Studio8 - Uniting the Arts

"everything that has black sounds in it, has deunde" Lorca

When we hear the black sound
the grinding of the stone and the grounding
of being
we hear the call of raven on the wind
we hear sound of nothing and everything
we hear sacred ashes on world alter are saying
we hear the music between mystery and time

to listen to the black sun
to catch the corner of the blackness of her eye
we hear the obsidian revolution of words
where words end and the ink keeps writing, weeping
where the midnight river runs in her black nylons
we hear the turning of the record with the needle
deep in the groove

the sound of crackling and dust
before Billy Holiday's voice slides the dark honey
into "what a little moonlight can do"
we are hearing but not listening
or listening and not hearing
the black "that scorched the heart of Nietzsche"
oh Lorca that i followed you in the Poet in
New York, in the counterfeit dawns

blackness of rhyme, grime, mime,
of Apache tears, the blackness you can almost see through
this would be like the sound the Moors heard
when they disappeared from history books
when Africa remembered who we once were
and the slow rhythm of the drums spoke the language
of the original people
that we should hear the black flame dance
and the old blind gypsy looks deep into the green flame
look deeply into the jazz funeral march
into the cosmic eye of the hurricane
into the sounds of burning licorice roots
listen to the unconscious waters in the cistern of masks
hear the sting of the black scorpion as it stands
in the circle of fire and transformation

tell the shadows to drink the poem as they weave stories
into great contrasts of black notes and the rain of glyphic
silence

listen to the nada nada in the raga raga calling calling
listen to the eclipse as the calypso passes the nihil cry
through absence of color and the total spectrum of light
listen to Uncle Remus as he gathers the children around
and that great pause, that infinite wonder and awe
that rustling on huge branches above and some kind of
glory about to burst through darkness darkness asunder

the roots run deep, into the black earth, the black edges of sunshine, the blackness of space. indeed.

never turn your back on a nigger
with maggotts in his eyes
it took a guy with a baseball bat
to teach me that n*gger has nothing to do with skin color
only to the unenlightened.

I could never turn my back
on your poetry

blacker than black
black to the bone.
I am addicted

it is all turtles from >>>>>>>>>>>here on down

blacker than black
my friends skin was
from west africa
he had the most beautiful skin I have ever seen
showed at my door one night scared
tennessee the homeplace of the klan
but I was pretty sure I knew who had pranked him
and he did not get the joke
it was some kids from our Quaker meeting I think
one of those "birth right quakers"
the real pure ones

my black friend lived with me for about a year after that night
we lived in a basement apartment on music row in nashiville
no windows in that crib
it was dark as a coal mine in there at night
I could always see him in the dark
as if his skin so black it glowed

pardon the ramble
thanks for the poem.