WIND-CHANT: A DIVA PROFILES
She was wild and fresh, a breeze from forever
blown across frontiers of my life. Her whispers
were soft, spring breaths stroking leaves,
guiding them towards fecund maturity. I was
rock, unbending, hopelessly rigid; but she
found secret depths, emerald vallys glowing
in her mind. Wind and rock, yin and yang,
her golden voice sang in dark infinities,
was sunlight where green reigned supreme
in mythic landscapes extolling Summer.
My beautiful one, a hurricane sweeping
the tropics, filling us all with emotion,
insurgent devotion to all that surges and
surrenders, sings and embraces totalities;
emerges clean and whole to perpetual
rhythms alive in melanin realms where
lost voices haunt recurring dreamscapes,
and spirits resurrect full moons, forever Eden.
SURVIVAL: A CHANT
(for Malcolm, Martin and Medgar)
Paint this joy upon the World's canvas;
that despite lynching, bombing,
dirty deeds, we living seeds of a Bantu
Nation live and breathe amidst the trials
and madness of Anglo-sponsored
profiteers, spawn of puritans, new breed
pioneers raping this world with Saxon greed.
We are Thirty Million strong, bred from auction
blocks of chained chattels. Slaves!--bought and
sold like tamed cattle--now produce astronauts,
rocket scientists, while sermons from
slain kings rattle in America's frigid ears.
SUN RA'S UTOPIAN CHANT 2
These years speed by like
an eye blinking; first one is
thirty, prime, then forty, fifty,
in between problems and prayers,
the life-lines deepening, the seams
and leathery features of Mid-life
descend, and distantly
a faint bell tolls; a pulsebeat,
a liquid metronome. And where is
wisdom, spirituality? hip, like
Miles mastering tonal implications:
muted solos open rhythmic doors
into wonder, on the road to forever,
while the beat ascends swiftly, via
cosmic revelations--like Sun Ra's
chant among gurus, saints and
astronauts, out beyond the stars. ( continue... )
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