Ode to Aime Cesair
The body of a black man is stretched across the skyWith stars in his eyes and the band-aid moon on his cheek. All the empires are calling; all wish to overcome their defeat at the hand of time. There in Americus the black men are kept in the closet close to the hangers where a lynched man swinging in the broken wind is reading the Bible that has forgotten how to save him.
The body of a black man is stretched across the sky, with its pin point light lit by distant fire telling that there is life in the womb of night. In Americus the children of the Buffalo are crying out but Americus can not hear then there for she have stuffed her ears with dollar bills that bleed oil across the face of Washington painted in a school on the San Carlos reservation and the Ute are united with the memory of Chief Ouray and the Lenid meteor showers streak across the black man’s body bold and biting at his nipples, bold and bitter by the blood that bleed its beautiful bounty born by the Buffalo’s brother.
The body of a black man is stretched across the night where crime is committed in the heated heart heard by the hard hour of a flower smelling of baby’s babble of mama and dada, papa and the Hungarian’s tata, a tic for a tock runs the baby’s body clock ticking as darkly of any black man’s skin. The baby will come to call himself nigger in a whisper barely heard in the smell of cornbread baking in the freezer where we keep out memories cool, where we want for not the weeping of a good man mending his mind mindfully mining the Moor’s motion mapped and moped by militants marooned in the bloody battle buying its time in the told tall tale of tongues.
The body of a black man is stretched across the night that spreads from the heart of trees dropping their spoils in spoonful to be eaten by the poor with pockets full of the butt ends of commercialism kept in the warm handout of a caution consumerism recklessly wounding the poor penny pinchers who pile their mounding miseries in a make ready meant to met the mighty monster moaning its mouthful of maturation swollen and swallowed sour and salty as the tears of a baby Baboon.
The body of a black man is stretched across earthWhere the dealers of stars fluff the telling moon with its stolen light listless and capable of a long lasting loneliness liquid by the last lane leading its facelift given by the 12 hour night neat and nodding its knowable knowledge nipping at the hind end of a new cold cloudy wish with its cumbersome chill stored in the hands and feet of the homeless whose hunger is hurried and hurled from the body into the trash dumpster where their dinner is to be found.
The body of a black man is stretched across earth Spinning without regret its regurgitate the umbilical cord of air weather blown over by outrageous winds weeping the lost scent of Isis befriending the slaves who picks cotton from her eyes. All matter of mischief break through when the Gods cry their prayers sobbing like benedictions given in the wee hour of a satanic challenge, sobbing inconsolable its blazes of flesh, sobbing a millennium of membranes, sobbing ‘who am I to say” sobbing the tepidity of an indigent delirious lava that girdle the blood.
The body of a black man is stretched across the dirtDone over and under where the bodies of black children killed by their own rattle their bones with an essential concentration that rush in the Mississippi night hawking its hunger hard and heart felt as horny as flowers are for bees. The children are killing children, are killing the killers, are killing with bloody hand they go looking for the great myth of their fathers. The children are playing war in the urban brain with its train of tidal waves rushing pass the vices of their memories dropping like red bricks from an abandoned building torn open by the weight of black birds.
The body of a black man is stretched across the dirt where grows the joyous purple public in October opting out of the splendor of bread and wine giving only on Sunday in the church of Yellow Pine weeping their shadows beneath unforeseeable towns abrupt in their sleep of vague streets lined with shacks restored to their fallen grander. Outside of Brooksville Mississippi, beside the grim of cutwater throated birds the black plow is rusting for want of use, rusting a dirty red the blood soaked hands of killing the meaty land in an exoticism’s pulse. The children are killing themselves with the word nigger; slicing open their throats where fly from it a flock of crows brilliantly bold in their blackness.
The body of a black man us stretched across the sky, it is tied down both hands and feet by Christianity less he escape into the obsessive rain whose song is the very ecstasy of a mother God liquefied and dozing its surprises of remembrance of man made treacheries committed against all but the sun’s force and the cloth that it ware.
The body of a black man is stretched across the sky.He is prostrated before the stagnant breath bitten by baboons and bisons, boa constrictors and bobcats listening to the last bobtail tight and tugged in a tell- tale tongue fix for the language of the young, when Europe have fallen into white despair that twist its screams as white as virginal milk hatching their overrated pride then will a brighter day come, an astonishing ambition of accumulated systematic confessing shadows of an authentic announcing day will come to the brow beaten land. When the English cloth sleeps in the vomit of the drunken streets full of exhaled fog falling forward fast and firmly, freely and fondly, fluently as smoke from a thousand foundries then and then will a brighter day fall full of the mercies showed to the slave by Elizabeth dying in her room on morphine, Elizabeth who shall love us best after death.
The body of a black man is stretched across the night where negritude falls from his skin to accused the whites of their aborted sins towering above the jazzy jimson turbulence heard in the boredom drowning its scandals of offense of skin as sable as Cain’s, living out their lives in the fundamental hypocrisy of a race done wrong. Do not weep. Be strong in your Armstrong song. Be hard fisted. Be heard where you have planted your pelvis. Let the children be full of soulful songs suing the strained long histories of being with the whites. In them; the gauntly complicitous smiles of children; the guilty gusts of children, the empty spaces that they can not keep will be filled with history.
The body of a black man is stretched across the night, its grotesque fatherhood is the step son of liberty caught between slavery and the crimes of the blood done in the egalitarian rain running round the mulatto who scorched his skin under the justifiable sun abolishing the rain once prosecuted by the Christian slave holders who supported the vanguards leading the way toward racism taught to children running barefooted between trees of condemned men, condemned by ready rope waiting patiently, by the cottonwood’s strength tarred beaten by the white wind blowing the jaw bone of its prize.
The body of a black man in stretched across the earth, stymied by the iron-fisted absolute human dignity of slaves’ work songs making its escape from the spiritual, songs as poignant and yearning and smart as Brer Rabbit of the city park, the modern American black man is Brer Rabbit incarnate to his American brothers, he is part Africans that flies little by black birds calling Massa with a yessuh, yessuh massa ringing down through the extent of his cowardice that war the dices. I am such a man in my right knocked about battled and bullied by bullets bone of my heroism fit to be lying down. The socket of my question is simple, discolored and taxing the very roads of my nose, the lanes of my lips where words play leads to the oldest human heart, the depth of my over exaggerated skin with it prepensely for American poverty is born body bold with a Jackal’s justification. The measure of the rhythm of my hair is well kept by the dread locks of Jamaica trees home grown home hammed locks hangs light its new growth girlish it guard my brain.
The body of a black man is stretched across the earth where rabbits tickling his underbelly, the opossums climb up to ride along his back bone. The bats wing his hair. Over his body the animals are working on Tiger’s farm and Leopard woman is chasing Bush cows. The monkeys are tiding bobcat’s tail to the black man’s ankle. The yellow dog is talking to Blackbird and Ringdove about the curse of the birds while Lion and Jackal are saving the rain as Tortoise gives underrated praise. Hyenas are following the elephant’s hips. Hare and Spider are off to visit Spider’s fiancée’s parents in heaven. Squirrel is robbing Rabbit of his tail. Eagles and hawks are afraid of fowls. Brer Fox and the Tar Baby play awful Mr. Wolf. The Pig is nosing the Baboon’s rear as King Buzzard is spying down. On the body of the black man stretched is the gratitude of an oozing air.
The body of a black man’s is stretched across the dirt that is as dark as him, as crusted with history, as a tongue tied into a knot, as stubborn as a child crying for its metamorphosis mother, as carved up as an African mask’s enthusiasm, as bleached a dingy dark by night, as right as the need for whiskey in need of a brown paper bag. Both man and dirt hunger the worst that man can do and do again along the sixteen blocks roadway where piety with its spat heretical petty splashing in a pool of conscienceless is pined against the wall of a fragile cannibalistic quarter.
The body of a black man is stretched across the dirt where the savage death of freedom comp an attitude against the miseries that is a mirage emphatic as being alone in the hideousness of fire’s embrace, burning the collapsed mouthful of fraternal consumption and contempt for the restless fallen hour that morn the conflagration of voices crying out for a singular word birthed out of their ignore.
The body of a black man is stretched across the sky, his human fatigue docile against the Ten Commandment given in a famished year to the ancient itching etching of the souls of the chosen people who thirsted for the unimposed fireworks tormented by the benevolent meant to heal wounds made when man was a child playing God by the fire of the sun that burns the sea form relieving itself on the bleached beach by secrets of frenetic miners of fishes in the water forest growing with generosities found in the mouth of a wayward wave breaking its spectacle of collapsed brotherhood growing modest as morning also breaking when the sun mounting the sky imprisoned by man’s body screaming its convulsions there where the four windows corners of our world wisely will be folded into a compost church where the birds worship their rhetoric rigged round riding the realms ready for the rills, ready to reel in the ancestral dawn’s part of the soul sold sadly and simply shyly to the church where the prodigious tadpoles voyage the sea.
The body of a black man is stretched across the night. Who will tear the moon from his naval, who will eat his ripe prick, who will be his prophet at large, who can hold him close around the neck of his missionaries insult, who will and when wean themselves from his nipple and his fountain of tears when climate of his season injury the confidence of his offense?
The body of a black man is stretched across the night and ten thousand tears shed in one year are filled with minnows that whip their tails in the weight of the wee hour of a hundred years. The electrified concrete and old steel of evil water have lost their confidence in being an accomplice with hands that takes a turn at misleading the satanic challenges that we make against the justice of force for the nostalgic yellowish wash of the delirious sun.
The body of a black man is stretched across the earth of compulsion for the last anguish he toss with trembling heart to the old lust of European overrated desires encircled with blood smelling of tea and rum plowing the field where memories are planted to free the history of pulse beating the beautiful egotism of a machine gun unappeased by the obscene dignity precious and filled with accumulated madness.
The body of a black man is stretched across the earth, he laugh his thunder loud as a proud glory, as a prince of wooden warriors carved by time, warriors that vomit in the hold of a slave ship, warriors that enchant the forest, warriors of weariness found amid the noble adventure recognized by the hard march of men looking to bring home the prize found in their cowardice, warriors in the shape of black fathers marching away from their sons who longs for a hard hand to hold, warriors of the masterpiece of pride untiring the poverty found in the uninhibited industrious cities hiding the defense of machines in the fruit on the tree that droop heavily heavenly with pedantic tears, warriors victoriously wounded by the warriors of slavery fighting in Peru, warriors of Chem at Nowe, at Memphis of old, of old Thinis, warriors of Khufu and Cushites, warriors of the Libyans, the Ethiopians, the Nubian and the Thebans, warriors of the talking drums heard when Spider outwitted the rich woman, heard for Mwiundo the little one just born, he walk the baby rivers running, he dance round about the darkness of his skin.
He who went to sleep wake up
You have no power against Mwindo,
Mwindo is the little one born he walked.
He who went to sleep wake up.
Look, I am playing with my conga scepter.
Though Muisa slay Mwindo
And I shall die,
Muisa, you are really helpless against Mwindo,
Against Mwindo, the little one just born he walk. The little one just born he walk toward the city of a hundred gates when black Egypt turned brown and white, when the mulattos came, when the blacks were scattered in a force migration when the whites came, when the blacks was chained with the bloody irons smelling of their names. The little one just born he walks the city of the common grave when the Christens came to change our names.
The body of a black man is stretched across the dirt and ancestral Christianized tom-toms growing from his skin were cries of treason against the fate of Christianity wilted in the light of nature as the one true God. The lotus eaters are gathering in the lake to be baptized by the bats beating their wings back against the black skin of a sudden pride caught in the order of hands luminous and extremely humble by the thumb that poke itself in the eye of the sun when the bird of pray circle the disorder of the flesh breaking down deep and done drawn and quarter by the whip in the town square fatigued from seeing so much murder done in the name of a God that darken his skin in a desert walk, wandering through the cathedral of sand his aim was to save man but mindful man resisted the salvation of his spirit for the appetites of his flesh in a fat year where the puny conflagration apocalyptic and full of the conquest that binds the soul to the body is meant to enter the joyful paternal church where is stuffed the spirit of our cadavers.
The body of a black man is stretched across the dirt, he illuminates the hummingbird’s wings beating back the strong winds that beam the gentle alcoholic quicklime of luminous deafness of a heard germination of femininity, he illuminate the exultation of reincarnated joy of a beautiful prophesy in the form of a beautiful boy spoken for in the temperament of a figurehead unique to the germination of a tyrannical universal hunger that thirst for the drunken blemishes found in the promiscuity humble and yet callused in the muscles that brace the horizon weeping under water. He illuminates the locomotive secret of sorcerers that break the wounds of water flowing it’s deform currents of thirst. He illuminates the trade winds blowing its speech of reasons gaping its proclaim strength apocalyptic as a tornado of volcanoes gigantic with blisters. He illuminates the negritude found in a baby’s fist. He illuminates the business end of earth by parasites. He illuminates every star, omnipotent but injured by an enormous bone bloated and bound by pestilence. He illuminates the fat of his liver trapezoidal as a second class citizen draping themselves with an unexpected respect for control. He illuminates the white God that tells us to be good niggers to accept our servitude without complaint, to bare our burden as fresh milk midst the udders of cow holy in the streets of India.
The body of a black man is stretched across the sky he is held captivated by the conquering fire of the sun and the invented motion of the moon. He is breathing for the entire world. He is reconciled by the exultation of his survival. He is the resentment of meditation on the uniqueness of his sable race rocked by slavery and the religion of fornication that seeks to preserve the tyrannical nation of his intermittencies imposed by a God stolen from his master who taught the Bible with a whip to make the calluses of his laboring hands humble and for hire by the holy words. He is stretched over the veinlets of trees and the veins of river forever running wild till man take away their force but there is always something wild about the hinged river that overflow its banks and flood the land something willing to pass on the grim of the water in the conflagration of spring. The ancestors are gathering to free us from our orders issued by our suppressors, the warriors who have done the flesh of their lives by the dirt; the joyful jolly of warriors is all that was not taken from us.
