Harmony Holiday

To be born yellow into a household where the black man rules with his fists  and the white wife  body   livid   with      devotion         hip enough to confuse  trouble with   love    or   whatever   it  was, such the  lucky  one   to come up so unamerican   ,   thankful  one   in whose imagination the  country danger is   so ambient and precise  of   source   it vanishes    and with each departure  more affectionate    machines   panting   to run the dream between  hope    and  habit I wanted to say this more clearly         In what ways  did   watching  your black father beat your white mother   empower   you   as a brown   baby   ?   in  a blue    way      is  there anything   so  cruel   so    crude    as  to say   you felt   each   of your hands   in their  puppet   throats   as they screamed   for help   in   unison   but  only    one  was   hunted  for   room   within the invisible  listener   Only one  could  pray  that      far I wanted to say this more clearly       trustless of a soul  who hadn’t   suffered  he tore  hers  toward him And I arrived as a kind of vengeance, the many versions of war worn raw by their sex, come to be as the treacherous peace of empty pacts    and broken  chessmen were scattered all over the room It’s like being the last person alive

Despite all their fervor     they were headed somewhere   limp   in the intellect     nursery rhyme dialect headed   somewhere   all   circumference     hunnid   something for Sumerian   tablet happy meals   where you get     to munch   the   code-cold   sun upfront     the rest   when you’ve     eaten a bit of rat flesh   in the shape of yesterday     perishing youth addiction : Future dreams of codeine nibbles the white nipple wedged between him and his     soul   stice staaay sis what is this?     passes out     on the battlefield, improviser  /    wisest man I ever   mumbled   alongside     Power   with all the wars   in it ain’t shit     in   a   flawed   system     besides   self-destruction   may all our enemies   become powerful   and empty   in the west   while we sell our bodies   these   mumbled   prayers codeine   ain’t got nothin to   do     with my   love, child   either labor in the holds was painless bled ’til the chains lost their grip and there are   tapes   to prove it

Or nothing is really north, but you’re so civic and indivisible. The Folk Revival has no middle, no anachronism, just no more caption or advent, but you’re not them dilettantes.          As relentless as listening to the shore backwards, your words about how it happens, wanderlust and continental, badge verse the nourish of no mercy  crash short, burst slack,   repeat  as you were reallysomething. You know the house is empty, exempt, yours for the mentioning of will to power appears an officer on a horse with more posture than you’re used to, undoing your robe for it’s satin loose before a sash and give him the magician, night minion, answer over the flashlight nothing Authority I admire is kept during itself, kinetic, black market uncorrectable and in between admiring and participating, you wear the tight number which hugs risen the been-there under your eyes vindicates evasion head on    I don’t even imagine what real violation sounds    I stay at the Social Club while you go sell my high back to Cuba China   as a kind of sound of king of sound    He’ll ask me to speak up, come closer, note the kind of trouble I’m in here is absurd and prolific  the kind you catch for witnessing an author rewrite the book   skip the vista, the word vista,  the good word  and look as it’s splitting

Even alleged militants blame the vanishing of the summer sea ice on “Ghosts” (short version) by Albert Ayler. He disappeared while he was getting his sound together. No one knows what happened but the water high in increments like a crown around his cries and glass is a liquid and you have to forgive your parents for whatever it is and they have to forgive themselves I would like to use this craft to fly with him I feel that saddle the morning after and try — again — warm in the habit of our warning and yearning for more of  them until We finally need to see this reckoning But when it’s time I’m not ready and when I’m ready it’s not time — that’s fate. And blind in the halo of so-what, so-what, we make it a future I say,I don’t know who you are. I say,It don’t matter at this point,I do it all for you anyways(long run) — gorgeous photographs of industrial ruins so lush you want to lick them, be them, become a trend. Crushed under the debris, an instrument is so tender it breaks and mends in the same note. Becoming men is like that, degrading, uplifting, denial, lazily caving in Isis and ice until all of our guesses are obsolete we can’t see nobody who isn’t disappearing

Looks to me like you’ve been disinherited, mute-chanting     while sirens scatter the will into a dull blade that can be attached to the muzzle of a rifle like a shadow     or   braid joke.    Stray dreadlock at the bus stop/ black stranded on blue/ and grape flavored bayonet that’s the word, French, daisy-hued lemon enunciation of when. I heard you were leaving this country     and     you tried   holding Rockefeller to daddy’s     promise     in the corridor of  being reasonable     and that he who could not sing should be made to sing     and the crow   pecking at synthetic kinky reggae would stow ’way home     If we   start thinking about the things   that keep us   in   a   place     we know we shouldn’t be in      and as the gates swing   open   jump rope like boxers training in velour short-shorts   and spitfire   just to keep brides in the jungle     sequestered /  the sore lavender nipples of the dairy cows add a rude dimension to the tasting menu   but that’s   what feeds you this sour mold juice, like the tiny yelling hands that piece together these machines   american dolls   and   darn that     charming cardigan made in Stanley Cowell’s   incantatory   shroud of a   winter power outage  ,  every shimmering object settles   in cold blood but I will not be interrupted of it .I’m sending you two black babies the greeting card reads     the wood of the reed splits     like the chief’s prophecy/ mask ,     Ma     remembers     the one that sold   her first was   it her father     what is   a   father   bath on   netted   lots .  of stray turtle doves   in this tribe,   ruler and thundering     Bula gnawing on the missing leg     of a queen’s   stool, hers, m aa fa s nursing trumpet was   she her father     I will not be interrupted   even to be my own father   watching me   dance   and earn him   a village .  even by Black Christ of the Tropics   begging to learn his name   in silver verses     I will not be interrupted     I     will   not   be interrupted

We’re all pagans and shamans and clap your hands now we won’t stop the beat We believe in divine healing and we hate to see that evening sun go down We know when the sight of our women dressed in white each ritual night, is touching, hypnotizes The animals blush and split for us as revival, as revealed to themselves These are triumphant women. Even Sister Fame hiding out in the alley turning tricks and singing verses from the undid scripture, is touching Thank you jesus, thank you jesus, that you jesus, baby, is that you, she mutters up high between rocks and lace — his eagerness — it was all night long Sometimes he’d interrupt a recording session to tell us about his early Motown days or expand on his views of   Heaven and Hell One time he was saying how important it was to love one’s father. Do you love yours? I asked him Why don’t you tell him Why don’t you tell your father, he said I will if you do You go first

A gunshot then. Stop your bikes and let them wobble in mechanism Then a gun watchman, hithered on the imaginary end of a macabre lipping telescope, broke my hero into speeches. It had to be masculine this many occasions consecutively and also diminutive from a hugeness I could not collect enough pipes and wizards on the trumpet trigger to build a trumpet or remorse or capitulate or boost my chest into order, for a basicness distortion gives, gives exegesis         Pedals coiling and scuffing the earth dust trusting lungs to come out in funicular or jigback. If I could just look to the minimalists, suss a sleek black wrist gathering the handles or clutching stacks of hourglass glasses to his grappling ribs at this one endless shop.    We looted

Gone then risen Milk dawn gone then risen Our ephemeral fawning done Gone sanguine then risen in spell High with your wrist while nihil busy Unburrowing dice teams from sand figurines Risen to swirl steam scooping passing seemingly A kindred-ided up and up, born of dormant corners Forms filial then filled          Goes mourn and swoon Love have and love loom                    Union and risen

I saw you painted on a ghetto wall last summer and thought don’t submit to this medium...    everybody’s running into the wall or running into each other and plagiarizing our future like mummies and nukes, I watched you hug the Mona Lisa. I wanna use the word pariah until it shrugs for us and even their disguises go limp as a fire tumbling down a hillside into the playfulness in my heart, acres and acres of a lean, almost spiritual vibe afraid of  its own momentum and then not afraid again

I mean to really live? Kick a spook in the stomach and commit to yourself and not be committed. Sit through another because I got it like that yoga class where a Coldplay soundtrack competes with the upbeat white chick reminding you to be present, to thank yourself for making it to your mat. Point to any place on the map and blow it up. Blow up spots. Why you gotta blow up spots? I loved Lebanon, never quite made it. I spit out the sudden ash with Don Cherry in Marrakech. I lifted one chiseled leg so high over my head Magic City had called and the ATL was ready to blow me up and I said,please. Do I do.What you do. Sing with me. Another shooter made it first and the ACLU was a petty bunch of pseudo-saviors but they blew up spots that one day. So many sad stories you start laughing at the wrong time and you thought yours was one ’til the time working at Ailey with the girl whose mom was killed by her very own daddy in front of the just-say-no rainbow she drew him in class. She wears heavy aquamarine eyeshadow and closes the gap between feeling and being. I’m glad you’re Dorothy Dandridge. Ban on that word, daddy. Banksy sees the zoo in you and cages hisself in bluer notes. I go wild and will, and will. Myth is a special kind of killer and I love her atonal smile. Without her we’d all go bye-bye, point to a place in the rap and make it a black hole, let it suck us in hug the cuckolded sucker emcees and let it hold us against our certain demolition. Without her you would find it hard to live. All the opiates would shrivel into sickle cell and all the blood running through the streets would keep on believing in bodies —  what obsolete machines, the only ones worth saving. Thank yourself for making it     for being present for the cold ache you sit with and rock into situations     for the way you exploded in nuclear winter and thought you had dreamed it     and made a new world bent as your denial     reached forth to caress it all and it shocked your fingertips     this is the bravest numbness