this dreadful water cannot speak
for itself. its throat clogged with
bones-of- fierce-days & contempt.
what is left to show is the cadaver
of sorrow lurking beneath salt
scent. a small violet grave. a cavity
of an unborn child hoarding
the map of a war behind the back tooth
of memory. let the man who cannot hear
nor see kneel on a ship, make
holes & paths in his navel.
the glowing red trickling down his hands
is a riddle of a/hunger. the water open itself
to thirst. I should have known, vengeance
is a sacred way to hurl God into
non-existence. as if I did not make you
understand blood is the origin of gloom.
I heard a swarm of prayers summon
every white man to the fangs of the
Caribbean sea. I hope the displaced boy
never forgets he’s the secret country
of his white father. why do too many
cling to the same sword? in Curaçao,
some of the oppressors I wanted to kill
are already dead or rebirthed into new nations.
I have known the truest preamble
of redemption. to let myself free
like sky, I had to rob time’s wings
for anguish. here in Ghana,
a slave progeny is burying
a teddy bear of grief. this
is bleach & seawater for
blood-sucked heads. tonight i prefer to wash
my face with needles. because
I have chosen to live, free from dawns
stained with cannon fumes.
A hosanna or damnation homophony in which a revenant sings with
the voice of slavery as history conducts with the hands of time
i slip a ladle of hope & freedom into the Nile─ stir with a name.
all i taste is blood, the sour of bone & the bone of sweat. sweat
of bodies munched by bedeviled Mediterranean. i’m recalling
the path where my body was a door, my shadow followed Orion
thru the haze, thru the drowsy breath of a phoenix. i keep walking
towards history until i’m almost dead. these keys, i cannot find but
each day hear the rattle, feel a constant bop in the left thigh of my
spirit. i keep walking towards history until i’m almost dead─ then
keep walking. 94─ 7th Avenue. white door. brown fence. the odor
of broccoli stew waiting on the lip of a spire─ of the citadel where
a plover once stood, ate the scab of our grief & baptized us with
the holy dung. i keep walking towards history until i’m almost dead.
just know. this─ this is a refrain of our many wails & that to sing
you must be blessed with the eyes of a baobab & its steadiness
tucked under your skin. here’s a shaman’s ascending hand that’ll
wake sleep amongst archeologists, look into the atlas or palm &
say; this prognosis or thick vein is no fulcrum for our stillborn
longing. Marvin Gaye, Sylvia my Plath, Paul. L Dunbar─ tongues
stretched above the Nile awaiting sky’s chrism. so, to understand
the slave’s long sigh into the night─ those who learn to wait for salt
& bones to accrue on the shore knows there’s a backdoor to every
sorrow. but the tears don’t get clean in rain. the tears don’t get clean
in rain. i keep walking towards history until i’m almost dead─ keep
walking towards history until i’m almost dead─ then keep walking…
Sea Ballet
a sequence
III
Some days, i am the door,
other days i am the shadow
in the middle. of whether going
or coming. at sundown the body
chooses to be water wagging
its stretch into the dark;
into the cruel bundle of time.
Dec. 3, 1794. twelve thousand nights
of turbulence. i think of the slave-ship,
the unpaid chores on the sugar plantation
in Maranhão. the haul of dank bodies
pressed flesh-to-flesh from Ghana
to Curaçao. i picture the cataclysm;
blood shouting for water. water shouting
for blood. i feel a tornado in my trachea;
requiem of wavelets for the dispersal
of tribal marks. how do i identify
the shape of my mother’s nail bone?
what is lost to me is the count of necks;
clans scoffed by the bedeviled
Caribbean sea. every detail gnaws me
in the mind. sea! hey! are you watching?
this is a moonstone anklet &
amber beads. not given up her waist─
a photo of mother. like you; how brave
& boundless her love was.
dig
dig
are you digging?…
(Senbun)
IV
The more cargo that you have that is living, the more ballast you need because live cargo moves & is not as heavy as, say, tubs of molasses. the anecdote of slave-ships, like slave trade itself, spanned continents & oceans, from fishing villages in Africa to sheikhdoms where powerful chiefs plotted with European traders to traffic in human beings to work on plantations in the new world. the breakthrough that every shipwreck was of a vessel that had been carrying slaves came from something unexpected, the iron blocks of ballasts that were used to offset the weight of slaves in the hold. ballast becomes a signature for slaving a direct corollary to human beings-
waning moon
the utter darkness of heads
under the ocean
slave-ship
the locomotive necropolis
amid sky & land…
