Jimmy's Blues and Other Poems Read online

Some days you say,

  oh, not me never – !

  Some days you say

  bless God forever.

  Some days, you say,

  curse God, and die

  and the day comes when you wrestle

  with that lie.

  Some days tussle

  then some days groan

  and some days

  don’t even leave a bone.

  Some days you hassle

  all alone.

  3

  I don’t know, sister,

  what I’m saying,

  nor do no man,

  if he don’t be praying.

  I know that love is the only answer

  and the tight-rope lover

  the only dancer.

  When the lover come off the rope

  today,

  the net which holds him

  is how we pray,

  and not to God’s unknown,

  but to each other – :

  the falling mortal is our brother!

  4

  Some days leave

  some days grieve

  some days you almost don’t believe.

  Some days believe you,

  some days don’t,

  some days believe you

  and you won’t.

  Some days worry

  some days mad

  some days more than make you

  glad.

  Some days, some days,

  more than shine,

  witnesses,

  coming on down the line!

  Conundrum (on my birthday)

  (for Rico)

  Between holding on,

  and letting go,

  I wonder

  how you know

  the difference.

  It must be something like

  the difference

  between heaven and hell

  but how, in advance,

  can you tell?

  If letting go

  is saying no,

  then what is holding on

  saying?

  Come.

  Can anyone be held?

  Can I – ?

  The impossible conundrum,

  the closed circle,

  why

  does lightning strike this house

  and not another?

  Or, is it true

  that love is blind

  until challenged by the drawbridge

  of the mind?

  But, saying that,

  one’s forced to see one’s definitions

  as unreal.

  We do not know enough about the mind,

  or how the conundrum of the imagination

  dictates, discovers,

  or can dismember what we feel,

  or what we find.

  Perhaps

  one must learn to trust

  one’s terror:

  the holding on

  the letting go

  is error:

  the lightning has no choice,

  the whirlwind has one voice.

  Christmas carol

  Saul,

  how does it feel

  to be Paul?

  I mean, tell me about that night

  you saw the light,

  when the light knocked you down.

  What’s the cost

  of being lost

  and found?

  It must be high.

  And I’ve always thought you must have been,

  stumbling homeward,

  trying to find your way out of town

  through all those baffling signals,

  those one-way streets,

  merry-making camel drivers

  (complete with camels;

  camels complete with loot)

  going root-a-toot-toot!

  before, and around you

  and behind.

  No wonder you went blind.

  Like man, I can dig it.

  Been there myself: you know:

  it sometime happen so.

  And the stink make you think

  because you can’t get away

  you are surrounded

  by the think of your stink,

  unbounded.

  And not just in the camels

  and the drivers

  and not just in the hovels

  and the rivers

  and not just in the sewers

  where you live

  and not just in the shit

  beneath your nose

  and not just in the dream

  of getting home

  and not just in the terrifying hand

  which holds you tight,

  forever to the land.

  On such a night,

  oh, yes,

  one might lose sight,

  fall down beneath the camels,

  and see the light.

  Been there myself: face down

  in the mud

  which rises, rises, challenging

  one’s mortal blood,

  which courses, races, faithless,

  anywhere,

  which, married with the mud,

  will dry at noon

  soon.

  Prayer

  changes things.

  It do.

  If I can get up off this slime,

  if I ain’t trampled,

  I will put off my former ways

  I will deny my days

  I will be pardoned

  and I will rise

  out of the camel piss

  which stings my eyes

  into a revelation

  concerning this doomed nation.

  From which I am, henceforth,

  divorced forever!

  Set me upon my feet,

  my Lord,

  I am delivered

  out of the jaws of hell.

  My journey splits my skull,

  and, as I rise, I fall.

  Get out of town.

  This ain’t no place to be alone.

  Get past the merchants, and the shawls,

  the everlasting incense: stroke your balls,

  be grateful you still have them;

  touch your prick

  in a storm of wondering abnegation:

  it will be needed no longer,

  the light being so much stronger.

  Get out of town

  Get out of town

  Get out of town

  And don’t let nobody

  turn you around.

  Nobody will: for they see, too,

  how the hand of the Lord has been laid on you.

  Ride on!

  Let the drivers stare

  and the camel’s farts define the air.

  Ride on!

  Don’t be deterred, man,

  for the crown ain’t given to the also-ran.

  Oh, Saul,

  how does it feel to be Paul?

  Sometimes I wonder about that night.

  One does not always walk in light.

  My light is darkness

  and in my darkness moves, forever,

  the dream or the hope or the fear of sight.

  Ride on!

  This hand, sometimes, at the midnight hour,

  yearning for land, strokes a growing power,

  true believer!

  Will he come again?

  When will my Lord send my roots rain?

  Will he hear my prayer?

  Oh, man, don’t fight it

  Will he clothe my grief?

  Man, talk about it

  That night, that light

  Baby, now you coming.

  I will be uncovered, on that morning,

  And I’ll be there.

  No tongue can stammer

  nor hammer ring

  no leaf bear witness

  to how bright is the light

  of the unchained night

  which delivered

  Saul

  to Paul.

  A lady like landscapes

  (for Simone Signoret)

  A lady like landscapes,

  wearing time like an amusing shawl

  thrown over her shoulders

  by a friend at the bazaar:

  Every once in a while she turns in it

  just like a little girl,

  this way and that way:

  Regarde.

  Ça n’était pas donné bien sûr

  mais c’est quand même beau, non?

  Oui, Oui.

  Et toi aussi.

  Ou plutôt belle

  since you are a lady.

  It is impossible to tell

  how beautiful, how real, unanswerable,

  becomes your landscape as you move in it,

  how beautiful the shawl.

  Guilt, Desire and Love

  At the dark street corner

  where Guilt and Desire

  are attempting to stare

  each other down

  (presently, one of them

  will light a cigarette

  and glance in the direction

  of the abandoned warehouse)

  Love came slouching along,

  an exploded silence

  standing a little apart

  but visible anyway

  in the yellow, silent, steaming light,

  while Guilt and Desire wrangled,

  trying not to be overheard

  by this trespasser.

  Each time Desire looked towards Love,

  hoping to find a witness,

  Guilt shouted louder

  and shook them hips

  and the fire of the cigarette

  threatened to bum the warehouse down.

  Desire actually started across the street,

  time after time,

  to hear w
hat Love might have to say,

  but Guilt flagged down a truckload

  of other people

  and knelt down in the middle of the street

  and, while the truckload of other people

  looked away, and swore that they

  didn’t see nothing

  and couldn’t testify nohow,

  and Love moved out of sight,

  Guilt accomplished upon the standing body

  of Desire

  the momentary, inflammatory soothing

  which seals their union

  (for ever?)

  and creates a mighty traffic problem.

  Death is easy

  (for Jefe)

  1

  Death is easy.

  One is compelled to understand

  that moment

  which, anyway, occurs

  over and over and over.

  Lord,

  sitting here now,

  with my boy with a toothache

  in the bed yonder,

  asleep, I hope,

  and me, awake,

  so far away,

  cursing the toothache,

  cursing myself,

  cursing the fence

  of pain.

  2

  Pain is not easy;

  reduces one to

  toothaches

  which may or may not

  be real,

  but which are real

  enough

  to make one sleep,

  or wake,

  or decide

  that death is easy.

  3

  It is dreadful to be

  so violently dispersed.

  To dare hope for nothing,

  and yet dare to hope.

  To know that hoping

  and not hoping

  are both criminal endeavours,

  and, yet, to play one’s cards.

  4

  If

  I could tell you

  anything about myself:

  if I knew something

  useful – :

  if I could ride,

  master,

  the storm of the unknown

  me,

  well, then, I could prevent

  the panic of toothaches

  If I knew

  something,

  if I could recover

  something,

  well, then,

  I could kiss the toothache

  away,

  and be with my lover,

  who doesn’t, after all,

  like toothaches.

  5

  Death is easy

  when,

  if,

  love dies.

  Anguish is the no-man’s-land

  focused in the eyes.

  Mirrors

  (for David)

  1

  Although you know

  what’s best for me,

  I cannot act on what you see.

  I wish I could:

  I really would,

  and joyfully,

  act out my salvation

  with your imagination.

  2

  Although I may not see your heart,

  or fearful well-springs of your art,

  I know enough to stare

  down danger, anywhere.

  I know enough to tell

  you to go to hell

  and when I think you’re wrong

  I will not go along.

  I have a right to tremble

  when you begin to crumble.

  Your life is my life, too,

  and nothing you can do

  will make you something other

  than my mule-headed brother.

  A Lover’s Question

  My country,

  t’is of thee

  I sing.

  You, enemy of all tribes,

  known, unknown, past,

  present, or,

  perhaps, above all,

  to come:

  I sing:

  my dear,

  my darling,

  jewel

  (Columbia, the gem of

  the ocean!)

  or, as I, a street nigger,

  would put it—:

  (Okay. I’m your nigger

  baby, till I get bigger!)

  You are my heart.

  Why

  have you allowed yourself

  to become so grinly wicked?

  I

  do not ask you why

  you have spurned,

  despised my love

  as something beneath you.

  We all have our ways and

  days

  but my love has been as constant

  as the rays

  coming from the earth

  or the sun,

  which you have used to obliterate

  me,

  and, now, according to your purpose,

  all mankind,

  from the nigger, to you,

  and to your children’s children.

  I have endured your fire

  and your whip,

  your rope,

  and the panic from your hip,

  in many ways, false lover,

  yet, my love:

  you do not know

  how desperately I hoped

  that you would grow

  not so much to love me

  as to know

  that what you do to me

  you do to you.

  No man can have a harlot

  for a lover

  nor stay in bed forever

  with a lie.

  He must rise up

  and face the morning sky

  and himself, in the mirror

  of his lover’s eye.

  You do not love me.

  I see that.

  You do not see me:

  I am your black cat.

  You forget

  that I remember an Egypt

  where I was worshipped

  where I was loved.

  No one has ever worshipped you,

  nor ever can: you think that love

  is a territorial matter,

  and racial.

  oh, yes,

  where I was worshipped

  and you were hurling stones,

  stones which you have hurled at me,

  to kill me,

  and, now,

  you hurl at the earth,

  our mother,

  the toys which slaughtered

  Cain’s brother.

  What panic makes you

  want to die?

  How can you fail to look

  into your lover’s eye?

  Your black dancer

  holds the answer:

  your only hope

  beyond the rope.

  Of rope you fashioned,

  usefully,

  enough hangs from

  your hanging tree

  to carry you

  where you sent me.

  And, then, false lover,

  you will know

  what love has managed

  here below.

  Inventory/On Being 52

  My progress report

  concerning my journey to the palace of wisdom

  is discouraging.

  I lack certain indispensable aptitudes.

  Furthermore, it appears

  that I packed the wrong things.

  I thought I packed what was necessary,

  or what little I had:

  but there is always something one overlooks,

  something one was not told,

  or did not hear.

  Furthermore,

  some time ago,

  I seem to have made an error in judgment,

  turned this way, instead of that,

  and, now, I cannot radio my position.

  (I am not sure that my radio is working.

  No voice has answered me for a long time now.)

  How long?

  I do not know.

  It may have been

  that day, in Norman’s Gardens,

  up-town, somewhere,

  when I did not hear

  someone trying to say: I love you.

  I packed for the journey in great haste.

  I have never had any time to spare.

  I left behind me

  all that I could not carry.

  I seem to remember, now,

  a green bauble, a worthless stone,

  slimy with the rain.

  My mother said that I should take it with me,

  but I left it behind.

  (The world is full of green stones, I said.)