still in its baby steps. thoughts please.
---
Rosary wrapped round her wrist she says
each bead is another man's heart she keeps
for ransom.
Let us pray.Let's press play
start spinnin' and break beats
over vinyl city streets.
This here's a manhattan project.
Kick drops like a little boy and a fat man,
eight oh the humanity! eight,
and snare pops like a forty-five.
This here's another hit.
Needle administered like a syringe.
Heads bobbin', we're all addicts
and we listen like we eat
like we drink till dawn
like we sleep till dusk
like we toss bombs toss black cats at a stranger
'cause he's got more style than us
like we crack eggs crack fireworks on his likeness
'cause he's got more style than us
like we hate and kill and love and flirt and fuck -
with religious fervor.
Amen.
I swapped Plato for play-do,
made prints of prints in a language I forgot I knew,
unspeakable, only singable
in vocal chords at once
major and minor
with that nine on top
that makes syllables sound like jazz.
Check your cello!
If my ear hears right you're left outta time and outta tune.
Tonight we play in the key of G O D,
so start turnin' those pegs or
play what the fuck you want to play and
show us how "dissonant" is synonymous with "sonorous",
long as you play the hell out of it.
Go ahead,
break some strings
and pray what the fuck you wanna pray
with folded hands or OM or little paper cranes
long as you pray the hell out of it.
Amen.
I sifted through scripture, pages stuck together with clay,
looks like Luke couldn't separate work and play
or maybe horsing around and
not giving a fuck is
the only way to say the good news, the Gospel According to
one man alone on stage, singing and crooning
with his Hart on his sleeve,
tossin' it out to an audience
with hands cupped over their ears.
And they let it drop,
'cause having a black man's ballad
swooning white women,
still don't sit with some people.
So he stands still.
And he sings, still.
Amen to a mendicant monk, king, Duke Ellington with
a pair of Ol' Blue Eyes.
And so be it.
Last page held a footnote to a footnote to
two notes etched on my feet -
B on the left, C on the right,
half step between this page and that which reads,
in a child's hand, backwards S's and all,
"She's the first,
and she keeps a fig leaf in her purse just in case,
and she's a fuckin' snake"
Saw that C and
bit at my heel but missed, just kissed the end of my jeans,
ripped a hole where my heel spins the earth like a top and
I'm like,
"Goddamn, just got this pair."
Staggering, feet dragging
in my broken pair of jeans like a broken pair of human beings,
cast out of Eden.
Yahweh's like
"Goddamn, just got this pair", and thinks
maybe all that's new tends to
invite this kind of ruin, which
sure as hell explains you
and I.
And I just broke a string, but
still got one, two, three left alright.
That needle drops again.
That beat drops again.
Amen.
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