I've been working on this poem for a while now. SO EXCITED.
I don't really think I'm prone to writer's block, or at least my writing periods seem to last a long time. And I like to think that when I put myself down to a pad and paper[or, a keypad, as the case actually is], I get shit done.
Anyway, the primary problems have been and always will be laziness and being easily distracted. The first faults I'll mention on this blog, and the ones that'll crop up pretty often in some way or another.[I also don't like proofreading, but that'll become evident pretty soon, if not already] Rather than sitting down as I should and tapping into what I want to say, I've just been letting this mess fester. And now it's January 13th and I don't remember what I wanted to say in the first place.
I usually try not to write like this. It's usually a two day window, three days tops.
Well, if that's not the longest prelude ever, here it is:
Citrus Sirius Genesis.
[A certain Burroughs laughed at me
when I told him I'd given up on him halfway
between windstorms in the Village
and acid trips in Brooklyn. He
put his hand on my shoulds,
my should nots, and my shoulders-- sketching
his way along the grooves in my
mahogany musculature.
"I see polgyons and tangerines,
and I can smell the citrus stains from your
inner right thigh. I've never really believed in
eyes speaking to me,
in grand gestures from the great beyond,
but your legs have walked a forgotten path of
stretched condoms and grapefruit,
and both of them are
behind you
now."
I was ashamed to say I had not
read a novel in days, that if I were God,
this world would still be but a mere conception
and there would have been no genesis,
no fall from grace.]
I.
Baldwin always said my life would not
complete itself
unless I went to Paris.
That this city on a river was the gay black paradise,
that the small, insignificant man with whom I identify,
whose many interactions and groups I claim as my own,
had made a leviathan against my consent.
I instead longed for bus rides along the
coasts.
The mixture of hot sauce and
Burberry cologne, the quick appraisals
the "are you downe?"
"are you?"s,
the violence against this
small, insignificant man with whom I
identify.
The razor bumps on your left cheek,
the callouses on the reverse sides of your knuckles,
licking rough lips and pushing knobby knees between my thighs--
oh, the anger. oh,
the gluttony.
I have to have you to myself.
II.
To be continued.
---
To compare, here's something I wrote three years ago? Or something.
Dreadlock Anthem
From bounce to
bed
to cock-blocked.
From Ella Fitzgerald to Ashaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaanti,
YOU SHALL HEAR ME.
KISS ME.
OBEY ME
and this nigger nap curling iron curtain [shall fall.]
"These are the end times, and
Revelation Chapter
(3,
2,
1,
4)
FIVE is predicting a golden rapture."
----------------------------------------
"Dreadlocks are actually
prison talk
For DREADFUL SHIT.
Wrapped and folded like marijuana.
Closer to the cranium, to heighten the feeling of
absolute terrorist, born and raised. You're a walking
fender-bender waiting to happen.
Rosie the Riveter has told me
all about your type
in mangled messages on the back of my milk
carton.
You're one of those poster children
for
Communist self-destruction, to rape the welfare
system and breed Boykin-fought
down-low homosexuality in your ratty projects.
I can read you like a tarot card."
Moses split the
Red Sea
that was your mouth. Tides of
plump meat
tore themselves from each other as if
you hadn't talked in decades.
And
you smiled your Rembrandt-Moaning Lisa smile,
barely salivating over your own skin.
Plymouth Rock was dancing in your eyes,
and that papyrus skin of yours was harlem-
shaking and heel-toeing all
over your face.
God's supposed to be in the details,
but his summer beach house is in
your cheekbones. Explains why
you're so beautiful. Nambia's
too deep in your femur, and it made me
wonder why He didn't choose a sleek Swede instead,
to bear his temporary heaven.
Then again, why didn't he choose a
virgin male
to give birth to Christ? Surely that would have been more
miraculous. God
works in mysterious ways.
But maybe the Africans were
God's chosen people,
and maybe the continent is really God's
eternal footprint in the waves,
a sign of actual guidance.
A sign of actual guidance.
Right.
"Tori Amos probably hates you.
Bastardizing Egypt
& more with your
Art History, when you haven't even
listened to Jimi Hendrix yet."
How deliciously you to say so.
I scrubbed my face with my cellphone
to show my elation.
I will not pretend that he does not know cellulite,
but he carries it so well that
fat becomes pride, replicates muscle,
heightens his sexuality, enlightens everyone of his thighs,
of his plump cheeks.[All four.] And I cannot pretend
that I do not love
every Sub-Saharan minute of it all.
I am afraid he is
on a different planet from
me. No
one from Venus can smile with
so many canines all at once. [save maybe
Avril Lavigne?]
And make a tongue look so
brutally hungry.
I bite my lips
EIGHT TIMES[JEHOVAH plus Buddha
equals an Atman totally
holier than thou, honey].
And I leave fossil remains of
this forgotten corn-bred boy on this land
in dried sweat and
passed wind. I killed my ears,
but they pulled a JESUS.
A Taking Back Sunday at eighty
trillion
decibels was not enough
to keep them disco-dead.
For me. For America. For your deliciously anachronistic
dreadlocks.
And that is why I cannot ignore your unveiled panther of
a baritone
as it stalks its way to my eardrum, saying:
"Walaikum us Salaam. Or, shall I say, Wa Alaikum,
you broken brother. Ishmael denies you
of your African soul.
Return to Abraham, and the broken covenant,
baby."
---
Well, certainly one difference is less caps lock.
No comments:
Post a Comment