Blue Skies take 1

I had to be black in order to justify my slavery/

I had to be white in order to justify my terror /   eyes   /     all eyes   on me     a mock paranoia    for    vanity         and  the  boy    we  chase  away   grimly     joyfully        returning    bent reference   to genes     and   exposure

the hardest thing for anyone to do   is to forgive somebody they know they have wronged

My father was the son of a slave,  that has something to with it  

Something to do with what      I'll be your excuses  if you can   guess  my true name  

Over this blues stitched recording of the confessions across   two  killers   as   they fall in love    

On the closing off of history / The Black Entertainer's Still Singing Blues

Every christening was a little bit of a dirge          and the whistleblower's nightmare  was  his over-achievement      that people   may listen   and change  later     blame him  for the useless exchange of base desires   for noble  ones           let's face it      embrace   the   denatured  root of redemption    once   you understand more than  one language   and sainthood  is as  blank   hood rich  al sharpton    wailing about the closing off of history      

In a total black theater        I was just thinking out loud   

I'm a singer   

and I   sing a song         

and that  song    hungry  for it's  own collapse  into choruses      will claim   anything    

sabotage anything 

shame anything  

for a chance    at repeating   

the transformation from  thing  to person and back and forth      that occurs on the closing off of history   

and life   emerges,   one of those   ancient     tongueless limitless   in all languages      revival   meetings  to be alive       where all the eyes   of former lovers      careen   into   one     witness      and the soul is not forlorn    and the   irritable   mystic is irritable   no longer       and    memory    is not the only  prize   for trying 

I'm a  singer    

and I   sing  a  song  and celebrating   the accidental appropriation   of all those   moods      as a gift    for    recklessness      as   a  chore       as      pious   as   denial    as   a strip  club  addict  stripping      cars    for the sound   of triggers      as    church   goer   stripping    god   for the   sound    of   the fearless    as what unites   them  ripping   meaning    from  the haven of brass   senselessness      calling    everyone a basic  bitch   and then  taking it back  on Sunday        we only     pray   for moods      and the right to be amplified      usually         so  much     of your  silence   belongs   to me    

A good man on most days

Black Privacy

I will say this to you though
It is not as if there were any                   more beautiful  way       

Kick a rhyme drinkin moonshine / Correspondence (6)

Summary: 

Diary of The Movement. No dancing in public, And the hustlers say.  Live at the Someday, trying to love our crooked neighbors with our crooked hearts.  Privacy is arbitrary, so we came here with new faces, all at the same time, hoping to confuse the enemy, succeeding in becoming our own enemy.  I think I was sleeping    about two hours  a night   if that.   Every murmur was a deposition. Angela Davis was young and faded justice was a phase away from Dorothy Dandridge.  Every saturday I took him back. Maybe in love with the slap of careless love, the light purple knife is his back pocket shaped like an obnoxiously supple junk yard wing of the angel Michael, the one black angel of everything trite and meaningful. A redeemed sinner with gangster  proclivities. Life's a bitch   treat her good   or she'll get you back.   Wisdom he lacked,  wisdom he acted as. 

Highlights: 

Here we are again. Albert Ayler disappeared. Brother Weldon blew his head off on the turnpike like an ice aged epic, pac man in the hood acting sophisticated about depression, self-consumed, lethal sophistication. Miscellaneous niggas heard the news and asked where  there is to get to    as they sliced the changes in the miraculous /    ( arcade )    together like a deranged boyband, my cave, my clan.   Durational aesthetics.  And/nah don't talk to them, they can't read, we murmured at the deposition.  We were in love with that ignorance.  That orality. What a fetish for the spoken. A fetish for infatuation itself.  We stole all their tapes and sold them to Harvard where no one would hear them but intellectuals, who couldn't make out the screen on the drawl  on the hanging code  of  no more sober solo emcees.  The essay A brief history of black suicide    became   A sudden epoch  of black collectivity.   Identity was the reckless seed of early leaving.   They disappeared into one another as protest against their one name.   Ayler's resurrection, Weldon's resurrection, MLK's resurrection,  all those true rumors  as bland  as assumptions posing for thought camera.  So this archive belongs to the shallow ghosts of memory we  name   heroes  when they oppose the surface.   There are no women on those records, we are rarely that easy on ourselves.  We hold onto the scrutiny all our lives  daring it to let go of us    for one day  of  rhymes  and moonshine.