Posts tagged upfromsumdirt

• up at dawn…

i strap on africa:

my metaphor, my phantasm.

africa is the yoke i harness 

my imagination to, pulling 

me up from this assimilated coma; 

tan docker’s and my tattered olive 

hoodie make for a poor man’s 

american-styled dashiki.

midnight is the work-clothes 

i fit my words into; i’m a pullman 

car porter for old adages and new 

mythicisms; i’m a houngan in hijab 

and overalls, a workhorse for 

disbanded rituals, i’m a witchdoctor 

with a hipster’s aspirations - 

half Steven Jobs,  half Stephen Biko.

on this land / in these asphalt fields

i’m the onyx ox: a beast AND a burden.

all city / nothing urban; my insights 

hold out from the late, great Luba; 

so yes, my ebonics are quite bionic.

you see, Rome was too built in a day,

back in 1475 or so - when Europa

began dismantling her rivals, securing

trade routes, salvage rights and such. 

you know the saying:

 to the victims go the spoiled.

but alas, you’ve already lost interest

in my language, so i’ll just leave it to

a Kathryn Stockett-type to tell you 

my story of genocide. gentrified.

• half past day…

i’m an urban water buffalo plowing 

burnt soils so seeds will shoot forth 

feathers and jute harvest, my spells 

sprouting outer-space on the sidewalks.

from this sorry cinema i carve fertility

dolls into collage - from a white shadow 

black creatives softly creak with anger, 

having not enough of an edge, a ledge,

or mantel space for legacy (in a land 

where legacies, either proven or pilfered,

are extremely lucrative).

we sculpt a citizenship from empty popcorn 

boxes, soda pop cans and the discarded candy 

bar wrappers that whirl and spin in circles 

on discarded corners; its not dimlit, its well 

bright and we all see it.

but man-made poltergeists need 

the fiction of “midnightness” 

letting what passes for life bleed allusion 

into our lungs because hope is the heaviest

form of precipitation. 

separated from myth, america has given us

asthma / but we’re a pulmonary car porter 

people lugging suitcases for shango. 

we are free, but only if we forage for it.

so, before it becomes too late, before 

bandwidth becomes our only 

breathing apparatus, we really 

should unionize our fairy tales.

• into the dusk…

pushed past the end, the breath 

has bite but offers no new blueprint 

for the blackstar line forensics squad

to graft parables from, no poetry 

to put an end to the grand imperial

dragon’s pallbearers guild…

post-omega, these teeth have 

a presidential tint, short rocks glinting 

black / not obama-like (unless his daddy) 

- my stories - the stimulus package

for a black-art-movement’s 

romanticized egungun.

this poem is a transatlantic salve,

a trade / a barter system, inscribing 

spiritual security numbers on all 

the jagged surfaces of america’s

stolen property / in this breath, us IS,

usblackpeople is all human 

claim tickets for the ancestors.

on my tongue there are two trains 

a-rollin’… you dont hafta do a thing, 

but let the message board you.

and of course, you could tip, too.

 - upfromsumdirt © 2010