Cat Stevens hangs on with my favorite album, but Dance by Mutabaruka is my favorite song.
I embedded this one because cool slideshow, here’s one that doesn’t run forty-five seconds over.
cause out of de music comes de tinkin of de mind
an’ de people move on leavin nothin behind
de laughter an’ pain become as one
like de action of our ancestors risin from de lan’
That unimaginable horror show your asshole becomes when you’re a homeless broken poet. I could write about that.
He studied the menu ordered received payed and consumed and nobody thought any different. They didn’t notice he thought in relief and shame.
You were always a better fan than lover. That’s harsh to say and possibly untrue. Probably unfair. But I can’t revise it. So I’ll havta let it stand.
Only problem is where I havta go to let it stand.
My feet slip in the mud and I bang my head on a brick and a torrent of water rushes the blood away.
Straining on tippy toe gulping water and balancing that pole balancing that pole balance that pole.
That last poem was supposed to be the first one of the night, not the last one, and certainly not the only one, but it came to me fully formed and perfect, and it overwhelmed me.
I stepped into the moonlight sipping coffee
and clank the capstan slides under
the pinch roller sucking in tape
while the playhead snapped into place
tape tugging behind pressure pads.
The meters pegged out momentarily
as he turned out of me
faced the wall and sold it
perfect whole and true.
His voice catching and hitching
like it meant something
and he got the perfect sneer in the last line.
A poem exploded somewhere and I was standing in the path of the blast wave.
I had to shut myself up and be like what was that. And he repeated the performance, spot on, same tears same sneer. And again I insisted.
It was done. I couldn’t deny that. It was handed to me having been harvested, packed and express-delivered from some infernal co-op.
The insert read that it came into your world having been forged, over countless time, in the heart of a far off pyre, seasoned with and prepared by time.
