from Book of Hours
The light here leaves you
lonely, fading
as does the dusk
that takes too long
to arrive. By morning
the mountain moving
a bit closer to the sun.
This valley belongs
to no one—
except birds who name
themselves by their songs
in the dawn.
What good
are wishes, if they aren't
used up
The lamp of your arms.
The brightest
blue beneath the clouds—
We guess
at what's next
unlike the mountain
who knows it
in the bones, a music
too high
to scale.
* * *
The burnt,
blurred world
where does it end—
The wind
kicks up the scent
from the stables
where horseshoes hold
not just luck, but
beyond. But
weight. But a body
that itself burns,
begs to run.
The gondola quits just
past the clouds.
The telephone poles
tall crosses in the road.
Let us go
each, into the valley—
turn ourselves
& our hairshirts
inside out, let the world
itch—for once—
* * *
Black like an eye
bruised night brightens
by morning, yellow
then grey—
a memory.
What the light was like.
All day the heat a heavy,
colored coat.
I want to lie
down like the lamb—
down & down
till gone—
shorn of its wool.
The cool
of setting & rising
in this valley,
the canyon between us
shoulders our echoes.
Moan, & make way.
* * *
The sun's small fury
feeds me.
Wind dying down.
We delay, & dither
then are lifted
into it, brightness
all about—
O setting.
O the music
as we soar
is small, yet sating.
What you want—
Nobody, or nothing
fills our short journeying.
Above even the birds,
winging heavenward,
the world is hard
to leave behind
or land against—
must end.
I mean to make it.
Turning slow beneath
our feet,
finding sun, seen
from above,
this world looks
like us—mostly
salt, dark water.
* * *
It's death there
is no cure for
life the long
disease.
If we're lucky.
Otherwise, short
trip beyond.
And below.
Noon,
growing shadow.
I chase the quiet
round the house.
Soon the sound—
wind wills
its way against
the panes. Welcome
the rain.
Welcome
the moon's squinting
into space.
The trees
bow like priests.
The storm lifts
up the leaves.
Why not sing.
Cadillac Moon
Crashing
again—Basquiat
sends fenders
& letters headlong
into each other
the future. Fusion.
AAAAAAAAAAA.
Big Bang. The Big
Apple, Atom's
behind him—
no sirens
in sight. His career
of careening
since—at six—
playing stickball
a car stole
his spleen. Blind
sided. Move
along folks—nothing
to see here. Driven,
does two Caddys
colliding, biting
the dust he's begun
to snort. Hit
& run. Red
Cross—the pill-pale
ambulance, inside
out, he hitched
to the hospital.
Joy ride. Hot
wired. O the rush
before the wreck—
each Cadillac,
a Titanic,
an iceberg that's met
its match—cabin
flooded
like an engine,
drawing even
dark Shine
from below deck.
FLATS FIX. Chop
shop. Body work
while-u-wait. In situ
the spleen
or lien, anterior view—
removed. Given
Gray's Anatomy
by his mother for recovery—
151. Reflexion of spleen
turned forwards
& to the right, like
pages of a book—
Basquiat pulled
into orbit
with tide, the moon
gold as a tooth,
a hubcap gleaming,
gleaned—Shine
swimming for land,
somewhere solid
to spin his own obit.
Beyond Words
Mudd Club 4th floor gallery
Manhattan, April 1981
If you bomb
the IND
or tag the 2
downtown
—gallery-bound—
dousing it in tribal
shrapnel, you're it
—the shit—
If you can lie
between the rails
—Please Stand
Clear the Closing—
or press yourselves
betw. train
& the wall
spray can rattling
like a tooth—The roof
the roof
the roof is on
fire—soon
the 6 will whistle
past, swinging
like a night stick—
Officer Pup throwing
a brick
@ that Mouse
Ignatz, in love—
#$!?!!!!—then
you'll have found
risk. A calling—
Crash, Daze, Pray
covering trains
like cave paintings,
avoiding the German
shepherds—ACHTUNG—
while the cars sit
in the yards
—what no one else in this
city owns. Making
their names
known—Dondi, Boy-
5, B-Sirius, Crazy
Legs, Coolie C—
The city clears
its throat
the subway shaking
the buildings above—
We don't need
no water let
the motherfucker
burn— Futura 2000,
Phase II, Quick
& Sex & Zephyr
& Lady Pink—
Fab 5 Freddy
(n� Braithwaite)
saying everyone's
a star. "Rapture"—
the whole planet's in
on it—Chilly Most
Being the Host Coast
to Coast—Freddy's painted
Campbell's Soup Cans that read
DADA & POP instead
of beef barley—
the UFO has landed
& a brother's
stepped out, alien, dressed
in white. Then when
there's no more cars
he goes out at night
& eats up bars—
graffiti like 3 card monte—
running, avoiding the pigs
like a black muslim
bean pie. DJ spinning
says my my.
Pay attn.—
say, ain't that
Basquiat spinning
disks behind Blondie—
SAMO AS AN END
TO MINDWASH RELIGION—
45s stacked high
as a Dag-
wood sammich?
Hungry, this B-
boy's headed
to the top—Yes
Yes y'all
You don't stop—
blowing up.
Aunties
There's a way a woman
will not
relinquish
her pocketbook
even pulled
onstage, or called up
to the pulpit—
there's a way only
your Auntie can make it
taste right—
rice & gravy
is a meal
if my late Great Aunt
Toota makes it—
Aunts cook like
there's no tomorrow
& they're right.
Too hot
is how my Aunt Tuddie
peppers everything,
her name given
by my father, four, seeing
her smiling in her crib.
There's a barrel
full of rainwater
beside the house
that my infant father will fall
into, trying to see
himself—the bottom—
& there's his sister
Margie yanking him out
by his hair grown long
as superstition. Never mind
the flyswatter they chase you
round the house
& into the yard with
ready to whup the daylights
out of you—
that's only a threat—
Aunties will fix you
potato salad
& save
you some. Godmothers,
godsends,
Aunts smoke like
it's going out of style—
& it is—
make even gold
teeth look right, shining.
saying I'll be
John, with a sigh. Make way
out of no way—
keep they key
to the scale that weighed
the cotton, the cane
we raised more
than our share of—
If not them, then who
will win heaven?
holding tight
to their pocketbooks
at the pearly gates
just in case.
Kevin Young
