there’s the saxophone:
& the music?
to be blue? and the question, em?
we didn’t like his music. career? his very existence? the core of his being? his lost relationship with us? envied it, the glory? all of it? plays ask for a pause. stage right. dim lights. enter we.
we enter. lower. we continue with the tirade? how can one man be so beautiful, escape god, be job without being job, in this place where fatalism escapes the flutter of a butterfly wing?
psychoanalysis? at our old age we don’t see why we should be worried. we’re outside diagnosis. he’s long dead now. we should not be so banal. he’s long dead. to mean he turned christian. lifetimes ago. since then and now, there have been resurrections. we will not ascribe any to anyone. there are many forms. musicians, for a start. and the worst: poets. the telescope of nostalgia.
not quite why we like his voice.
we like:
the castrato soprano.
very much unlike the classics: his rhumba is off. not the old patrons, nothing cuban. not the patrons who cheated. t.p.o.k. if you get. still. not tabu ley. not mbaraka mwinshehe. no. this voice:
it made its way from lubumbashi to goma. it lost something. Gained something. This is not a question of what experience does to loss, or what letters written by dead poets do to students of literature. pain. the longing for a home you’ll never return to, an undefinition of exile: there is no there, there is no back home. there is simply nothing. your parents an an installation, if we are to be cruel.
we are reading john cage silence lectures again. silence is not in these parts.
& what is the use of history, his name, our name? there are no pots these hands cannot mould back into existence. we have chosen no existence and rhumba.
the dead head of the hallucination? when you’re in the throws of the octopus? when it is almost real? a haunting? we read somewhere that poetry should be able to comprehend the earth. what’s the us, in saturn’s moons?
there is no moon. no sun. the only sure thing on this earth is a blackout in nairobi. The death of lower gods
midday. rain. a gentle shower on our rooftop. the kind of weather after which you expect birdsong. mari mari guy is out. kid’s singson. umoja morning.
he’s singing. an old rendition. a cover.
greek gods
we didn’t like his music. career? envied it?
psychoanalysis? at my old age i don’t see why i should be worried. i’m outside diagnosis. he’s long dead now. i should not be so banal. he’s long dead. to mean he turned christian. lifetimes ago. since then and now, there have been resurrections. we will not ascribe any to anyone. there are many forms. musicians, for a start. and the worst: poets. the telescope of nostalgia.
not quite why we like his voice.
we like:
the castrato soprano.
very much unlike the classics. his rhumba is off. not the old patrons. not the patrons who cheated. t.p.o.k. if you get. still. not tabu ley. not mbaraka mwinshehe. no. this voice:
it made its way from lubumbashi to goma. it lost something. Gained something. This is not a question of what experience does to loss, or what letters written by dead poets do to students of literature. pain. the longing for a home you’ll never return to, an undefinition of exile: there is no there, there is no back home. there is simply nothing. your parents as an installation, if we are to be cruel.
we are reading john cage silence lectures again. silence is not in these parts.
& what is the use of history, his name, our name?
the dead head of the hallucination? when your in the throws of the octopus? when it is almost real? a haunting? we read somewhere that poetry should be able to comprehend the earth. what’s the us, in Saturn’s moons?
there is no moon. no sun. the only sure thing on this earth is a blackout in nairobi.
midday. rain. a gentle shower on our rooftop. the kind of weather after which you expect birdsong.
he’s singing. an old rendition. a cover. rift valley brothers.
“you lost?” we ask.
there’s the saxophone.
fit’s not much the playing of it, the fiddle, the river bubbling under it all, the recluse of the city, it’s nightmares and sunshines, not the beauty of the lonely footbridge, the promise of the mammoth tree trunk, the unseen but heard birds, and who would cut down such a tree in a conservatory? not so much the unnamable ways of your hair when I am venting, the envy of nature that comes to you. it’s none of all that. the intrusion of it, the walking into someone’s holy moment of joy or heartbreak or ascension, sainthood, one’s last moments as they regard the semiquavers to which their deaths have been set. they have no suicide note. they remain an afternote.
we didn’t like his music. career? envied it?
psychoanalysis? at my old age i don’t see why i should be worried. i’m outside diagnosis. he’s long dead now. i should not be so banal. he’s long dead. to mean he turned christian. lifetimes ago. since then and now, there have been resurrections. we will not ascribe any to anyone. there are many forms. musicians, for a start. and the worst: poets. the telescope of nostalgia.
not quite why we like his voice.
we like:
the castrato soprano.
very much unlike the classics. his rhumba is off. not the old patrons. not the patrons who cheated. tpok if you get. still. not tabu ley. not mbaraka mwinshewe. no. this voice:
it made its way from lumbumbashi to goma. it lost something.gained something. this is not a question of what experience does to loss, or what letters written by dead poets do to students of literature. pain. the longing for a home you’ll never return to, an undefination of exile: there is no there, there is no back home. there is simply nothing. your parents an an installation, if we are to be cruel.
we are reading john cage silence lectures again. silence is not in these parts.
& what is the use of history, his name, our name?
the dead head of the hallucination? when your in the throws of the octopus? when it is almost real? a haunting? we read somewhere that poetry should be able to comprehend the earth. what’s the us, in saturn’s moons?
there is no moon. no sun. the only sure thing on this earth is a blackout in nairobi.
midday. rain. a gentle shower on our rooftop. the kind of weather after which you expect birdsong.
he’s singing. an old rendition. a cover.
