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(after Juan Luis Guerra) from Africa to a Caribbean hill de África a las lomas del Caribe to the smiling ruin of our cities a la feliz ruina de ciudades anoint the neural vessels we refill al matorral neural en donde vive until your acid muse drowns our pities tu agria musa que ahoga soledades return us to our tribe that grew dark beans devuélvenos al semillero isleño cut through the grease of our late-night omelets metaboliza la grasa nocturna and warm this empty diner by the club trae tu calor a nuestro desvelo where luckless lovers stare at tiny screens haz que el amante no muera de sueño and poets brew old socks into psalmlets tu borra es poema que embadurna while dreaming it rains coffee from above. y sombría tu alegría de cielo.

Jam non consilio bonus, sed more eo perductus, ut non tantum recte facere possim, sed nisi recte facere non possim" "I am no longer good through deliberate intent, but by long habit have reached a point where I am not only able to do right, but am unable to do anything but what is right." (Seneca, Letters 120.10) Stern Daughter of the Voice of God! O Duty! if that name thou love Who art a light to guide, a rod To check the erring, and reprove; Thou, who art victory and law When empty terrors overawe; From vain temptations dost set free; And calm'st the weary strife of frail humanity! There are who ask not if thine eye Be on them; who, in love and truth, Where no misgiving is, rely Upon the genial sense of youth: Glad Hearts! without reproach or blot; Who do thy work, and know it not: Oh! if through confidence misplaced They fail, thy saving arms, dread Power! around them cast. Serene will be our days and bright, And happy will our nature be, When love is an unerring light, And joy its own security. And they a blissful course may hold Even now, who, not unwisely bold, Live in the spirit of this creed; Yet seek thy firm support, according to their need. I, loving freedom, and untried; No sport of every random gust, Yet being to myself a guide, Too blindly have reposed my trust: And oft, when in my heart was heard Thy timely mandate, I deferred The task, in smoother walks to stray; But thee I now would serve more strictly, if I may. Through no disturbance of my soul, Or strong compunction in me wrought, I supplicate for thy control; But in the quietness of thought: Me this unchartered freedom tires; I feel the weight of chance-desires: My hopes no more must change their name, I long for a repose that ever is the same. Stern Lawgiver! yet thou dost wear The Godhead's most benignant grace; Nor know we anything so fair As is the smile upon thy face: Flowers laugh before thee on their beds And fragrance in thy footing treads; Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong; And the most ancient heavens, through Thee, are fresh and strong. To humbler functions, awful Power! I call thee: I myself commend Unto thy guidance from this hour; Oh, let my weakness have an end! Give unto me, made lowly wise, The spirit of self-sacrifice; The confidence of reason give; And in the light of truth thy Bondman let me live!

If aught of oaten stop, or past'ral song, May hope, chaste Eve, to soothe thy modest ear, Like thy own solemn springs, Thy springs and dying gales, O nymph reserved, while now the bright-haired sun Sits in yon western tent, whose cloudy skirts, With brede ethereal wove, O'erhang his wavy bed; Now air is hushed, save where the weak-ey'd bat With short shrill shriek flits by on leathern wing, Or where the beetle winds His small but sullen horn As oft he rises 'midst the twilight path Against the pilgrim, borne in heedless hum: Now teach me, maid composed, To breathe some softened strain, Whose numbers stealing through thy dark'ning vale May not unseemly with its stillness suit, As musing slow, I hail Thy genial loved return. For when thy folding star arising shows His paly circlet, at his warning lamp The fragrant Hours, and elves Who slept in flowers the day, And many a nymph who wreathes her brows with sedge And sheds the fresh'ning dew, and lovelier still, The pensive pleasures sweet Prepare thy shad'wy car. Then lead, calm votress, where some sheety lake Cheers the lone heath, or some time-hallowed pile Or upland fallows grey Reflect its last cool gleam. But when chill blust'ring winds, or driving rain, Forbid my willing feet, be mine the hut That from the mountain's side Views wilds, and swelling floods, And hamlets brown, and dim-discovered spires, And hears their simple bell, and marks o'er all Thy dewy fingers draw The gradual dusky veil. While Spring shall pour his showers, as oft he wont, And bathe thy breathing tresses, meekest Eve; While Summer loves to sport Beneath thy ling'ring light; While sallow Autumn fills thy lap with leaves; Or Winter, yelling through the troublous air, Affrights thy shrinking train And rudely rends thy robes; So long, sure-found beneath the sylvan shed, Shall Fancy, Friendship, Science, rose-lipp'd Health, Thy gentlest influence own, And hymn thy fav'rite name!

A reading  from the book of  Willie Maxwell 679:1738 ...    then Rap Gawd formed a man from the dust of the auto-tune &breathed into his nostrils the breath of Rémy Martin the man became Fetty Wap. Rap Gawd saw fit to make Fetty a counterpart. so he caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; while he was sleeping he took one of the man’s eyes then closed up the place with flesh. then the Rap Gawd made a woman from the eye he had taken out of the man. the creation story of Fetty the first trap rapper to make a song I might play at my wedding. there’s a choir of church mothers smiling down on the brown boy that sings of a woman’s worth in a culture destined to nullify it. do you know how long sisters been waiting for a brother to willingly let us hit the bando? (after patiently explaining what the fuck that means.) l’union fait la force your music emblematic of the motto of Haiti unity makes strength as we scream SQUAAADDDD! the weight of that bass hits hard like Gawd’s tears landing on glow in the dark floors ’cause Gawd does not just “cry” He makes it rain on a crowd of women in heels higher than most GPAs dancing their way through nursing school &out of some deadbeat’s roach-filled 1 bedroom. the fellas big brother arm-wrapped shoulders singing off-key about Ki’s &pies and other shit they have no real idea about. the only song in the club that allows a hetero male to gaze into the eyes of another [suspected] hetero male and/or stranger singing his fucking heart out. make him more mathematician than murderer spewing lyrics repping the urban district’s finest cognac this is a black man’s “Sweet Caroline” oh, oh, oh! Fetty, you got me — I, too, see heaven peering through the pearly-gated smile of that gap-toothed princess in your video. I, too, have a glock in my rari — in the form of a master’s degree but don’t get it twisted this summa cum laude bloaw anytime a motherfucker think they know me! &my trap look a lot like a dimly-lit cafe with semicold red stripes a microphone a couple judges but I’ll be damned if anyone tell me I ain’t a queen of this shit . &then I blink &the bass subsides &the song fades into another brother caring more about his golden grill than making the best of a family business. &she picks up her ass her purse slides off the pole disappears into a mixture of low-budget smoke machines &catcalling men wedding bands tangled in the drawstring of their sweats &another Saturday twerks itself into the crisp breeze of Sunday morning &the church mothers glance over the room covered in government-issued confetti &Gawd smiles as they bellow in unison “I want you to be mine again!”

i was mothered by lonely women       some of  them wives     some of them             with plumes of  smoke for husbands    all    lonely smelling of  onions & milk         all mothers some of them to children some to old names phantom girls acting out a life        only half a life away      instead        copper kitchenware bangles pushed up the arm    fingernails rusted with henna          kneading raw meat with salt with coriander                     sweating upper lip in the steam       weak tea          hair unwound against the nape         my deities      each one sandal slapping against stone heel      sandal- wood & oud                    bright chiffon spun about each head     coffee in the dowry china butter biscuits on a painted plate      crumbs suspended in eggshell demitasse       & they begin i heard       people are saying i saw it with my own eyes       [      ]’s daughter a scandal                  she was wearing [      ] &not wearing [   ]            can you imagine a shame                                             a shame

Your voice crawls across the dashboard of Grandma’s Dodge Dynasty on the way home from Lilydale First Baptist. You sing a cocktail of static and bass. Sound like you dressed to the nines: cowboy hat, fur coat & alligator boots. Sound like you lotion every tooth. You a walking discography, South Side griot, keeper of crackle & dust in the grooves. You fell in love with a handmade box of wires at 16 and been behind the booth ever since. From wbez to V103, you be the Coolest Gent, King of the Dusties. Your voice wafts down from the ceiling at the Hair Lab. You supply the beat for Kym to tap her comb to. Her brown fingers paint my scalp with white grease to the tunes of Al & Barry & Luther. Your voice: an inside-out yawn, the sizzle of hot iron on fresh perm, the song inside the blackest seashell washed up on a sidewalk in Bronzeville. You soundtrack the church picnic, trunk party, Cynthia’s 50th birthday bash, the car ride to school, choir, Checkers. Your voice stretch across our eardrums like Daddy asleep on the couch. Sound like Grandma’s sweet potato pie, sound like the cigarettes she hide in her purse for rough days. You showed us what our mommas’ mommas must’ve moved to. When the West Side rioted the day MLK died, you were audio salve to the burning city, people. Your voice a soft sermon soothing the masses, speaking coolly to flames, spinning black records across the airwaves, spreading the gospel of soul in a time of fire. Joycetta says she bruised her thumbs snappin’ to Marvin’s “Got to Give It Up” and I believe her.

Where dost thou careless lie, Buried in ease and sloth? Knowledge that sleeps doth die; And this security, It is the common moth That eats on wits and arts, and oft destroys them both. Are all th' Aonian springs Dried up? lies Thespia waste? Doth Clarius' harp want strings, That not a nymph now sings? Or droop they as disgrac'd, To see their seats and bowers by chatt'ring pies defac'd? If hence thy silence be, As 'tis too just a cause, Let this thought quicken thee: Minds that are great and free Should not on fortune pause; 'Tis crown enough to virtue still, her own applause. What though the greedy fry Be taken with false baites Of worded balladry, And think it poesy? They die with their conceits, And only piteous scorn upon their folly waits. Then take in hand thy lyre, Strike in thy proper strain, With Japhet's line aspire Sol's chariot for new fire, To give the world again; Who aided him will thee, the issue of Jove's brain. And since our dainty age Cannot endure reproof, Make not thyself a page To that strumpet, the stage, But sing high and aloof, Safe from the wolf's black jaw and the dull ass's hoof.

Come leave the loathéd stage, And the more loathsome age, Where pride and impudence in faction knit Usurp the chair of wit, Indicting and arraigning, every day, Something they call a play. Let their fastidious, vain Commission of the brain Run on, and rage, sweat, censure, and condemn: They were not made for thee, less thou for them. Say that thou pour’st ’em wheat, And they would acorns eat; ‘Twere simple fury, still thyself to waste On such as have no taste; To offer them a surfeit of pure bread, Whose appetites are dead; No, give them grains their fill, Husks, draff to drink, and swill; If they love lees, and leave the lusty wine, Envy them not, their palate’s with the swine. No doubt a moldy tale, Like Pericles, and stale As the shrive’s crusts, and nasty as his fish, Scraps out of every dish Thrown forth, and raked into the common tub, May keep up the Play Club. Broome’s sweepings do as well There as his master’s meal; For who the relish of these guests will fit Needs set them but the alms-basket of wit. And much good do’t ye then, Brave plush and velvet men Can feed on orts, and safe in your scene clothes, Dare quit upon your oaths The stagers, and the stage-wrights too (your peers) Of stuffing your large ears With rage of comic socks, Wrought upon twenty blocks; Which, if they’re torn, and foul, and patched enough, The gamesters share your guilt, and you their stuff. Leave things so prostitute, And take th’Alcaic lute; Or thine own Horace, or Anacreon’s lyre; Warm thee by Pindar’s fire; And though thy nerves be shrunk, and blood be cold, Ere years have made thee old, Strike that disdainful heat Throughout, to their defeat; As curious fools, and envious of thy stain, May, blushing, swear no palsy’s in thy brain. But when they hear thee sing The glories of thy King, His zeal to God, and his just awe of men, They may be blood-shaken, then Feel such a flesh-quake to possess their powers, That no tuned harp like ours, In sound of peace or wars, Shall truly hit the stars When they shall read the acts of Charles his reign, And see his chariot triumph ’bove his wain.

And now, my Marian, from its shackles free, My wearied fancy turns for ease to thee; To thee, my compass through life’s varied stream, My constant object, and unfailing theme. Torn from the bosom of my soul’s repose, And self-devoted to surrounding woes, Oft o’er my solitary thoughts I brood— (For passing crowds to me are solitude)— Catch thy loved image, on thy beauties dwell, Improved by graces which no tongue can tell, The look which I have seen, by love endeared, The voice to love attuned, which I have heard. Or rapt in thoughts of higher worth, adore Thy virtues, drawn by mem’ry’s faithful store; Or court, as now obsequious at her shrine, The Muse, unkind on ev’ry theme but thine. Nor foreign deem from such a frame of mind This tale, to meet thy gracious ear designed, To me, and to my state, alike belong The subject, and the moral, of my song, ’Tis true, no serpent of envenomed breath Hath stung my love, ere yet a bride, to death; And, O! may Heav’n for many years to come, Preserve her life from Nature’s final doom! Yet is she lost to me, in substance dead, With half the traversed globe between us spread; Dreadful transition! in one moment’s cost My soul’s whole wealth I saw, and held, and lost. The Fate and Silence closed life’s blissful scene, Its being past, as it had never been. The sad rememberance only now remains, And by contrasting aggravates my pains. Hope still attendant and delusive stands, And points, but coldly points, to distant lands; Gilds their faint summits with her flatt’ring ray; But deserts, rocks, and seas obstruct the way; And age, and sickness, and the clouds that teem With unknown thunders, through the prospect gleam. Ah me! no Gods, nor Angels now descend, The sons of men in pity to befriend! My sufferings else might some kind spirit move To give me back on terms the wife I love: And more than half my life would I resign, For health, her purchase, and herself, for mine, Borne by the Pow’rs of Air, or she should rise, Or I rejoin her through the distant skies. No more my thoughts in solitude should mourn My sweet companion from my presence torn; Nor rigid duty force me to remain, And see her sails diminish on the main. To her my destined hours, though few, I’d give, And while I lived, a life of bliss I’d live.

I love the sound of marbles scattered on the worn wooden floor, like children running away in a game of hide-and-seek. I love the sight of white marbles, blue marbles, green marbles, black, new marbles, old marbles, iridescent marbles, with glass-ribboned swirls, dancing round and round. I love the feel of marbles, cool, smooth, rolling freely in my palm, like smooth-sided stars that light up the worn world.