Apropos of nothing

 Over the years there have been many versions of this poem, including on my CD “Libationsong” and in my book “Ideas of Improvisation”. But this is feeling like the final draft—

AN IDEA OF IMPROVISATION 

WITH A MORNA AS STORM

I don’t know why, but nearly every night 

sleep pulls me down deeper than the harbor 

of Sao Vicente, to seek the fragrance 

of a woman whose footprints keep falling

like txuba on the dry sand of my dreams.

Say her lips are bold as badiu di Santiago,    

eyes green as the trees of Santo Antao,

hair black as the back beaches of Fogo.

Make her skin brown as the hills 

of Sao Nicolau. Her smile white as Sal,

fingernails neat as the streets of Maio,

perhaps a pout round as Boavista.

Slant her legs slender as Santa Luzia,

feet almost tiny as Brava.

Who wouldn’t wish to sunbathe 

on the divinity of such a beach,

while white-tipped waves lick their legs 

with water warm as leite fresku,

palm trees dance in a breeze

or an airplane weaves a white thread 

through the sky's blue silk?

Please let her Kriolu tongue

one day become 

a sliver of kana

between my lips.

But the Atlantic hisses 

like a Mae bedju

insisting these islands are only 

ten pimples on a vast face.

My heart skips quick as a koladera,        

why couldn’t these be 

West Africa's fingertips

reaching for America, 

reaching for me?

Tonight, the moon seems shiny 

as the underside of a tuna,

an evil eye, it gazes down

tireless as any tide.

Seagulls now circle  

like questions in my mind. 

How far can anyone follow 

the footprints of a beloved

through any dream’s shifting sand?

My pen seeks to plough 

crooked lines across a barren page

or incline brown stanzas 

into terraces up the hillside 

of something silent as hope

until the bentu lestri appears to bend 

the branches of all the trees

in the direction of one question—

will her quiet ears ever hear 

these waves of blood

breaking across the rock 

of my heart?

I’m fucked up fucked up.

 

AN IDEA OF IMPROVISATION 

JUST 48 HOURS AFTER YOU LEFT

(for Sarasvati Ananda Lewis)

Your last words still hover

in the air like dust motes.

The telephone has put on a bathrobe 

complaining my constant staring 

makes it feel naked,

and I find myself out on the street

interrogating rain showers as to your 

whereabouts.

This one particular raindrop

is very evasive, 

answering in metaphors—

I may have to wring 

some answers from these clouds.

Happiness stumbles along smelling

of mad dog and mumbo sauce,

wearing cheap sneakers with holes 

the size of a headache 

and a shirt that reads 

like a menu of stains.

I've begun hoarding my tears

as holy water, 

and all the vowels in my vocabulary

are now lookouts on the windowsill—

waiting to trumpet your return . . .

THURSDAY POEM

(For Sarasvati)

Say I'm laying across a leather couch

with Ariel, whose half-Mexican mouth

and chile green eyes track Jordan across

the court. It's maybe six days after you, 

and now my head sinks into the hollow

of her thigh. MJ wins the game with a jumper. 

We cheer, kill the TV and chill. In her 

mantle speakers, it's Round Midnight but she 

doesn't need my hands stroking her legs, 

and her fingers refuse to run thru my hair

as though put off by my need to be touched.

I don’t know how to ask to be held, so

I make up an excuse to bounce from her crib.

There's a long wait for the bus, so I walk, 

the air wipes its sweaty hands on my face

and just thirteen blocks from First St. NW,

I pass where Charlie's Seafood used to be

and recall that day I had two dollars,

but bought a slice of sweet potato pie 

for a dollar and a half, then came up 

to your apartment without calling first.

Your eye asked Who is it? through the peephole,

I yelled “A slice of your favorite pie.”

You cracked the door, eyed me like an errant 

child, your lips red as pistachio shells.

Don't ever do this again you said, then 

let me in. You make a communion

of apple cinnamon tea, say Let's play 

dominoes. We then flip a box over 

and plop on pillows, you shuffle all 

the bones and count out seven,

turning yours on their sides so I can't see.

I gathered my tiny tombstones of tile 

around me. After whupping me twice and 

talking trash, you laid on your back with your 

mouth blank beneath the black dots of your eyes. 

I aligned the dominoes of your spine, then

fed you sweet potato pie from a plastic fork 

which nearly melts as it touched your lips. 

I considered letting you have the whole crust, 

but you said Let's split it, like a wishbone. 

You scooted over, brushed crumbs from my shirt, 

as I leaned into the rhythm of your fingers 

finding a nook in my neck. Now, I’m at 

the corner of Seventh and Florida Aves., 

beginning to wonder if this red light will 

ever change? Your fingertips still tantalize

my ear, and perhaps I don’t just want 

their touch, perhaps I need it. Maybe not how

the letter Q needs to be followed by U, but

but how every small i needs the pupil that dots it.

Whitman’s Sampler redux

Since I’m going back through the poems in my first book, here is my *final* revision of the book's first poem. Shout out to my boy T for his genius suggestion that I begin the book with this poem. It not only transformed the arc of the manuscript, but of my writing arc since that then. 

WHITMAN’S SAMPLER
a DJ Reneg8d remix

To begin with, take warning, I am . . . 

far different from what you suppose;
I do not ask any . . . delight, 

I swim in it as in a sea. 

Then the eyes close . . . 

and . . . speed forth to the darkness.
Mind not the old man 

beseeching the young man,
Entering but for a minute . . . 

see a sight beyond all the pictures 

and poems ever made,
ebb stung by the flow 

and flow stung by the ebb, 

love-flesh swelling and deliciously aching.
Have you ever loved the body of a woman?
Have you ever loved the body of a man?
O I think it is not for life I am chanting . . . 

my chant of lovers
         . . . it must be for death . . .
The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, 

and of the shore, and dark-color’d sea-rocks, 

and of hay in the barn, which too long 

I was offering to feed my soul.
And what I assume you shall assume;  

Stop this day and night with me, and
you shall possess the origin of all . . . 

But I do not talk of the beginning or the end,

held by this electric self out of the pride 

of which I utter poems.

I too but signify at the utmost 

a little wash’d-up drift, 

A few sands and dead leaves to gather, 

gather, and merge myself as part 

of this mystery—

here we stand

in the mystical moist night-air,

and from time to time, 

here, take this gift . . .