COLTRANE'S ASCENSION

When John cut out the heroin and booze,

his soul grew even deeper and more true.

The violence of his sax transcended space.

He balanced all the cosmos on his Black back.

His attack was supreme love.

May all our architecture imitate his deepest Om.

The thrum of him is larger now he's gone,

a Jedi's seed.  He channeled all the forces

dark and light, with perfect discipline.

I tell my men to imitate his Zen.

We should drink from the well

that his blood filled.  He sanctified

and transformed all the demons

that he killed, with perfect will.

When you meet your craft clean

day after day, in solitude

and with others in improvisation,

all things bloom.  John cut down

the avatar of deadening masculinity,

and worshipped the Womb.

His manhood grew there too.

In his ascension we can be renewed.

RESIGNED.

I cut my finger on a blade of grass

and contemplate this cellular abomination.

I am a thing that runs and shits

and eats, to no avail.  All my creation

decorates the mindless froth

of genocidal beasts, who share my skin.

This violence is what we have always been.

The other stories really can't compete.

The dreams of Whitman, Ginsberg

are all gone.  I won't be pawn

of wishes that they cast.

My forefathers were drunk

on progress gas.  That buzz

has passed.

And yet I feel an unexpected peace,

a strange and darkened joy.  No longer

toy of falsity, my manhood stirs

again: I can accept the justice

of our end.  I celebrate the death

of humankind.  Their winding stories

tended to be blind: mine need not be.

I see the beauty more

because I know it's not for me.

GODDESS COME

I feel spiders on my spine

and I don't cringe.

I take the Goddess when she's open

and I binge.  Her aim is stretched

between what's been

and what will be.

I leave the greater part with Her

and take a little bit back just for me.

Stain me with your greatness,

O creation.  Slay my willing spirit

with the holiness of heights,

take me to where rocks

have formed a cave,

let me paint with berries

juiced as dark as tattoo ink.

Show me the sacred

architecture without end

slithering beyond the brink.

Let my tongue of inspiration

moisten your sweetest stink

let my blood think.

MOON.

Eroded disc, eroded orb,

your cloak is thin,

you suffer from exposure.

Still I sense some spectral

fertility in you.

Is it your tow-line in the blood,

your cleansing rinse that

brings us back to the womb fresh?

I would bring you my end,

waft across your body

with clownish footsteps,

let me spring lightly one last time

when my bones are old.

When I'm tired and the air tanks

are running out

like an old electric record

whose source is far

I will remove my mask

and let you undo these lines

unfold these creases

unravel me far out

into many worlds.

NAT TURNER

Originators strike deep.

Inspiration comes in a flood,

cutting down the DNA

of the oppressor.

Violence like a storm

within a storm, fresh

from the cosmos.

A bright Black man of God

had the will, the sacred audacity

in deed.  Articulate in prison,

versed from before his birth

in glorious destiny, wreathed

in grateful angels

from pinioned beginnings

to the full flower of revolution.

Blessed with the lucidity of courage,

seeing from the fields

a vast expanse of stars

that must give light.

Not one is white.

ALPHA'S ALPHA*

Roosters can fly in spirit.

I always knew you had a soul.

Your speckled wings

are spreading now,

your red and gold

filaments trailing

over country roads

and ignoring highways.

Who's that ghost raccoon

following you?  The eye

you took from him

is filled with liquid moonlight,

I can see he is your brother now.

He collapsed in the forest

with a missing testicle.

You roam these astral lands

together toward your own

unknown Valhalla.

Then I wake from lucid dream

and release you to rejoin you

sometime later

in another unsought vision.

* The title was inspired in part by Rafael Alberti's 'The Angel Angel' from his great collection, Concerning the Angels.  That book and The Owl's Insomnia are favorites of mine.  Alberti was one of the greatest poets who ever lived, and his work should be confronted by anyone with a serious interest in poetry.

A glade beside a cliff-drop

a pool of bejeweled women

a burlap umbrella,

corolla'd skull and bones

sweet rain soaking fibers

and the laughter shaking

delicious rows of breasts

bright triangles of sentient pubis.

Faces staring tendrils

through the bleakness

of my former soul

searching me for

milks of ancient dawn

no king's hand

on no willing pawn

free people in a ring

of stone and water

we frolicked making sons and daughters.