The Dead Emcee Scrolls (17 page)

Silent angel

Wingless words

Women who dance

Meaning into shapes

Shapes that are symbols

Of truths to come

The past tense of drum

Is dream

We dance through

Memories, unseen

We are dancing women

The subconscious

Of our ancestors

The contents of feathers

And webs, rewoven

The fabric of a future

Once fable

The legend

Of a legion

Of angels

The only metaphor that

Exists is midwifery

All else is sight specific

Most things are

Hardly more than they are

There is midwifery in poetry

Midwifery in dance

The artistic process is

A process of midwifery

If we do not catch

These falling stars

Then we will experience

No more than a cratered

Wilderness but when truth

And beauty falls into our hands

And we learn how to place it back

Into the arms of the mother …

You finish the thought

The depths of breath

Is all that is left

To breathe shallow

Is to wallow in doubt

Here on the darkened wood

Of this misshapen tree

There is no trace of age

Its rings have been stained

And tarnished

There is no telling

Of ancestry or lineage

It no longer matters

We are here now

Conjurers of the evermore

I cannot invest in these surroundings

For only I am held accountable

And the wages of unwritten pages

Is shallow breath

It is only through this

That we might replant

These forests

Libraries are forests

Replanted….

That which I was born

I am no longer

That which I was born

I have lived well beyond

That which I was born

Yet I am

As an artist

First, I was black.

I wrote with a yearning

To be a leader. I was

Born into a mourning

Race. We mourned

The death of a king.

I awoke to find

My tongue a scepter.

Inner breathlessness, outer restlessness

By the time I caught up to freedom I was out of breath

Grandma asked me what I'm running for

I guess I'm out for the same thing the sun is sunning for

What mothers birth their young'uns for

And some say Jesus' coming for

For all I know the earth is spinning slow

Sun's at half-mast 'cause masses ain't aglow

On bended knee, prostrate before an altered tree

I've made the forest suit me

Tables and chairs

Papers and prayers

Matter vs. spirit

A metal ladder

A wooden cross

A plastic bottle of water

A mandala encased in glass

A spirit encased in flesh

Sound from shaped hollows

The thickest of mucus released from heightened passion

A man that cries in his sleep

A truth that has gone out of fashion

A mode of expression

A paint-splattered wall

A carton of cigarettes

A bouquet of corpses

A dying forest

A nurtured garden

A privatized prison

A candle with a broken wick

A puddle that reflects the sun

A piece of paper with my name on it

I'm surrounded

I surrender

All

All that I am I have been

All I have been has been a long time coming

I am becoming all that I am

The spittle that surrounds the mouthpiece of the flute

Unheard, yet felt

A gathered wetness

A quiet moisture

Sound trapped in a bubble

Released into wind

Wind fellows and land merchants

We are history's detergent

Water soluble, light particles,

Articles of cleansing breath

Articles amending death

These words are not tools of communication

They are shards of metal

Dropped from eight-story windows

They are waterfalls and gas leaks

Aged thoughts rolled in tobacco leaf

The tools of a trade

Barbers barred, barred of barters

Catch phrases and misunderstandings

But they are not what I feel when I am alone

Surrounded by everything and nothing

And there isn't a word or phrase to be caught

A verse to be recited

A mantra to fill my being

In those moments

I am blankness, the contained center of an “O”

The pyramidic containment of an “A”

I stand in the middle of all that I have learned

All that I have memorized

All that I've known by heart

Unable to reach any of it

There is no sadness

There is no bliss

It is a forgotten memory

A memorable escape route

Only is found by not looking

There, in the spine of the dictionary

Words are worthless

They are a mere weight

Pressing against my thoughtlessness

But then, who else can speak of thoughtlessness

With such confidence

Who else has learned to sling these ancient ideas

Like dead rats held by their tails

So as not to infect this newly-oiled skin

I can think of nothing heavier than an airplane

I can think of no greater conglomerate of steel and metal

I can think of nothing less likely to fly

There are no wings more weighted

I too have felt heaviness

The stare of man guessing at my being

Yes I am homeless

A homeless man making offerings to the after-future

Sculpting rubber tree forests out of worn tires

and shoe soles

A nation unified in exhale

A cloud of smoke

A native pipe ceremony

All the gathered cigarette butts piled in heaps

Snow-covered mountains

Lipsticks smeared and shriveled

Offerings to an afterworld

Tattoo guns and plastic wrappers

Broken zippers and dead-eyed dolls

It's all overwhelming me, oak and elming me

I have seeded a forest of myself

Little books from tall trees

It matters not what this paper be made of

Give me notebooks made of human flesh

Dried on steel hooks and nooses

Make uses of use, uses of us

It's all overwhelming me, oak and elming me

I have seeded a forest of myself

Little books from tall trees

On bended knee

Prostrate before an altered tree

I've made the forest suit me

Tables and chairs

Papers and prayers

Matter vs. spirit

Yo, the mosh pit

Is star lit

I see the light

In your eyes

Find my way

To the amp

And stage dive

Into your lives

I am as ignorant

As I am heaven-sent

My mind's a circus tent

I ride the elephant

Into the record store

Its foot breaks through the floor

I hear the surface pop

And underneath, the rock

Down in the underground

A more familiar sound

I do a somersault

Into a sonic vault

I'm in the listening booth

On a quest for truth

I nod my head and goof

I shake and move

Everything you see

Tilted to the sea

Everything you touch

Wilted more than once

Everything you know

Melted in the snow

You are all alone

You are all aglow

No one has to know