BRAVE STAR
singing like a slow scent beneath the sunArchive for September, 2006
001.
Elegy after the flood.
For you
I have cried under the blue moon skies of Yemanja.
Floated down sweet gardenias to line the dusty bones
of our great-grandmothers on the ocean floor.
They are no longer alone.
Mississippi breezes howl a myriad of patois deliriums.
Do not forget me. I am still here.
Do not forget me.
This cannot be America.
Where is my sister? My son?
Daddy, I cannot swim. I want
to go home.
Home with warmth and vanilla smells.
Home where ghost houses now weep in the dark
in the city of the dead marked with cement saints.
Where have all the angels gone?
I saw one beneath the stairs.
Tangled up under her house like she was
The wicked witch of the East
No ruby studded slippers just tiny doll feet.
They cannot find her mother.
Young, black, unmarried
Pressed hair and Payless pumps
Working two jobs just so they can eat
And live without crying too much.
She is gone.
X 1 dead inside
X 0
X mother under refrigerator
X
X
X
X
For thirty years my father rose before the sun
Bought this house to hold his women
Mama, my three sisters and me.
Spent every silver cent for these bricks
that we call kitchen, porch, life.
Fuck an American dream.
We waited
watching our water-logged domain
crumble away in ruin.
Drowning.
I have moaned ten thousand requiems for this bird called hope.
lit twentyfivehundred candles for the missing and the dead.
Exaudi orationem meam; ad te omnis caro veniet.
Hear my prayer.
Hear it in the breath of trombones whispering melancholy dirges.
Hear it in the melodies pulsing softly from somber pink mouths.
Hear it in the bitter laughter of traipsing Zulu revelers.
Hear it in the swaying rhythms of mothers dovening at dilapidated levees
Soon I will be done.
Soon is what they said with vague eyes and blank hearts.
But not soon enough for a sister
catching her dying breaths in an attic
pressing her face against the vent for
a final taste of sunshine as if she could
still hear Africa singing across the water.
The sea still humming some distant ominous memory.
Everyone says we have nothing to fight for
but these people are in my blood.
They are in my dreams and my wishes, in my breathing
and I finally remember.
For them
I have cried under the blue moon skies of Yemanja.
Floated down sweet gardenias to line the dusty bones
of our great-grandmothers on the ocean floor.
They are no longer alone.
prelude 007.
for some reason just now i was thinking of bob kaufman. a girl is asking for me send in my favorite poems and i think of jayne cortez and bob kaufman. and now sonia too. but right now i just want to read On. on lonely poet corners with low lying leaves and moist prophet eyes. i just learned that he took a vow of silence for ten years after jfk was assassinated. no words. spoken or written for a decade. his son’s name is parker. and now i remember walking parker home. and on the day that the vietnam war ended he recited a poem in a coffeeshop to break the vow. break the vowel. i need to read more bob kaufman.
prelude 006.
treasure chest:
here are some things i just needed to take note of:
:: Pandora Internet Radio, a product of the Music Genome Project, it creates playlists based on your favorite artists and songs– http://www.pandora.com
:: Kehinde Wiley– LA born, Yale educated, genius artist. He paints urban blacks in classic baroque themes. Like this:
:: For a whole year, Suzan-Lori Parks wrote a play everyday and now they are being performed simultaneously across the country. Each day capturing “whatever happened to fall out of the sky.”
More here– http://www.publictheater.org/365/
:: This Tuesday, Zadie Smith will be doing a reading at Bryn Mawr College. I will be there. Here is a taste–
GIRLS, (PRETTY)
The power of a pretty girl… totally unquantifiable. But this much is certain: there is nothing a beautiful girl in the West cannot have, for a time. And I don’t speak from any far off hilltop – I’m as much a sucker as anyone. I’ve risked everything for a certain look, for tapered fingers or a particular mole. So I hear you when you say it’s not what she says, not what she does, that it’s on her. It’s something she wears and however skin deep it may be on her, it penetrates you right to the marrow. Pretty girls lie at the centre of straight culture, dyke culture, fag culture. They sell everything, they buy everything, they ruin great men and women, and finally they ruin themselves, accidentally, simply by getting old. I think about them. Sometimes I want them and sometimes I worry about them – even though it’s not my business to do. I wonder about them. I wonder if you are the pretty girl in question. I wonder what you do with a power which, though potent, makes you vulnerable to every probe, every demand, every infiltration? I wonder what you do with a power that turns you into an open atlas upon which any idiot can map their own route?
tata!
prelude 005.
So, basically now I just feel lost, like I’m floating and on my own, which I don’t mind because I’m completely comfortable
and confident in myself and my work, but I just have no one to be in poetry with. I feel like I have no home– like
I’m running out of options. I can’t not do poetry, but I can’t do it alone either.
I wrote a letter to YW tonite. Her wisdom is always so relevant and insightful. Maybe she can help.
prelude 004.
yesterday i breathed poetry again. i had been writing til 4am the night before. giving birth to new metaphors. sculpting and sculpting. yesterday i read them, and i felt like a proud mother. no, they are not perfect but they are my babies and with them i feel more alive. on monday, i read another that i wrote in 9th grade– the one for shyna. i cannot believe i haven’t seen her in five years. ashad must be talking now. i have never seen him. only photos. she’s going to nursing school and i feel like we’ve grown too much for me to memorialize her in that poem. she is still alive! and will always always be my friend. so i think i might retire it. i can’t let her go out like that.
prelude 003.
so i was just about to write something about how things are looking up and how i’m finally figuring out how to manuever in this environment and then this song came on from my soul brasil cd and it was perfect. i have four classes tommorrow. they shouldn’t be too bad, except for the fact that i have to get up at 9am, which may be a little tough. but then again, i do want to learn how to enjoy my mornings and how to enjoy a full day. i wasted so much time last year. just by learning how to be alone, i’ve been able to read more and just enjoy my own company in general. i’m also getting a lot more stuff done now that i’m not so invested in all the bullshit. so that’s that. i’ve been doing a lot of walking too, which, though it may be causing shin splints, is very refreshing. i feel like i’m finally thinking again. like i’m more alive. seeing As yesterday was just what i needed to catch my breath. to slow down. to remember that there’s more. i think i forget sometimes. i’m glad i’m finally taking care of my self, my heart and my happiness. today was just a day, just regular, but it felt pretty damn nice.
prelude 002.
on positivity:
so that’s what i’m seeking. i refuse to drown in blue days. i can’t do this for a year. i know exactly how i want this to be so now i just have to work a little bit. i don’t owe it to anyone but myself to stay happy. it was a rocky night and a rough start, but this is only the first day. i just need a little more sunshine and some yellow colors. that’ll be better, i think.
prelude 001.
i keep forgetting what it feels like to write my everydays. my life is moving too fast for me not to remember it somewhere. today is labor day. i actually don’t know what the holiday is for other than not wearing white tommorrow and a nice sale for school shopping. speaking of which, i start classes this wednesday and i am slowly resurrecting myself. i moved into 4221 two days ago. i have a sunny window and trolley sounds and a lot of thinking space and writing space– a neccessary change. i went up to penn for a minute to visit stella and drew, which was a wonderful start to this year, i think. i was re-imagining where i was and what i was doing a year ago during orientation, and i was just on the ridiculously wrong crippled foot– now it’s september again, and i feel a little more balanced. like i’ve finally learned how to walk, even though my toes still point in sometimes. i think it was brasil, and oxum, and erzulie, and erica hunt, and jayne cortez, and sonia. they taught me how to move again.
peace/
