till the Lethe is on her left

  & the Styx is on her right,

  & then I enter the labyrinth.

  My alter ego is my servant.

  Bring me fat gooseberries.

  Translucent snails in sea salt.

  Bring me a bit of Philopator’s heart.

  I have a taste for the fugu fish

  because there’s nothing

  delicious as chance.

  I’ve stood at a window

  overlooking the Ideal City,

  mouthing odes to a burnt silver spoon,

  to a candle’s flame-glut,

  to a woman in the distance,

  to the insipid angel

  on the tip of a needle.

  My caul has bitten into me.

  I know the eternal earthworm.

  Behind my peacock mask,

  facing the Adriatic Sea,

  I wonder what it would feel like

  to follow pearl divers down, to know

  the holy pressure of falling water.

  HOW IT IS

  My muse is holding me prisoner.

  She refuses to give back my shadow,

  anything that clings to a stone or tree

  to keep me here. I recite dead poets

  to her, & their words heal the cold air.

  I feed her fat, sweet, juicy grapes,

  & melons holding a tropical sun

  inside them. From here, I see only

  the river. The blue heron dives,

  & always rises with a bright fish

  in its beak, dangling a grace note.

  She leans over & whispers, Someday,

  I’ll find some way to make you cry.

  What are her three beautiful faces

  telling me? I peel her an orange.

  Each slice bleeds open a sigh.

  Honeydew perfumes an evening

  of black lace & torch songs,

  & I bow down inside myself

  & walk on my hands & knees

  to break our embrace, but can’t

  escape. I think she knows

  I could free myself of the thin gold chain

  invisible around her waist,

  but if she left the door open,

  I’d still be standing here

  in her ravenous light.

  Her touch is alchemical.

  When she questions my love,

  I serve her robin’s eggs

  on a blue plate. She looks me in the eye

  & says, You still can’t go. Somehow,

  I’d forgotten I’m her prisoner,

  but I glance over at the big rock

  wedged against the back door.

  I think she knows, with her kisses

  in my mouth, I could walk on water.

  A VOICE ON AN ANSWERING MACHINE

  I can’t erase her voice. If I opened the door to the cage & tossed the magpie into the air, a part of me would fly away, leaving only the memory of a plucked string trembling in the night. The voice unwinds breath, soldered wires, chance, loss, & digitalized impulse. She’s telling me how light pushed darkness till her father stood at the bedroom door dressed in a white tunic. Sometimes we all wish we could put words back into our mouths.

  I have a plant of hers that has died many times, only to be revived with less water & more light, always reminding me of the voice caught inside the little black machine. She lives between the Vale of Kashmir & nirvana, beneath a bipolar sky. The voice speaks of an atlas & a mask, a map of Punjab, an ugly scar from college days on her abdomen, the unsaid credo, but I still can’t make the voice say, Look, I’m sorry. I’ve been dead for a long time.

  TOGETHERNESS

   Someone says Tristan

  & Isolde, the shared cup

  & broken vows binding them,

  & someone else says Romeo

  & Juliet, a lyre & Jew’s harp

  sighing a forbidden oath,

  but I say a midnight horn

  & a voice with a moody angel

  inside, the two married rib

  to rib. Of course, I am

  thinking of those Tuesdays

  or Thursdays at Billy Berg’s

  in L.A. when Lana Turner would say,

  Please sing “Strange Fruit”

  for me, & then her dancing

  nightlong with Mel Tormé,

  as if she knew what it took

  to make brass & flesh say yes

  beneath the clandestine stars

  & a spinning that is so fast

  we can’t feel the planet moving.

  Is this why some of us fall

  in & out of love? Did Lady Day

  & Prez ever hold each other

  & plead to those notorious gods?

  I don’t know. But I do know

  even if a horn & voice plumb

  the unknown, what remains unsaid

  coalesces around an old blues

  & begs with a hawk’s yello
w eyes.

  DEAR MISTER DECOY

  If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t be

  smooth as morning light on cold stone.

  I walk into a jewelry store ten paces behind you

  & look them in the eye like a pawnbroker

  when I wear this apple-red lipstick

  & blush of Icelandic rouge.

  I lean lightly on the showcase in a low-cut

  flair of tailored innocence. You could be

  the lost descendant of some South African

  whose fingernails were checked at dusk

  for a speck of gold. Your face

  blurs their brainy maps, & I apologize

  for using their image of you this way,

  as if we agreed to rendezvous

  among twelve misty stations of the cross.

  I run my hands through blond hair

  till I own the store, my slender fingers

  toying with silver latches & the glint

  of diamonds. I know you are a good man

  who worked & squirreled away coins

  for small dreams, unable to stop seeing her

  wearing this necklace, a secret wad

  of dollars pressed against your bad

  heart. Their cameras never aim at me,

  Mister Decoy. I play with a sapphire brooch

  as if I’m one of Pindar’s Graces

  or Charites, but I live for the fit & tug

  of blue jeans as my hips sway to ooh-

  la-la. I never clutch my foolish purse

  when you pass. Texas pours out

  my mouth, & I know how to reach so my skirt

  rides up my thighs. The mink collar

  of my cashmere sweater blinks its jade

  eyes. Years ago Jennifer dared me, & now

  it’s habit woven into flesh, Mister Decoy,

  & sometimes I can’t stop myself

  from clowning with the light this way.

  ONTOLOGY & GUINNESS

   Darling, my daddy’s razor strop

  is in my hands, & there’s a soapy cloud

  on my face. I’m a man of my word.

  Didn’t I say, If Obama’s elected,

  I’ll shave off this damn beard

  that goes back to ’68, to Chicago?

  I know, I also said I’d kiss the devil,

  but first let me revise this contract.

  I can taste tear gas. I hear a blur

  of billy clubs when I hit the drums.

  I haven’t witnessed this mug shot

  in decades, but I’m facing the mirror.

  I’m still the same man. Almost.

  Led Zeppelin is still in my nogginbox.