prayers to Kevin Ware for a complete and full recovery.

then FYEAH! louisville’s beatdown of the duke bluedevils…. and… and… CAN THIS BE RIGHT: the louisville women’s team is currently up big over baylor and Griner?!?! never had much use for easter, but this so far is a great one!

from my old morethanmud.blogspot.com page…. 

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 2010 (edited feb 12 2013 at 2:damn-early a.m.) 

this pathos-by-proxy still twitches 

at the mere mention of paterollers 

storming the gate / neanderthals with 

knuckles dragging - swarming the stanza; 

dupes in white robes, haute-couture dunces 

capped in trivial pursuits; they’ve come for 

the gardenias, the organza. and the penumbra 

spills over every edge, haunted / daunted 

by a post-slavery stress disorder that’s anything 

but paint-by-the-numbers. voices told me 

to buckle up; that work was to be done. 

but who knew i’d be the one 

to grow up mapping the spinal cortex 

of yoruba-oblongata / talking the dead down 

from the ledges of ivory towers, stalking 

spirit-guides on chalkboards, and in chatrooms, 

and in chapbooks always in a state of rough-draft 

that outlines the underlaying pedagogy 

of a sun-people who’ve been told for years 

that melanin undermines 

their accomplishments, 

their merit, 

their every seat 

at the table. 

money changed hands. 

the bets placed on the crowd-pleasers 

and social networking favorites. but who thought 

it would come down to this: - me - taking 

the witness stand as public defender 

for africa’s stolen property; one 

of 200 million 

“exhibit a’s”. 

(recess) 

the story goes i was born 

the son of an egun-runner and fell 

shadow-first from several wombs all at once; 

was assembled on a single line / stitched into sorcery 

by the gnarled hands of an unseen seamstress, 

but i digress. 

this poem is my mess-of-pieces 

and in haste i assumed you already knew 

the elemental weight of sankofa. the dna of most 

nursery rhymes are made of angst and atoms, 

but mine are composed of some poro mask’s whittled 

remains, of the wolof wail of tears, of robert johnson’s 

cigarette ash, of blood spray from whip’s lash, 

was told by high school guidance counselors to be 

“a gash man” but i write trash/rehash/a whole rash 

of broken teeth / tonsils / rhythms / wisdom, 

etc.  

anyway, 

the banana in the pocket 

of this poem is a poltergeist. 

but i’m not a ghostbuster 

whispering the echos 

of the dead… 

i’m the doorman for the dearly dormant. 

it’s a tough trade. not as in demand 

as you would think… 

(court is back in session) 

i was born 

to translate tarbaby’s morse code 

into a canonical course (jes grew 101), my dissertation 

was on head-lump reading. baron saturday was 

my first instructor, paid me to re-edit the wiki-page 

for the pot-liquor sciences. he taught me to be 

everywhere you want to be. that’s why i’m known 

as prometheus backwash on facebook and, by luck 

of the drawl, i’m jujuchagalia on twitter… 

i’ve been told that “upfromsumdirt” is kiswahili 

for “switchblade renaissance” (or “this meat done turned”) 

and my hand writing looks like basquiat’s long lost rorschach, 

my john-hancock the sonogram for incomplete cultures 

in red, white, and blue… 

woo-shit! - you should just see my cat-scan! 

no lie, my medulla is a fun-house mirror. 

i see saint octavia’s image on toast and tree-bark 

or when connecting the moles on the back of my lover’s 

neck. i was hit by a marching band as a baby and 

that’s why i see everything so clearly. 

just didnt know i’d be the one to grow up re-inventing 

a wonderland, where kentucky replaces Ile-Ife as 

uncle tom’s backdrop where cabins are shingled in bluegrass, 

bourbon glasses, and the soul’s weight in cowry shells… 

does anyone know the trajectory for a black poet 

profiling himself? then again, it’s not like i was born 

for recognition, my mug adorning the t-shirts of drunken 

frat boys and feministas on the college courtyards across 

the land. in me is not the tradition for upholding 

a metered dialog; i was born an act of reclamation

so what need i for “social progress” if the thought-process 

is afraid of flames? 

you: 

continue taming your lions and chasing 

gazelles; i was fed the breastmilk of hyenas born 

in a cage - don’t mind my jagged teeth and breath 

every bit rancid, the brochure says the rabies 

will only kill you 

if left untreated. 

(the plea) 

it’s my nature to alert you to aneurysm; 

when i curl up at your feet it means 

a conniption is coming. 

i’m only trying to save your life: 

your lover’s husband has a knife, 

the midwife is on birth-strike, little timmy 

is stuck in the whale…. 

my words: 

the harpoon you need / the playbill 

for a pitiful revolution.

If you have to choose between being a pretentious smart-ass or a smug son of a bitch then go with the one that will get you laid the fastest, depending on the circumstances, because chances are you’ll have nothing else going for you.

i want a bar mitzvah.

or something. i’m 43. watching

boyz in da hood with my homies 

while checking email from a cell

phone does not count

as “rite of passage”

“In traditional societies there was little room for the “unplaced person” who had yet come to terms with his/her society. In part the creation and extension of adolescence is a reflection of a casual motif in modern social structures. The distinctions between the developmental stages of a person’s life in American culture have become blurred. A chasm has been created with respect to an individual’s development from childhood to maturity; it has been filled by a loosely defined adolescence that can appear to have no end. This casual motif is further evidenced by the decline of ritual and ceremony in a secularized world. Formalized definitions of transition such as graduation or religious confirmations play a relatively minor role in our social life. The function of ritual is supposedly to imbue an event with meaning; in a modern context, ritual seems to trivialize an event. Nevertheless, there is no evidence that a secularized urban world has lessened the need for ritualized expression of an individual’s transition from one status to another. An increasing number of individuals are forced to accomplish their transition alone and with private symbols. The casual motif in modern society may eliminate the dramatizations of the passage from childhood to adulthood, but it does not necessarily eliminate the felt need for the individual to undergo that transition. The failure of modern society to dramatize or take serious the need for such transition during adolescence has contributed to disruptive social groups such as youth gangs and the mid-life crisis of the “unplaced” or “uninitiated” persons.”

   - ritesofpassage.org/rites

before the end of day

i will slay a bull (not on wii, but

in real life)… i’ll lay in its blood

and coagulate myself into the role

of Higher Creator. i’ll drink its bile

from my granddaughter’s sippy cup.

i will make this america look 

a little bit like me… if not 

in the face, then beneath its nails. 

and if not the brow, then its hands

will at least remind me

of my own.

- upfromsumdirt © 2010