Duende, p.5
Duende, page 5
reversed moments where the sound is two cat eyes
penetrating the midnight hours of moon pearl lacing
the broken mirrored waters
mississippi mean as a sun-drenched trumpet/man
holding dreams held high on any wind/light
voice walking on eggshells
2.
& time comes as the wrinkles
of your mother’s skin shrinks inward
fly towards that compelling voice
light calling since time began
on the flip-side of spirit
you shed placentas at each stage of your music
then go down river exploring new blues
the drum skin of young years wearing down
the enigmatic search of your music
now your autumn years of shadows creeping twilight
dancers wrapped tight in cobwebs held on
to one another
beneath fractured lights cracking the floor
their lives now prismatic poems at the point where the sun
disappears with every turning of the clock hands
spinning towards the death of light
there in the diamond point
of the river beyond the edges
the light glows smaller
grows inward becomes a seed to grow
another light illuminating the shadows
crystalline as this trumpetman
voice walking on eggshells
phosphorous as truth or blue
as luminescent water beneath the sun’s eye
3.
Oh Silent Keeper of Shadows
of these gutted roads filled with the gloomy ticking
of time-clocks/razor-bladed turnings of hairpin corners
of these irreducible moments of love found
when love was sought
iridescent keeper of rainbow laughter
arching out of broken-off gold-capped teeth
blues man holding the sun between his teeth
soothsayer of chewed-up moments
shaker-re-man at the crossroads of cardinal points
talisman hanging from dewdrops singing deep
sea diver of transparent rhythmic poems
trumpet voice walking on eggshells
your shadow is as the river snake-thin
man at flood time blood lengthening in the veins
coursing through the earth’s flesh
shaman man gone beyond the sky’s limit
music sleeps there in the riverbed
mississippi where those calcified shining bones sleep
deep reminding us of the journey from then to now
& from now to wherever it is we have to go
so pack your bags boy
the future is right around the corner
only a stone’s throws from yesterday’s/light
as is this carrier of afternoon dream music
trumpet voice walking on eggshells
this eggshell-walking trumpetman
voice hauntingly beautiful lyrical music man
gold as two cat eyes penetrating the midnight hours
as blood blackening the pavement mean music man
shadowman holding the night in the bell
of his trumpet singing
mississippi river pouring from roots of his eyes
4.
shadowman holding the night in his music
shaker-re-man at the crossroads of cardinal points
elliptical talisman hanging from dewdrops singing
deep sea diver of haunting magical tones
trumpetman walking on eggshells
your shadow as the river at flood-time
snake-thin shaman man blade-sharp gone beyond
the sky’s limit music sleeps there in your coursing
river veins curl around the bones
clear as diamond points on waters of sunsets
there where light grows inward
your genius moving out from that source
trumpetman walking on eggshells
afternoon dreamcarrier of blues in flight
steep night climber of haunting magical poems
juju hoodooman conjuring illuminating darkness
SNAKE-BACK SOLO
for Louis Armstrong, Steve Cannon, Miles Davis, & Eugene Redmond
with the music up high
boogalooin’ bass down way way low
up & under eye come slidin’ on in mojoin’
on in, spacin’ on in on a riff
full of rain
riffin’ on in full of rain & pain
spacin’ on in on a sound like coltrane
my metaphor is a blues
hot pain dealin’ blues is a blues axin’
guitar voices whiskey broken niggah deep
in the heart is a blues in a glass filled with rain
is a blues in the dark
slurred voices of straight bourbon
is a blues dagger stuck off in the heart
of night, moanin’ like bessie smith
is a blues filling up the wings
of darkness is a blues
& looking through the heart
a dream can become a raindrop window to see through
can become a window to see through this moment
to see yourself hanging around the dark
to see through
can become a river catching rain
feeding time can become a window
to see through
while outside windows flames trigger
the deep explosion
time steals rivers that go on & stay where they are
inside yourself moving soon there will be daylight
breaking the darkness
to show the way soon there will be voices breaking music
to come on home by down & up river breaking darkness
to come on home by stroking with the music
swimming up river the sound of louie armstrong
carrying river boats upstream on vibratos
climbing the rain filling the rain
swimming up river
up the river of rain satchmo breaking the darkness
his trumpet & grin polished over pain speaking
to the light flaming off the river’s back
at sunset snake river’s back
river mississippi big muddy up from new
orleans to alton & east st. louis illinois
cross river from st. louis to come on home by
up river the music swims breaking silence of miles
flesh leaping off itself into space
creating music creating poems
now inside myself eye solo of rivers
catching rains & dreams & sunsets solo
of trane tracks screaming through night stark
a dagger in the heart solo
of bird spreading wings for the wind
solo of miles pied piper prince of darkness
river rain voice now eye solo
at the root of the flower solo leaning voices
against promises of shadows soloing of bones
beneath the river’s snake-back solo
of trees cut down by double-bladed axes
river rain voice now eye solo of the human condition
as blues solo of the matrix mojoin’ new blues solo
river rain voice now, eye solo solo
& looking through the heart a dream
can become a raindrop window to see through
can become this moment this frame to see through
to see yourself hanging
around the dark to see through this pain
can become even more painful as the meaning of bones
crawling mississippi river bottoms snakepits beneath
the snake-back solo catching rain catching time
& dreams washed clean by ajax
but looking through the dream can be
like looking through a clean window crystal
prism the night where eye solo now to be-
come the wings of night
to see through this darkness
eye solo now to become wings & colors
to become a simple skybreak shattering darkness
to become lightning’s jagged sword-like thunder
eye solo to become to become
eye solo now to become to become
with the music up high
up way way high boogalooin’ bass down
way way low
up & under eye come slidin’ on in mojoin’ on in
spacin’ on in on a riff full of rain
river riff full of rain & trains & dreams
come slidin’ on in another riff
full of flames
leanin’ & glidin’ eye solo solo
loopin’ & slidin’ eye solo now solo
V.
POEM FOR SKUNDER BOGHOSSIAN, PAINTER
music drumming skies
of your paintings of poetry
miles cooking there
with long gone trane leaping
canopies of distance
& space can be canvas
or bark negotiated by brushstrokes of silence
ghosts evoking myth in illusions
wind-voice gongs
shaping shadows from mist
signatures that echo
COLLAGE
wings of snow sweep
disintegrate
slow fall chimney ashes
belch through gray night
silently screaming
voices thick as molasses
blanket fluttering pavements
slide into one another
below moments
faces
ringing like bells
MY POEMS HAVE HOLES SEWN INTO THEM
my poems have holes sewn into them
& they run searching for light
at the end of tunnels they become trains
or at the bottom of pits they become blackness
or in the broad winging daylight
they are words that fly
& the holes are these words
letters or syllables with feathered wings
that leave their marks on white pages
then fly off like footprints tracked in snow
& only God knows where they go
this poem has holes stitched into it
as our speech which created poetry in the first place
lacerated wounded words that strike out original
meaning bleeding into language
hemorrhaging out of thick or thin mouths
has empty spaces & silences sewn into it
my poems have holes sewn into them
& their voices are like different keyholes
through which dumb men search for speech blind
men search for sight
words like drills penetrating sleep
keys turning in the keyholes of language
like knives of sunrays stabbing blind eyes
my poems have holes sewn into them
& they are spaces between words
are the words themselves
falling off into one another/colliding
like people gone mad and they space out
fall into bottomless pits
which are the words
like silent space between chords of a piano
or black eyes of a figure in any painting
they fall back, into themselves
into time/ sleep
bottom out on the far side of consciousness
where words of all the world’s poets go
& whisper in absolute silence
this poem has deep holes stitched into it
& their meanings have the deadly suck of quicksand
the irreversible pull of earth to any skydiver
the tortured pus-holes tracking arms of junkies
my poems have holes sewn into them
& they run searching for light at the end
of tunnels or at the bottom of yawning pits
or in the broad daylight where
the words flapping like wings of birds
fly whispering in absolute silence
from
SKULLS ALONG THE RIVER
I.
SKULLS ALONG THE RIVER
for my mother, Dorothy Marshall, and my father, Quincy Trouppe, Sr.
1.
up from new orleans, on riverboats
from the gulf of mexico, memory carries
sweet legacy of niggerland speech, brown tongue, bluesing
muddy water
underbottomed spirits, crawling, nightmares
of shipwrecked bones, bones gone home to stone, to stone
bones gone home to stone, to stone
riverbottomed, underbellied spirits
bones gone home to stone, eye say
bones gone home to stone, eye say
skulls along the river
2.
& the faces of these faceless bones unknown
screaming arpeggios of stitched memory in cold light
cadences of blues
shrinking sun sprays, shrieking with every turning
of black bone armed clocks
& it is the collected face of memory that wears
the metaphor of collected dust
the collected mathematics of lamenting calibrations
hieroglyphics
crackling & peeling & curling in stone, dust storms swirling
around edges
bones white as chiclet teeth in memory cloning
the images come locked in whatever
time gives them
death there forever, forever locked in time
death there forever & forever locked
in time, in time
we suffer because we must
there is no other way to find beauty
there is no other way to find love
we suffer because we must
there is no other way home
to find the memory
& O the skeletons that have passed
my cracking eyeballs seeking true cadence
within the lamenting calibrations of music
history rattling dice bones
on their worn out knees
the already dead scraping earth, breath
for an even deeper death
the ultimate transmissioning migration
& O you midnight men of peppermint moons
rooster claw soliloquies raking at vision’s corner
heroes emerging from sandblasted history books
grant me leather flesh of your weather worn wisdom
O blood-drenched gravediggers
anthracitic soothsayers
O mellow prophets of crushed grapes & stomped berries
grant me holy syllables of your blues laced tongues
perfect eardrums
O grant me sacred light of your blues
doowopping mackmen
grant me holy flight of your eagle-
winged life, O grant me the tongue of your blues
perfect eardrums, grant me holy flight
of your eagle-winged life
O grant me the tongue
of your blues perfect eardrums
3.
beginning now with the formless mystery of love
informing it all, cadences, its ritualized celebration
of birth as death as drama
its copacetic language of blues
inside the journey back under buzzard wings of parody
textures realized & lost & found & lost once again
the slitting, definitive answer
of a pearl handled razor hissing through
the dark’s wailing wall mystery, of flesh
wallowing in its own gluttony inside the breath of death
now hear the hieroglyphics of space & time forming
sculpting in winds from great distances, voices
shapes down way way low, voices
taking on colors, turning around & taking on shape
voices spinning into blurring faces swimming
trying to breach this calligraphy
of space & time & distance
voices, down way way low, spinning themselves
into memory phono-discs, voices as faces
down way way low, way way low
voices spinning & turning into faces in memory
phono-discs, down way way low, down
way, way low
send back now the memory further back than bone
see there, now, the polished stones lifted
& singing, singing
becoming birds that are words
their wings being the holy myths that fill up our lives
with movement, movement
now, listen to the blood burning song breaking
through & into our rivervoiced veins
climbing towards the plateau
of the heart
listen to the rains
beating against the underbelly of those stones
marking worm deep earth bottoms where
the narcissus of flesh
rests
listen to windtongues
drums breaking now into flames & wind trumpet songs
opening up doorways to rivers, listen now
to hearts, listen
to rhythms of stones, beating hearts climbing
towards the dark, listen to rhythms
your soon to be calcified
worm eaten heart
listen now
listen now, to the dark
4.
we are the dark
are dark stitched voices climbing
memories from the heart, are secret
arpeggios of spirit
scaling towards the light
voices of weeping rains, teardrops
hanging from history’s eyelids
of that toad squatting
city by the mississippi river
wide spread arms of slippery catfish
deep inside skulls of mississippi
river nights born of savage flights
are dark, hip voices stitched
into fabric of those razor
bladed nights
blues kneeling down
eye say blues kneeling down
before that packing house city
wide spread arms slippery as cat
fish, spirits climbing towards
the cracks of moonbeams
slashed light, blues
kneeling down, moonbeams
climbing towards cracks
slashed light
5.
O sweet lovers of no faces
of all races with desert bone dry eyes
of no reception
pain knee deep in quicksand
who give sandpaper tongues of no sweetness
