The Night Has a Thousand Eyes

Restrained, nappy, wild as an underbuilt galaxy, shifty, dilated, still, ladylike, childlike, unreasonable ice in the summer wind, plymouth, imbeciles, bullies, jealous angles, altruistic beasts, always prepared to give you themselves, always late to the takeaway. You make too much sense as the helpless eventuality far off in the distance impaling yourself onward with black is the color of my true love's-- hurry then, there's a trapdoor in the halfway hour--complacency, indifference, and it turns all this weightlessness into manual labor toward the damage, toward the hanging of hot lights on a banister in hopes that the climb is worn blind on up like a pucker. That's not what it's like tonight it's like as important as hopelessness and as hopeless as order in the context of swarm, as obedient as skin. Look at him, sitting there, limp as the thousand lookouts and missing the house in the sheltered cry of myth, which is always saying yes, and then disagreeing with itself like a lowdown heckler's perfect timing, fiends for the dialectic, unambivalent in spacesuits,
stompin and
stompinandstompinandstompin and

Sensational

(Take 1)

Take me to the race tracks
No not those
I said the race tracks
Not those
The race tracks
The race, the one my color chasing down the yellow whores, my hero
I want to sit in old-fashioned bleachers and watch real horses run themselves into blue. Into ribbons. With him. Fray
my brother, fray
I want the black bandwagon sitting next to me most of the time, like an upsidedown fetish, surveying with intuition
making sure I cheer neat melodies about how we won, even when we didn't.
I feel safe here with them,
I'm gonna take on my hat,
I'm gonna bet all my money, safe enough to be sad, even after victory.



(Take 5)

To count everything in increments of running,
cause that's all I'm doing anymore, preparing for this disastrous happiness
In the glare of my own limitations: greed/generosity, cannibalizing one another
until there's no more bias to pry them separate.
So, shy like a child again and willing to say anything
I really mean
You–
from you
to you
that distance is crucial, unjustifiable. Brides run, and machines, kids,
cassettes,programs, bodies, sentences, his and mine, stuck running for the record,
this one's for the record




Outtakes (Inverse Window Seat)

In my version of the video, the controversy goes in the opposite direction, no trigger, all insider justice. I start off nude, in public, and I'm looking for something (I don't even know what) non-chalantly, walking past piles of ready-to-wear clothing and abandoned shoes. The city center adjusts into a desert, it strips too in solidarity, and then I notice my own condition, citadellicate nakedness in this desolate place, and I am the most self-conscious I've ever been. Afraid to have that much influence, exhilarated, afraid on purpose, until finally I sit down at a loom which is there as soon as I decide I need it, and invisible until then, or just busy. Anything preemptive is a form of excess here, is trespassing. And I weave myself a unit of fabric so beautiful in its yield, and I hold my body to its standards: there's no such thing as falling apart, we fall together, into the integrity of our own forms. With that, the city resumes its casual spooks and dominions, as soon as it recalls their names and uses. A new incentive for the intensest rendez-vous: vain, rude, and imperative, our savior: solitude. Nothing unnatural has ever happened besides the camera, which will self-destruct as soon as you are brave enough to put it down.

Kung Fu Ego

Not disillusionment, not business as usual, something regal and crude at the same time like the self mounting its own trench to announce that the war is over, all the riddles have left the chamber and we do miss assembling them, and the surplus, but not enough. Work songs are not enough. We have a young canyon, and any one piece of wood in my hand is automatically two when I'm lazy enough to concentrate they break exponentially, forgetting that breaking is associated with loss and not gain and runoff into a brand new rainforest shouting I'll never change, I'll never chain, isle always be changing for you

Touring (two rings)

The striking difference between intimacy and gossip

is that they are the same by this time, (off minor fairy tales of the uninterpretable)

I get the phoenix/The phoenix gets me. People start to find out and deserve an excuse to whisper. No need, (for) devouring

Both of us are asking for just the bright parts, Where nothing finally happens

The scandal bloc blank and no warmer than journalism, no more determined to warn, or yearn

And tambourines. And hands so close to orbit metal showcasing how the earth goes, to itself, for advice and starts to tremble which solves the conversation

Just enough pressure to make the reed vibrate, then none, the sunniest most matte stillness, transcendent obstruction

and a single human in the lucky rays saved from lynching by a fearlessness of heights

Imperial. Souless Eden, lethal perfection, restorative error, and I saw it, I watched it begin to hymn in him

I can't decide if what's left is an accusation, or a promise. Calm shame or


Confederal and joyful.

All we have established is that both offer a sense of belonging but one leaves time out of it and one drags itself out of time, palms first,

and the first thing it's touching is the matter(nothing), or in the matted air between our hushed voices there is a shrill scream we cannot access, drilling our perception for the left-out elements-- not fire, not fear, not the light, not the lie, not the lie again, not the lie. Why is your anxiety so lazy and mine so absently looking for repatriation, unamerican, some pledges we plagiarized while holding hands on the way backwards away from the ledge, are echoing, Fugitives, living in two-times, two-times, one for the body one for the mind one for the mend me, don't mention me, mend my soul, be kind to the men who told the the truth by accident,be that kind, be cruel to the one's who told it on purpose, be that cool

Hesitation Pitch

Throwblack, Crow's back, as a filthy scarejet so clean on the outside, you look fly on it and copy that compliment with some other jive like the continent tin man. There are no wizards in Africa, just hazards and stuff, save us, teach us to count our own gold one smile at a time

I have discovered you, now you exist (speckled yellow with rape and fever and the otherness high

Can you pass me the spirits) or surround me (the spear, the pirouette of angels and jailers and no fear and no skit, or

Instead of citing history, cite the future as evidence, source. I will exist, you will discover me. Otherwise you'll wreck the subject with hesitation. You'll ruin my puppet, my pulpit, my opinion, my golden smile.

I made it as light as possible

(body of bamboo sticks, arms made of trashbags with duct tape (rubber made): puppet, creases in his pinstripes, torso of chicken wire

Branding Iron sorting out the symbols on his tattoo to spell

Some shiny headline, like, Solar System Slips Back in Time

(African meteorite, or the media. I will come forward as one or the other. I will describe you, then you'll exist too. That's the situation. A country with no treaties, rising

Hasbeen/Husband (A reconciliation)

On the stage, if you want someone not to be there they have to go away, they have to leave. On camera, you just move the camera and they're no longer there. Vanish

Now your greatest danger is resembling yourself (that includes repeating yourself, which includes playing yourself..(again)

They're called clouds now (my plans), T.V. re-runs, and the aspect of the rain they prowl is movement not wetness. The water are verses (how life turns liquid when you look back on it

A slick arcade, otherwise I might have said tomorrow-arcade. Made archaic decisions like having lots of children. Sorry, tomorrow, borrow a craving from the real future and show it to me too,

The coin (in me) put by you, falling

Following

dashing...like handsome only faster coin, sleek anxiety for something incomplete like I always address myself to your lack (of me, or of understanding) Without that (lack) this might not be worthwhile. It'd be an idea stuck in the blithe struggle ego hoping to become cumulative like a policy or the pinball in the games guts, which are hollow. Ideas/police, don't trust them. Trust what the day does, what dey does, what daze does to the dice in you. Three separate rages of trust, without neutrality. Follow any one of us to the controversy, to the (scam) scene, and watch what happens. It starts to look like you. Residue from the new frontier. Bebop millionaire in trouble. Stall. Give me time and I'll most survive the other side of time. At the very least I'll deliver a sleepy kiss to your forehead and taste of red jasmine and saffron until you wake up thrashing from how I'm gone from the camera but still centerstage and someone is saying maybe

when we break, you can trust us. We are capable. Of everything? But disappearing is the only thing capable of us? If this is the case, the camera will have to face its own bullseye and wait for the plot to show up to its arrogant electricity in the size of silence in the shape of crime and medicine (hexagon) and them and us and everything capable of an image. That leaves the screen black as will until the black actor smiles or holds up his guns , his wallet, a safe afro, or some sad diamond rings

Appear Surreal.

I'm less your fairy, more your Pharoah, a fairness you're told to cherish, not rule with requests

And I'm not about suffering or come-up cars' passengers or leaving Harlem for my mightiest harem

either

This is not the House of the Rising Sun,

not ethereal, cause it not even is at all

I've been spared, but not left, over there, or in the trunk or in the ivy-palm, I have been to where the only winter is a misinterpretation of burn and when I went far enough for it to no longer hurt but not far enough for it to turn good, there you were, at the arch of that pitiful equation counting the sand by binary code (numb, numberless), then the canaries showed up too. One, one, one and one and one and one and crying from the front of an asphyxiation....this must be the new money, the drumbeat I confused with lust, duty, and that lady, that one, that one, (who shakes your recognition) that one, I tried to trade
for a kite and the air refused like refuge like it won't accept hiding for freedom (who am I?) Where am I from, again?

And that is something no irony can cure

'Ima scare you with my flowers cause they're gonna be so bright/popular/A little nice, quiet tremor/something no irony can cure'

Bluffing (so what if you're)

A blind man holds his head like an evangelist, like what he witnesses while getting his silence aligned, belittling your stare like a parrot, by emptying it

(Hi,high. Up, uptown supperclub. Vowel auctioneers are obvious, always out of breath from announcing silence..(since 1863)

I don't read your columns, or whatever you call 'em
A moment ago

fame looked fun. Now I want to take my petty dresses and my free man and come home some

Cerebral and lacking in emotion contribution of genteel restraint

undermined the coherence of fate, substituting deaf phases like memory or

When it finally can't be judged it will be judged as jazz
.
a circular see-saw, a circular see-saw. Cause after cause. Parrot into pirate for betrayal's sake, to let the opera into and out of its subject: ( but when he calls I know) the wide yessir, the treasurer sides with disasters because they bring in revenue and eliminate the mundane news of how

Lightbright by Hasbro and other electrifying brotherly toys from the commercials to the plugs have outlasted entire ecosystems, no wonder

the soloist misses his blindfold enough to fall in love

Statues Also Die

Rigorous Mystery

Rhapsodist
No urge toward comprehensiveness
Or the leniency
from the rumor Duke Ellington started when he was still pretending to hate Tarzan's Theme "remember then, that when a colored man is full of jive he isn't always that way because he wants to be, but because when he is sincere he usually isn't taken seriously."
You're no rebel but you're a fascinating monster
But you know I'll never tell
I like you (that way)
Until you snap
So right about now, your Messiah habit
has run out of I
a surplus of color
A purple bride and her sheer
Drapes. Humble, but I meant to say phony
You know me, but I meant to say
don't
But I was preoccupied, thinking about my elegant nihilistic sideshow coon side and
how well it pays to be obscene and demure in the same gesture
When he is sincere he usually disappears, disapproves of his own suffering or finds a reason to rig it with the narrow ecstasy of escape. Frantic. Safe from contentment so that the music keeps sounding hip and desperate and as sickeningly clever as the everything-factions of the interlude

Superlatives/Dirty Tricks for Earnest Living

But not even then.../ not even event number 1 (This Is Our Music) convinces us to not be even---(with)
them

Dear Abbey,

I began praying in Paris. I prayed for at least ten years straight. Sometimes in public, when the brothels were full. Once upon a time they owned slaves/nowadays they rent them. I loved those men. It has nothing to do with Africa. Or a harp in the nightclub. We're here to protect property, not lives. Plots, of storyland and rate times time equals distance. Standards. But that was a coincidence of the metaphysical world, also. I can hear you swallow into the microphone when he leaves in the middle of the show. That's part of the song. We did what the music did, it's true. No truces. Locusts and doves,

You were a philosopher
You were a polygamous woman
You had the courage to defend yourself
It's always been like this
So if I had never met
anyone but you,
I would have known which way to go

Studies for Voice

My Eyes Already Touch the Sunny Hill

Three Species of a Secret

(2) Convincing

It was focus that broke my kaleidoscope (now I'm less careful). By the time the riot subsided, a diagram of how-high-the-moon and the indiscriminate silence lifted into bloom/extinction. Two male Negros with walkie talkies. The losses by fires alone could be heard and spied across empty grocery... I'm applying to be on the cover of a cereal box holding an alto and a football and... the boss says I'll get a promotion if I lend him my image, he promises, crosses his heart, I can keep my teeth apart and every seventh portrait will be donated to the league and I'll never be lonely, he promises me poems and brightmoments' maps made of fire alone, I am. Lost. Nestled in his atonement is a limit I call limbo/lovecall/sambo's all-alter-lap/ a pale slapstick myth we get deliberate for your mind did set me ticking like a fat gold watch but that doesn't mean I'll offer you what time it is, nor that I'm looking for you in the caustic leap across myself, I refuse, I'd rather be anything than a duty, in other words, I am three, but the lens lied as well as he did, just as well, no melody is steep enough or narrow enough to see up these skirts of us. So we burn our own road, so we build it over again, the same way, a tired trade. The man I love is very boring and predictable, not tall, half handsome, almost famous, insane, perfect almost, cruel, bashful, less and less special except for what he keeps to himself and keeps calling by my name

(3)

My Familiar Being/Unrendered

She climbed up on his lap and said/she wanted to play/ little/ black sambo/and he was the tiger/Dear jungle doll, he answered/watch/I'm gonna make a million dollars just talking/saying heliocentric things/apollo things/being the boogie/man/booed off by the boogieing dandy/she began to clap and wail and frail words ran out of memories wherein to store themselves/she wanted to pay little black sambo/and he was the rider

What is all this joy and justice

An Introduction to Non-Fascist Life

Stunning (a tumbling suntan, lanterns under my skin, come Sunday...

He stays worshiping. That's slang for running (running things), in uniform, entire mornings underwater) Oh captain, my captain I have never trusted you and now the rebellion is as fast as life

Both scoops of the parenthesis turn into slings and bend. An absolute. My sister is turning blue, in fact, the fee for water lit her soft blood to suffocations unknown to the podium but dumb enough to stand there submerged in its most limber rant: I am a constant soldier, an allday poet, and I will be king. Numb to gender, numb to nonsense, numb sincerity, wisdom works against us when it's for hire, too rigorous, too calm, too now that you're familiar with the diagrams: 8 is what the wheelbarrow does, 1 is us, 7 are the syllables missing from love and death and trust,4 to the left, the ones that keep us susceptible to contracts (like) marriage and music, there he is, the unnamed authority of the unexpected showing up while we clap with crime scene gloves on, suspicious, glad, fingerprints, clasp-prints, uneven headshots, belligerent leisure, a product of the truth, a threat to the truth, and then there were 2, it was too distracting, being understood was way too distracting

Panorama in Miniature/Shine vs. Shine

Secrets become agreements, myths from Griots' lips, grievances, givens (man keeled over at the railroad station is waiting for his woman's train (to arrive) on a discontinued line... he is very patient, do not pity him, there is a phase of love coloring his heart to blind and giddy, he rhymes with himself and can you do that, can you lean that over... it suddenly recurred to me, to whom who keeps a record, weather at the strip club or the red party meeting, or here waiting, all of these are part crimson/ brutal. Each chimp is property and it belongs to grammar, each chump too, each chubby pole dancer too and emaciated streetwalker/socialist, day/night, all forbidden by silence, so what if...........



a wild pause for transport. Or trespass (I heard a song by the Stylistics (during it(during the pause) about You.... You Make Me Feel Brand New....disappear the barrier, disappear the Black Saint, disappear the Sinner Lady, stray laces in a TV supper club in a mafia picture... this is my family I speak of, in palaces and stations and clubs, greeting one another over the crypt victories or disasters, depending on whose version, and surviving
We all sat down naked under khaki trenches in the middle of an unpacked strip joint on the side of blackout highway and singing an anthology of by the way while I was singing I could tell we are no longer assigned to this movement we are now its functionaries, we have inherited its function, we have replaced grammar with a glamorous hush fell toward the room, but could not quite reach it Free these mimes from their mute imitations and they just dance a percussive speechlessness into our shut-in/don't shoot/souls... I sing to you. So you can shine some way. Home