For the Now Child

It’s on the edge of established lives that I catch a touch of lumpy throat,

bouncing someone else’s baby at someone’s else kitchen table

lovingly sourced and made from hand felled oak.

At least, I think it is. It doesn’t matter.

It’s always a tree, right? There’s no better imagery

for the ways the children feed themselves on our roots,

for the ways the fed are disentangled and shoved

off to their own desperate journeys for truth,

for the planks of disembodied souls

catching errant drips of morning milk from cereal bowls.

“Now Keri, write in your book that I love Keri and sign it with my name.”

My name now is Now Keri and I can’t even tell her how correct she is,

hitting the mark so accidentally.

“Now Keri, I am putting this sticker in your notebook.

Now Keri, you will always know that I was here.”

I want to thrust these colored pages into your hands so you can see

your words washed over in strokes of easter blues and greens.

She asks, with tiny brows and jellystains but no words,

with grubby hand of vibrant wax posed kinetically over stacks

of poems bound together searching endlessly for perpetuity.

How do I say no to her? How do I tell her that this the only thing that anything means?

I want to say “now child, you can write in any book I own.”

or “now child, the very act of my hand touching the page turns white to red”

or “now child, please, please don’t let us die.

Please pass me around and love as I have loved,

please carry me and foster me in the eyes of your own children,

let them know that you should say ‘hello’ to every sidewalk

and ‘hell no’ to every heavy task.”

Instead I say “yes, baby. Anything you ask.”

The same, it's the same

Chutes and Ladders // 1904 Artwalk

Blue ribbon swirling, sweating,

Stowed by a broke millennial,

awarded to the hands of creative energy.

“Free-B-R! It’s free PBR!”

Creation warms, beckons,

calls me to his side to thank me silently

with jagged black agate eyes.

“I need you to sing to me.”

The world is humming,

I am humming at the feet of the ancients,

unspooling lengths of yarn.

I am humming

into a Samsung smart phone

at 4 in the morning with the spins coming for me

while you play guitar.

What can’t we do?

Where can’t we spend our energy?

Idle hands and all

so we keep ourselves so busy,

generously generating.

A man is whatever room he is in

but every room we enter becomes eternal and whole;

the center of sacred profanity.

“No one has written about me,” 

he says, to the girl with words to spare,

as he paints yellow birds into his hair.

I file away that sentence for future use. You think no one’s written about you?

Bard of academic disregard, mountain man in flatlands,

I know what you mean but I laugh at you anyway.

My notebooks have something else to say.

In the City

Beverly passes us the pitcher of Yuengling and says “I don’t care what y’all do, baby” when I ask her if Alex could bring in his guitar. Older but beautiful, wrinkled but youthful tending bar and singing along to Roy Buchanan’s “Beer Drinking Woman,” smiling wide at me when I start singing, too.

I’m not sure what’s next, really. Things swirl together steadily and I admit I can’t sit still. I rotate my bar seat back and forth with anxious hips. The three of us clink our glasses repeatedly, as if we couldn’t toast to life enough, bringing the foaming head of another beer to our lips in disbelief that no one's called our many bluffs, letting us entertain a stage even though our talent is rough. I can’t believe all of this serendipity. I can’t believe I’ve drawn these people to me, the faces in which I clearly see my destiny beaming back.

We leave the bar and I stack myself in the KIA with Alex’s sketchpad and instruments, giving the keys to Margie.

We queue up the music and sing, more, always.

We’re in the city
She came around at the right time
And if you’ll need me
Hope this was made for a good time
It’s like the run to all we know
Seems like we want to always go

To sit in the backseat is to feel weight lifted from my shoulders, letting my sister take my wheel for a minute so I can chill. Letting Alex sit up front so he can stretch his legs. To sit in the backseat is to leave the bar across the street from Fringe with a buzzing happiness humming on my lips, letting my voice reach the voices of my friends, letting our voices reach the highway streaming past our cracked windows. No one is timid or shy as we rush along the skyline, crossing the Fuller Warren, heading back to Grove Park where even more music will be made. 

It seems to fall out of us these days, colliding our vibrations by the fire until my throat cries out for mercy.

Until his fingers stumble drunkenly for a place to rest.

Until the final echoes hit the walls and bounce back into our chests. 

Focus Unnecessary // Our living room

I know I'm not wrong

Do you know what it means to miss the dark energy

of a world that loses its mind with planned synchronicity?

I chase Angie (pronounced An-zhee) into the galleries of Royal Street,

keeping her lipstick-red wig a fixture in my sight. I dig the heights

of ceilings in New Orleans but I wish I could take pictures.

I can’t tell facsimile from reality and the jewel tone of her pants bleeds

into the waiting hands of cherubs painted on suspended canvas.

She wants another drink already.

I’m in similar spirits and we wander planless through the Quarter,

pretending we're swingin jazzcats instead of whitebread like we look.

I lovingly stare down the dreadlocked heads of train-hopping “gutter trash”

and think "I'd rather be associated with that

than be labelled as a white girl."

This city's revelry calls to me, a swampland full of lessons for the listening,

and I do. I accept the rasp of muted trombone as sacrament,

the hush of holy reverence in the flush of liquored cheeks.

The dance with ancient history in the making.

A voice speaks:

"And I was never here

but it didn’t used to be that way."

The voice also tells me that I am Jesus, and it's tempting -

that His Divinity might simply be a smiling girl on a streetcar,

that the way, the truth and the light are not so far.

Of course I know I'm wrong, but the thought fills up my ego.

I savor the stranger’s knuckles that graze my shoulder blades

in rhythm to the road bumps as we go.

"Who dat, red hair?!" comes a catcall from the nightfall.

I'd rather be Jesus than a white girl but I'll take whatever this is.

I could be the guiding star or perhaps just made of ash pressed onto foreheads...

I think I am awhirl with planetary nobility.

I think I'm of a class that rises in tranquility as the sun declines over Poydras.

My ability to seek out wondrous dichotomy never ceases

and my eyes leak and hide behind folds and creases of wrinkled vision.

I laugh in the face of a chill coming over as I wrap myself in sips of Fireball.

Whiskey warmth. Catcalls from the nightfall.

I see myself in the seat of it all, surrounded and alone,

my eyes swirling with the saxophone and scanning the crowd for a red wig,

finding Angie and placing my hand on her head.

And I was never here

But it didn’t used to be that way

Griot

Sbisa // "my heart beat like a hammer"

I would liken you to a night spent in the simple silence of listening

were it not for the thunders of your utterance,  

of your applause.

'You’ve so much to offer and we’ve so much to receive,' the universe says to me,

unrolling old scrolls stowed on dusted shelves carefully.

The story is there; in the vacancy of weeded lots,

on streetcars,

on painted floors where koi fish swim with dancing bears,

at desks and leaning back in office chairs.

The universe unfolds

exactly as it should:

with no concern for plot.

Sbisa // George Dureau