Thulani Davis

the streets of hell are also paved with fear of contagion I have been swimming in enough barbed-wire waters to know you’re not even safe on the beach it’s not just your “body fluids” it’s the grime of your skin those dirty things you think they are cleaning up the world again I can see the inflammation heartbreak & hunger scurry me down on the road to Damascus I want to be blinded like Saul for the sake of vision not just cause I can’t take it anymore are we talking burnt out here? burnt out is a reason for infection I hope I get the whole disease I am glad to be a speck / a piece of dirt the dark side of the earth they’re trying to clean I want to get in their pores want them to sweat my filth the way a wound hurts before the dope but then come the murderers on the road are we talking burnt out? they go in the camps looking for you cause you are hiding the sores you could be contagious after all in the postapocalypse movies you don’t even exist your survival is not required for history or hollywood in the movie Road Warrior everyone is antisocial on purpose human ties are burnt out & human intercourse is fatiguing & dangerous gratefully no one is traumatized anymore & unfortunately no one goes to school in the movie Blade Runner almost everyone lives 90 stories below almost no one else everyone is antisocial by accident due to overcrowding in L.A. but no one minds & there are still parties to go to everyone white is “off-world” more or less everyone 90 stories down is polymorphous colored more or less no one has attended school in decades in both films everyone dresses with panache which preserves their identities to audiences who know there is no grounds for indentity postworld personally I prefer the people in Titanic even though they got their minds blown when the unbelievable happened they still believed in life they were not burnt out & had grounds for clinging to lifeboats and a certain stylish way of dressing they could not imagine Jim Jensen intoning without horror that the body count goes on that no one needs the news to know what’s going on Beirut is one of the low levels Dante went on about available in ordinary life see the corpses if you will believe at the risk you may see it everywhere every body spreads infection unless you burn it out eyewitness news invites you to wait for the coverage because Jim Jensen is there & history is in the making or you can come skinny-dip in my gene pool the massacres were arbitrary when my people were hunted down the deaths still go on stretching over centuries of shades of brown baptist, moslem, mothers, children, fathers burnt out of homes but living I am not that desperate to be numb & dumb I’m walking 90 stories down I know I survive in some wretched moments of what men do but I am not that desperate I don’t give a shit if this is history in the making it should stop I am still alive I am still happy to be the dirt that can’t be cleaned up scorch my earth & I will grow from history up under the feet of the present burnt out is for the movies in which we don’t exist

Roslyn has nothing going nothing to fight for no work to do she couldn’t name one desire that is not someone else’s or a man she cannot claim where she came from will not claim who she is or the way she cries so no one can see she has no work to do cannot finish books feed herself or go out alone she is always late not to sit alone somewhere and wait she wouldn’t know what to do Roslyn doesn’t want a thing but she waits for something anyway she has no work to do she holds off interests passions and opinions everything but the facts and these come to her from dramas and the papers she agrees with fiction and what people say i wouldn’t trust her in court or on my back a woman without a dream is a fault in the earth all steam and liquid fire Roslyn goes to work has a job but no calling waits for the word to call herself no one ever remembers her name or where they saw her she waits to be told she’s the only one her tyranny is silent small and sexual her losses are great she has not called herself said, “I’m here, now, deal with me” Roslyn wouldn’t hurt a fly but people fear her sleep her unconscious the primal whatever that wants to play it might have guns out for the rest of us

for Miami They all like to hang out. Thinking is all rather grim to them. Snake and Minnie, who love each other dearly, drink in different bars, ride home in separate cars. They like to kiss good night with unexplored lips. They go out of town to see each other open. This they do for no one else. Minnie does it all for God. Snake does it all for fame. Backstage is where they play their games; that’s why i know their business. I was gonna talk about a race riot. They say they’ve never played that town. Fleece tells me he’s seen an old movie about a black town attacking a white one. Sidney Poitier was the young doctor, accused, abused and enraged. There were Ossie Davis and Woody Strode, Ruby Dee and a hundred unknowns. Also Sapphire’s mama as a maid. “What was Sapphire’s mama’s name?” says Inez. I was going to talk about a race riot but we were stuck on Kingfish’s mother-in-law. Minnie kisses Snake so he’ll forget about that and I say, “They’re mad, they’re on the bottom going down, stung by white justice in a white town, and then there’s other colored people, who don’t necessarily think they’re colored people, leaving them the ground.” “That’s just like the dreads, the Coptics, and the Man-ley-ites,” one drunk says too loud, “I and I know,” say he. Snake yells, “Are you crazy? No, it ain’t, and no, we don’t.” “That’s just like Angola,” Terri chimes, “Sometimes it’s not who but what, sometimes not what but who.” I’m trying to talk to these people about this race riot, someone is walking on the bar, and every one of us belongs even now to Miami, to people we have never seen. Pookie and Omar want to know what’s goin’ on. They always do, ’cause they’re always in the bathroom when it’s goin’ on. They do everything together and not for God, and not for fame, but for love. At least that’s what their records say. They are a singing group that’s had 13 Pookies. Omar asks me, “What do you want to say?” Inez interupts, “She don’t know what to say, she just wants to say something, I understand that.” The 13th Pookie chirps, “This race riot sounds like all the other race riots.” Fleece says, “And you sound like 12 other Pookies, Pookie.” I am still trying to talk about this race riot. Minnie looks up and says, “We don’t have anywhere to put any more dead.” Snake puts on his coat to leave alone, “We never did, we never did.”

this little phase keeps on the same way without variety jazz and compromise making blue snow grow at the windows mohair fumes clog my throat like cats flames pounce without burning shadows gather in parkas at my back turn so i can see your face stand where i can see you man should someone phone i will tell whoever it is i cannot escape this night even saxophones do not dry light the brown sweat terror in white doorways under multicolored covers there is no way to sleep with the phone falling off the hook the blaring beep of warnings do not leave your house do not stay home this is the contradiction of when i live even fanfares and flourishes do not announce a truce with our personal assailants without variety blue dust blood traces in floor wax black fog and nappy lint colorless wax spreads broad tears across all the windows some permanent weather happened to this building some misplaced coal mine had its disaster here and i am alive inside

for Dianne McIntyre as i fly over this time rising over only this so much painted suffering unseen grimaces and stares among spruce greens these few forests left all of us trying to be alone quiet and blind. * i see soldiers in bus stations with colored names polaroid shots their girlfriends chew gum smile wide * in all this silver of sky like stars these wheels car gears lampshades electrical refuse zen oiled and greased the believers now so many now so tired of the sad songs the endless yearnings for war and more and more * dumb cries i sigh trying to get out of town i am writing on the wall it will be painted over like all the songs once outside but as i fly over this time * dianne is dancing touching the far reaches leaping and teaching she strokes and struts the air none of us stumbles or fears their lives steel beams and rail tracks strike an E-flat, B-flat, A E-flat, B-flat, A dianne is dancing no one can handle the hostages terror is abandoned because of light breaking in leaves because the center is gone we are still breathing and the swing is our bodies