Poem 9 of 30 - April 30 - Muse

Muse

I need everything you give me; the pictures of you – still looking out your back window, the reminders of past metaphor, the sing-back of songs I’ve sung.  These days I’m working harder than ever on something I can call a real thing I believe in.  I’m working on the sun on the concrete in fron my house and the dust in the bars that cover my window sill when the breeze comes through soft in the afternoon, and a lover’s tawny body in my bed stretched out across me while I come in and out of my dozing.  I need all this – and the mirror of my back and the slow weeping of dinner with friends who love me and the richness of the por and eggs and chicken andnoodles and herbs from my friend’s mother’s yard – how they made me feel strong today.

My homie tells of his uncle – how he ordered another man’s death and wept quietly in the middle of his field when his son brought him news of the job’s completion.  The poem has always been a field; since Frost, since forever and all our fathers and uncles these prosodic, precise lines meant to grow things out of their fallow. 

Muse – what is the news that interrupts?  What is the death that intervenes in the poem?  What is the nature of joy and surprise if not to have the plough surprised in its neat and reverent lines?  In my bedroom is a steady accumulation of things for my child who is now almost here among us in this world – a car seat, diapers, a rocker, Dr. Seuss books. There are bright golden condom wrappers in my room too; and as real to me as the arms I’m growing that are for nothing more than to hold this girl now.

Last week, I bought some shoes.  I am handsome and sleek in them.  They are black and glossy and comfortable.  I want to walk them into a field where my father is ploughing and tell him how I once dragged a boy down the stairs, how I tried to drag a man out of a moving car, how I threw my arms opened like I was receiving an ovation, as I leaned backward out of a speeding car and tried to make mush of another man’s face.  I want him to know his absence ordered their deaths.  I do not know if this is true.  My blackness co-conspires in everything.  I am his fourth child of six we know of.  I am the news that interrupts, the ghost who carries his shoulders into war.  I am walking into the field to tell my father that I love him, no matter how many carcasses he bids me fetch.  These are the lines I’m trying to plough straight now, looking over my shoulder for the girl to come.  She is beautiful in her brand new shoes.  Her shoulders are powerful.  She has done as ordered.  Her hands are brimmed in blood.

To schedule a reading or an appearance please contact Ofer Ziv at Blue Flower Arts at 845-677-8559 or email ofer@blueflowerarts.com. www.facebook.com/rogerbonairagard www.twitter.com/rogerbonair www.cypherbooks.com

Poem 8 of 30 - April 26 - Fast, How i Knew

Fast – how I knew

In 1980 I was fast.  I knew I was fast because Muhammad Ali told me so. Said he was the Greatest of All Time .  I still hear the phrase All Time in Ali’s voice, no matter who says it, with that exaggerated high vastness in his tone, his eyes crinkling up in the corner especially after Zaire, after Manila.  Ali said All Time and he looked like a benevolent king – ripe for a dethroning. 

But it was 1980 and far as I was concerned that wasn’t the time.  He was about to fight Larry Holmes and win again. He was going to pull one more rabbit from one more hat and shut everybody else up again, even as other boys said he was too old and this latest challenger too young and strong.  Ali had stayed too long, they said but I knew that there was no such thing as too long for the G.O.A.T. – that Ali had run and chopped wood and prayed five times and was going to be great forever.  That day, in the pavilion, right after cricket practice, shirt off and dancing in my socks on the warped wooden locker room floor, I shuffled, showed the boys how Ali would do later that night – all 11 yrs old 90 lbs of me flitting around the room and mimicking the clown like Ali would, like I’d become eventually, and I was fast and pretty, showing off my tiny, quick fists and bobbing my head this way and that and talking, like Ali did. Too fast. Too pretty.  Showing off my narrow unimpeachable body in the days before I’d inked a crown into my chest and a red butterfly where my heart should be and a sentence like a guillotine at my throat and blood, and books and memories of broken hearts.  I was fast and Ali was and he was going to be heavyweight champion of the world forever, and then all black boys could know they were fast, and could talk slick as hot oil to white men, and the world was going to open up and swallow stupidity that night, I was sure of it, and I was a black boy.  My mother told me so, and let me stay up to see Muhammad Ali talk shit to George Foreman 7 years before, when I really thought he was going to lose and watching his body sagging into the ropes, get pounded and pounded before he became some bullet-handed Jimmy Slyde, Honi Coles kinda super-hero and Africa chanted Ali! Ali! Ali! And it was late and I was leaned forward watching a thing I had never seen before and my mother getting up and dancing too, a slow hip-sway scotch on the rocks in one hand not daring to spill shimmy and she sang Oh God Ali, dey cyah touch yuh!

So, see…  I knew I was fast. I’d fought myself through the crucible of a Canadian Winter and learned how to pretty up my rage and dress it in something shiny and cocked to one side and my thin, tiny body that healed so miraculously and would wound and scar back to brown again so easy and walked anywhere it felt like past any group of boys, and knew Ali had enough left to beguile this bullet-headed man, Larry Holmes.  Everything was going to be gravy, Ali Boomaye! all over again, even though my mom was tense now and my father working. Late. Again.  I’d just finished practice and learned a new stroke and made some runs, and took some catches and everything would be right. Ali – king of the world, greatest of all time – he was still young and fast and black. And so were we.

To schedule a reading or an appearance please contact Ofer Ziv at Blue Flower Arts at 845-677-8559 or email ofer@blueflowerarts.com. www.facebook.com/rogerbonairagard www.twitter.com/rogerbonair www.cypherbooks.com

Poem 7 of 30 - April 22 - niggas (for avery, tai, miste)

Niggas

(for avery, tai, miste)

We spin the yarn, use the word like nexus, like

we build a next us out of mis-appropos

out of rooftops from a Brooklyn they still

tryna take from us – niggas - We use it

fluent as memorized prayer before

the smell of grits & fried fish gets too good

and interrupts the Lord under our intentions.

We see color, nigga and so we know every

story under the leather and cable knit

of Billy Dee Williams’ smooth-haired swag.

Dats a nigga for real and we know it the same

way we got taught early that it don’t matter

how tall or how rich or how gotdamned

learned we get that that word is ours

by back-break and lash and the love

we’ve had time to build and measure

in that room – that word migrates with us

to say slow, to roll around our mouths

like a tough sweet black toolum till

even our mouths are black with a nigga’s

sweet meaning, with all the ways niggas

make to say Church, with how we sure

nuff gonna find our own way to glory

To schedule a reading or an appearance please contact Ofer Ziv at Blue Flower Arts at 845-677-8559 or email ofer@blueflowerarts.com. www.facebook.com/rogerbonairagard www.twitter.com/rogerbonair www.cypherbooks.com

Poem 6 of 30 - April 8 - Jes so we does talk

Jes so we does talk

We push chin up say dat cooyah mout

say when de neighbor say it look like dem

people really going an put up dat ugly pink

house wit one setta flag in de yard – fuh dat.

We say she have de man like a coonoomoonoo.

Tabanca ha de man walkin de road like a pappy

show.  

We bottle and spoon refrain…

By the corner: Dis muddercunt gettin meh damn

vex. Ms. Mora light skin daughter pass: Mornin

family. And gorn back to – is a good planass

he want, oui

We suck teeth refrain

You eh even get a lil pull-tongue self?

You eh bettin you is a waisahtime nah.

Aye boy – bring back 2 ponga flour

2 ponga sugar and a ponga buttah

We cocoyea broom refrain

Smell dat hot bread – carry 2

fuh Ms. Ivy. Carry 2 fuh Aunty

Dolly. Carry 2 fuh Ms. Mavis.

Come back straight. Drink dis

beer.  It hot outside. Study

yuh book. Say yuh prayers.

To schedule a reading or an appearance please contact Ofer Ziv at Blue Flower Arts at 845-677-8559 or email ofer@blueflowerarts.com. www.facebook.com/rogerbonairagard www.twitter.com/rogerbonair www.cypherbooks.com

Poem 5 of 30 - April 6 - Groom Routine

Groom Routine

I’d never watched my father

get ready for work – never

seen the gleam of Vaseline

or coconut oil anoint the crowns

of his onyx knuckles or backs

of knees – never seen him pick

that afro out tall and smooth it

out with a postcard or pat it down

with a thin-volumed book.

Did he iron before or after

shower? Did shoes go on last

or immediately after trousers?

I hadn’t a clue – so I made

a routine up – trial & error

like I made up how to walk

the streets’ gauntlets, how

to say mornin family

to a sister in the streets,

how to throw a punch

or beg the woman you love

and have disappointed.

But understand that I begin

with the lotion – oil my body

free of the dry ash bequeathed

my blackness – I dollop

the thick green Afro-Sheen

into my palms- rub them

together making a thunder

sounding like wet laundry

and massage the magic into

my hair, my scalp, the rough

wires of sideburns and beard.

I work my wrists in along

the hairline, stroke that shine

in under the eyes, the cheekbones.

I step into trousers, then shoes –

drape myself in necklace or watch

or bracelet, an ironed crisp shirt.

I leave the combing for last,

my hair thick with my father’s

naps, with grease, his not-thereness.

From temples to chin I comb

it through, brush it out, buff

it up – so I look

like him anyway – a man

about to go somewhere

a man – about to make

a choice

To schedule a reading or an appearance please contact Ofer Ziv at Blue Flower Arts at 845-677-8559 or email ofer@blueflowerarts.com. www.facebook.com/rogerbonairagard www.twitter.com/rogerbonair www.cypherbooks.com