Duende, p.36
Duende, page 36
sweat from everybody, it’s like being in a sauna,
leaves the spirit wrung-out like a dishrag
it is nothing but time passing through sweating summer,
lovers remembering heat as passion lost,
wilted when temperature rose drenching in august,
while an old couple holding hands slouched toward winter,
their memory instructing them freezing cold is coming soon
ahead, right around the corner, they will find death
smiling in their faces—from a relative, friend—slyly
wearing a look they have long seen coming, known it
having worn it themselves all their long lives
A REMEMBRANCE FOR PRINCE (1958–2016)
eye met you a couple of times with miles davis,
you were quiet as a ball of dropped cotton
hitting a warm, slate floor, though you were alert,
your 500 watt lightbulb eyes glowing
your creativity, shining through
the dark gloom of your time motivating the seductive music
you played all up in the innovation, packed deep down
in the rhythms absent a bass player,
always getting up on the one, raising the beat,
musical lines articulating your invention
you were curious, took in all ringtones
churning around your still, electric presence,
all things were like magnets attaching themselves
to the metal of your vibrating gift—
like miles—drew all attention your way—
again like miles—you were a rare piece of jewelry
everyone coveted, though you remained contained
somewhere inside your spirituality
deep as opaque depths of pools of still water
eye heard from miles you were a trickster too—
again like the prince of darkness, michael & sly—
who loved to make those who knew you best crack-up
in side-spitting laughter, like when you threw some
chicken bones—someone else’s because you were a vegan—
at tv screens when someone said something stupid,
you were serious about living on this planet,
no nonsense, you didn’t suffer fools lightly—
again like miles—because music was always there,
incubating inside your head every day, mysterious,
seductive as sunsets stevie wonder couldn’t see
but heard in his heart in the birth of a song,
your purple rain mixed with cutting-edge creation,
hatched as a dove flying underneath an eagle’s wing,
your language of funk echoing sly stone,
the guitar licks you strummed, prince, were dizzying
vibratos birthed in your studio-home in paisley park,
in chanhassen, minnesota, where you rooted your life
echoing african-american boogaloos, humor,
deep grooves, spiritual voices echoing funky news
of those who swam here from west african blues
ROMARE BEARDEN’S ART BETWEEN 1964 & 1985
1. LIVING IN HIS MEMORY
romare bearden rooted his artistic memory in mecklenburg county
surrounded by cotton & tobacco fields, when he was three
his parents moved north from charlotte, north carolina,
to harlem, new york, where he grew up—in pittsburgh, pennsylvania, too—
listening to parents telling tall tales of enchanting, wide-eyed obeah women
practicing mysterious african hoodoo rituals, he heard ancient practices—
conjure, spells, the power of the laying on of hands, bewitching forces
sluicing from people speaking in tongues—black voices gallivanting hallelujahs
all-day sunday morning—evening service too—church choirs booming come-to-
jesus magical call & response incantations, absorbed syncopated jazz rhythms
pulsating through summertime close heat in uptown harlem clubs—also
in pittsburgh—saw sardine-packed streets full of hipsters,
women of the night, lizard-eyed pimps slithering through the dusk’s
evening shadows, “blues at the crossroads,” humid with pungent voices,
singers moaning sweat & tears, dripping wet inside a slow drawling
speech old black southern people speak, a language wrapped loose
though tight with syllables twisting into sonic shapes bent like pretzels,
succulent words, original phrases heard flowing rich, tasty,
smelling of shredded meat of cows, pigs—north carolina style—cleaved
from scorched bones, came saturated with spicy aromas of barbecue sauce
tickling noses with hints of hot pepper, slathered over the marrow,
a slow heating simmering time & place, rooted in mecklenburgh county,
fast disappearing like breath into space with the swift march of modernity,
its massive sweep lathering an antiseptic culture of isolation,
created fragmentation, prisons buzzing through non-verbal modes,
now speech, communicated via internet, smart phones, communicates
through texting—even dates at restaurant tables quit each other
through text messages—after computers replaced pig-latin’s mojo, juju,
the gullah geechee southern hand jive clapping hambone style linguistics
macking the juba hand-jive, greasy spoon gutter speech down to earth,
sweet home, original idiomatic secret ways of speaking through eye-to-eye
human contact, feelings, instinct, gestures, so absent in the new
generations homogenized grammar of politically correct speak,
in harlem, romy grew up picking up snatches of old word plays,
conversations overheard in his parents’ boudoir, his grandparents’ parlor
during time spent in pittsburgh, hearing tales describing the place where
he was born into stories he felt familiar with, as old black folks he met
& loved, so he pad-locked these folk images of a way of life
gobbled up by real-estate predators posing as friends, locked the old images away—
fading photographs in storage—inside the vault bank of his memory, to be used
later, when he began creating art, he privileged these recollections
(what bearden later called his “prevalence of ritual,” a redefining metaphor
of who & what black people were), knew it was mythic memory echoing
gauzy images of what truth really was over factual histories
from here bearden created collages of maudell sleet, cut-outs of conjure
obeah women, from this idyllic magical space rooted inside his imagination
he evoked a dream-like visual language speaking directly to the spiritual
essence of black folks—other americans, too—of a time & place
connecting memories, their blood-deep longing to what they knew was true,
metaphors recognized, loved, celebrated, singing in their own hearts
2. RITUALS OF SACRAMENTS ROMARE SAW IN THE MIRROR
when romare looked into the mirror he saw other black folks’ faces there too
in the image of himself staring back from the cut-glass, saw masks,
tricksters, profiles of people sitting on stumps, heard musicians innovating
music inside urban chaos—duke, count, louie, others—hip men getting down
with women doing the camel walk, walking the dog, the lindy hop, the turkey trot,
the cakewalk, trucking in the cotton club, jitterbugging, the black bottom
(a dance so nasty only initiates did it) singing wine-spodee-o-dee drinking wine,
he listened to blues guitars, read poetry of langston hughes, cane, by jean toomer
(later he read ralph waldo ellison, albert murray), though it was the brilliant colors
he saw on streets he absorbed everyday—bright reds, purples, blues,
oranges, greens, beiges up against browns, shades of black, whites, grays—
colors jumped out from everywhere, settled in his imagination,
then leaped onto his canvases, boards as dreams he saw in his sleep,
all was revelation for this former social worker, a gift of sacrament
he gave back in an unchanging pattern, a sacred rite he knew was resonant,
deeply rooted in mystery, echoes his eyes focused on (beauty, “joy, defeat, victory,
endurance” etched in those black faces staring back at him from his mirror),
the power of his own gaze underneath his ever present cap, or hat,
he looked like a kindly old buddha, nikita khrushchev, with his round bald head
he had the stoic look of a block of granite, though to black folks he was familiar
as a favorite uncle creating portraits celebrating their lives—to them
his paintings looked like snapshots gathered, pasted in old family photo albums
they saw themselves in his art as they really were—good or bad—
in images he created, based on his own face he saw each
& every morning staring back when he looked in his own mirror
3. CUTOUTS ROMARE SAW IN THE STREETS
when romy looked into his memory he saw bodies of black women
sometimes silhouetted in shadows, he portrayed them in cutouts
as if they were powerful, spontaneous improvisations heard in jazz rhythms—
fractured tempos pulled from traditional melodies—was what he imagined
when he ripped pages from magazines, papers, to create images,
splintered illusions laid down on boards, held together with glue,
cut up pages holding images of vanderzee’s photos of sweet moments
in women’s boudoirs, he scissored life magazine snapshots,
scenes from gordon parks photographs, witnessed zipping around
new york city streets in the wee wee hours, he saw finely decked ladies flashing
slanted eyes cutting back at him like razors, slicing through the dark, carving off
ends of slick conversations he rendered in collages slipping from lips notes
musicians cutting up on wailing solos of lady day, the president of pork-pie hats,
cut away to coalman hawking, sweet blowing johnny hodges’s deep saxophone riffs,
wails moaning, driving music through chaos, cutting sessions in harlem,
loosey-goosey dap people hanging around outside clubs, listening to snapping counts
popped off, tap-tapping metal plates of baby lawrence—heel to toe, toe to heel—
out on sidewalks, 118th street, in front of minton’s & the cecil hotel,
turn the clock back to the heyday of bebop, bird & diz, young miles, cutouts of duke
ellington’s band stomping train whistles down steel tracks, head bopping
saxophones rode hip, dipping up & down between trumpet blasts, following
duke’s piano runs jamming arpeggios, tickling ivory keys of who baby
don’t you know the sweet keys, undertones of american music cutting solos,
fired back black through codes, in the wee inky hours of vanderzee’s
harlem, night photos documenting spiritual denizens of the dark,
images snapped & clipped of a couple dancing, ripping rhythms
straight out of pages romy cut from a magazine, black & white images,
pasted together with glue, words, he saw himself in this mirror
reflecting snip snip images of night life swirling around him in a blizzard
of surrealistic images of black folks, with slanted wide-open eyes,
pork-pie hats slicing ace-deuce, cocked, couples out on dance floors cutting rugs
as music cooked, simmered, laid back, laid down, rose up again to rub up against
crescendo, cut-out rhythmic block-chords of thelonious sphere monk in minton’s,
glittering piano runs of art tatum shimmering nights full of black folks
decked out, slithering reptilian across asphalt, like bud powell’s tip-toeing notes,
high-stepping along lenox until the sun rose hot as great sex, ooh-la-la, get it
sweet mamas & papas in the darkness sent shadows scurrying back into corners,
where they slept until the parties started all over again around midnight
4. THE IMAGES ROMARE SAW IN ST. MAARTENS & THE CARIBBEAN
in st. maarten romy saw naked women in clear warm waters of the sea
inside his caribbean imagination, saw elliptical swirls of black angels
rising from blue green waters as he dreamed of mermaids
swimming in water colors he was painting, he looked at bucolic scenes,
striking pink bougainvillea bushes, the large blinding gold coin of the sun
rising with heat in february, vines snaking up outlining the painted yellow
body of a woman with bare nipples, a belly-button over a bush of brown hair
covering her sweet, moist vagina, laid up against a twisting mass of shrubbery,
weeds, close by at the shoreline two brown men wearing yellow straw hats
fished with nets, carried their catch from the clear-blue-green water,
the color of eyes of some of these mango-sweet caribbean women,
who lived nearby in the jumble of brown huts, surrounded by green
vegetation, replacing black & white cutouts romy created in harlem
women walked slowly here—instead of quickly—through verdant green
landscapes of his watercolors, surrounded by phosphorous blues, clear whites
muted browns, stick-figure palm trees rising up from light brown beaches,
a bulbous blue cloud hovering overhead instead of street lights,
with what at first glance looked to be an anteater’s nose—
though it also resembles a crab’s claw—what a miraculous change here,
a transformation where rollicking lenox becomes chaos of caribbean carnival
in romy’s art, a wondrous celebration of stunning colors teeming with beauty,
a signature of his last witness & testament, a vision he saw
looking back into his eyes from his mirror down in st. maartens,
when daylight began fading into opaque moments of darkness
POEM FOR JACK WHITTEN
(december 5, 1939–january 20, 2018)
PRELUDE TO A VISUAL INNOVATIVE LEGEND: ROOTS
you were born in bessemer, alabama, jack whitten—
like the baseball & football player, bo Jackson—
course he’s younger than you, though both y’all legendary,
hunters too (bo kills bears & you octopuses, jack)—
what is it about bessemer it produces people like you two?
bessemer is an old ’bama steel town gone bust,
belly up like an old beached whale,
you—like bo—grew up brilliant there in america’s segregation,
plantation system in the south, where white folks controlled everything
’cept your power to imagine yourself, jack, just like bo
you rode segregated buses with movable signs
when you were growing up here, jack, buses with bold letters
reading WHITE and COLORED sections,
then came a time when a “colored” army veteran came back home
to bessemer from a war to protect his country & moved the sign,
the white bus driver—who never went to war
to fight for america—shot him dead on the spot, just for moving the sign,
it was called insubordination to white folks’ authority back then, jack,
you called it “America’s apartheid” system, it’s still around today
though times have changed for you, the past is still here
deep there inside the marvelous art you create today
in your memory of a swimming hole, “a car tire tied from a tree branch
to swing into the water” until some white men thought
you colored boys were just having too much fun, so they threw
“bushels of broken glass bottles into our swimming hole”
& a young black boy came out screaming “with bleeding feet,”
because white folks wouldn’t let y’all swim in their swimming pools with slides,
floating platforms or use their beautiful westlake to fish
(it was Reserved for Whites Only), though you did risk sneaking in
from time to time, caught some of them many scaly critters breeding there,
heard sounds of real bullets zinging through the air overhead,
that was scary but y’all kept coming back, overcame fear
because of a need to catch those delicious fish, y’all didn’t think it was fair
white folks kept all that great eating for themselves
this was one of the first signs you were a risk taker, jack,
so, you hung in there with these memories swimming in your head
your father was a coal miner, worked every day of his life,
you picked up the example of hard work from him, though the first
creative impulse came from your mother, Annie, a seamstress
who made “homemade clothes—shirts, pants, jackets, recycled clothing
from salvation army thrift shops and army surplus stores”
you & your brothers wore to school every day—your mother later opened
the annie b. whitten kindergarten—bo Jackson went there too—
she was the first creative person you ever knew—sparked an interest in art
deep down in your spirit (your younger brother billy, too,
who became a top fashion designer, created michael jackson’s iconic
white sequined glove, worked with lionel richie, too)—
sunday morning black church services was a place of refuge for you,
jack, with all that great singing, preaching, down-home soul food—
fried chicken, pigs feet & chitlins—shielded you against the cold,
hostile, cruel world of alabama oppression,
instilled in you the will to survive absurd assaults
lurking everywhere in bessemer’s racist world
you finished high school, was first in your family to go straight away
to college—because of good grades—entered tuskegee institute
