UPDATE 8/30: On my way to Marianna, Florida, with my father, husband and son. Exhumations will begin. The remains of the Lost Boys, including my mother’s uncle, will soon be brought into the light.
ORIGINAL POST:
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Why do you write horror? How can horror fiction be escapism?
That familiar query from readers pops to mind as I’m riding with my father from Atlanta down to northern Florida to visit the site where the notorious Dozier School for Boys once stood as a real-life boogeyman to juvenile offenders from around the state of my birth.
Some former prisoners say boys were beaten, tortured, sexually assaulted. And as the cemetery behind the school still attests—called “Boot Hill” by locals—some of the boys sent to the Dozier School never came home.
One was a 15-year-old boy named Robert Stephens, my late mother’s uncle. In 1937, Robert Stephens died after allegedly being stabbed…
four am thunder
and thoughts:
fear.
strong glass/soft water.
electronic impasse.
no memorializing
mother nature’s fury
while early morning media
tows the line.
five am thoughts
of thunder
and the battle that has come.
scrimmages between
mohawk boy and me
about the mohawk
dropping seeds:
isn’t it interesting?
everyday i direct you
to comb your mohawk
but it isn’t until
impending visit
of masculine parent
that you get upset
with my threat
to cut it off
if you don’t take care
of it
I am way behind with Napowrimo but here I go, attempting to catch up!
An Indian man and woman
who I think are a couple
until the distance between
extends beyond what is proper
for a woman must walk five steps
behind her man scenario.
Moving in the opposite direction
is a well-hipped white woman
pushing an empty pram
and a young black woman
whose hair runs the rainbow
between yellow and pink.
I stare until she stares me
back into recognizing my rudeness
and my past
where my blues were the turquoise
Some time in the last two years, I decided to undertake a reading of epics (The Odyssey), verse novels (Omeros and Prophets, by Derek Walcott and Kwame Dawes, respectively). I called myself doing research for my own verse novel. Well. I got about more than half way through The Odyssey before I gave up the ghost. I barely made it past the first chapter of Omeros, although, truth be told, that was due to me being so enraptured by the language of that first chapter, that I just stopped in awe. And that is where I am at with that book. Transfixed. Earlier this month, I picked up Prophets and started reading it again. I admit to being fascinated…by the story, by the language AND by the three-line format.
Here is the back blurb:
From the winner of the 1994 Forward Poetry Prize for the best first collection comes this major new narrative poem.
Drawing on inspirations as diverse as Derek Walcott, the Bible and Peter Tosh, Dawes brings a live a world where 24-hour satellite television, belching out the swaggering voices of American hellfire preachers, competes with dance hall, ‘slackness’ and ganja for the Jamaican mind. Against this background, Clarice and Talbot preach their own conflicting visions.
Clarice has used her gifts of prophecy to raise herself from the ghetto. Thalbot has fallen from relative security onto the streets. Whilst Clarice has her blue-eyed Jesus, Thalbot brandishes his blackness in the face of every passer-by. Clarice’s visions give her power. Thalbot is at the mercy of possession by every wandering spirit. But when, under the cover of darkness, Clarice ‘sins’ with one of her followers, Thalbot alone knows of her fall. From the heart of the Jamaican countryside he sets out to denounce the prophetess and, like Jonah, to warn the Ninevite city of its coming doom. An epic struggle begins.
Now. Narrative poem. That may be a better, more poetic term than verse novel. Verse novel sounds so plain and well, teenage-ish; at least to my ears. So the next conceptual step on my journey to completing my own narrative poem is to call it that. As I tell my son, words have power/words matter.
The three-line format of both Omeros and Prophets is fascinating. It is a definite plus in reading poems which possess an extended narrative nature. Why that is the case, I haven’t yet figured out. I started out trying to mimic that format for my own work. However, the characters rebelled. They didn’t want line cohesion. They just wanted to tell their stories in their own ragged and mismatched lines (aka free verse). Even though I am the author, I got out of their way. After all, I want the narrative written, not blocked because of an allegiance to a format that, however fascinating, doesn’t work for this particular narrative.
I read this poem a couple of days ago and keep coming back to it because Alicia Khoo can WRITE! Check out this piece of poetry and if you agree with me, stop by her blog…
Coffee, cigarettes and croissants, Parisian petit-dejeuner. Pickpockets not
optional but complimentary. You won’t see them coming until you get home
and realize your underwear is missing. I meet a curator from a museum in
Venezuela, she is here for a world conference on what to do with the
evolution and possible demise of a certain art form. I meet a young Dutch
girl and we spend many nights sipping licorice tea all
bundled up in H&M sweaters ranting about politics, sparkling by sunsets in
Chinese traiteurs moaning and grieving about lost love and how much we
adore an English chef who keeps serving us dessert and croutons he made
from pain tradition on top of Caesar salads drowned in melted grilled goat’s cheese;
a boy from Brazil who came here for two days from Barcelona and ended up
staying for three years sitting with me at night in front of the Eiffel Tower watching it glitter and talking…
I am against terror in any of its manifestations. Any of its manifestations? How many manifestations can terror have? Isn’t it strictly Islamic fundamentalist? Growing up as a black immigrant girl child in Boston during the late 70’s and 80’s, I have to say no. In fact, I have to say more than no. I have to say this.
This is how dichotomy works in the US: there is the legal economy of drugs (pharmaceuticals) and the illegal economy of drugs (meth – or whatever its street name is currently; crack/cocaine, etc). There is legal terror (the pigs) and illegal terror (Boston marathon bombing). The legal is sanctioned. The illegal is not. Everything inhumanely possible is being done to coerce our support for the reasoning behind the legal economy and the legal terror while corresponding attempts are made to coerce us into closing our minds and hearts to the correlation between the two.
If you need it said poetically to get what I’m saying: here it is.
Twin Towers
We are reflections of each other
except I’m on the top
and refuse to look down.
We are reflections
except I’m on the bottom
constantly looking up.
We are reflections
but I stand in the sun
which lights the way.
We are reflections of each other
but I stand under the moon
which lights the night.
We are twins
yet I stand tall.
We are twins
yet I crawl.
We are the twins towers
of poverty and privilege
connected
by an umbilical cord
which pumps
only bad blood.
Oh look!
A plane is coming our way.
Come, plane, come!
We are the twin towers
of poverty and privilege
and there is nothing
permanent
that one plane or two
can do to us.
We can be tortured.
The steel that structures us
can be made to scream.
Cities can be blanketed
in the ash
of our destruction.
Thousands upon thousands
can die.
What is that to us?
Once the wind clears
and time has silenced the cries;
once we have sent our own
to kill and be killed
we will be rebuilt
even higher
as a single monument
to the twin towers
of poverty and privilege.
The sun is rolling in from faraway places. I watch it reaching out, circling these bare trees like some reverent lover. I have been standing still listening to the morning, and I hear your voice crouched near hills, rising from the mountain tops, breaking the circle of dawn.
You would have been 54 today.
As I point my face toward a new decade, Martin, I want you to know that the country still crowds the spirit. I want you to know that we still hear your footsteps setting out on a road cemented with black bones. I want you to know that the stuttering of guns could not stop your light from crashing against cathedrals chanting piety while hustling the world.
Great God, what a country, Martin!
The decade after your death docked like a spaceship on a new planet. Voyagers all we were. We were the aliens walking up the ’70s, a holocaust people on the move looking out from dark eyes. A thirsty generation, circling the peaks of our country for more than a Pepsi taste. We were youngbloods, spinning hip syllables while saluting a country neutral with pain.
And our children saw the mirage of plenty spilling from capitalistic sands.
And they ran toward the desert.
And the gods of sand made them immune to words that strengthen the breast.
And they became scavengers walking on the earth.
And you can see them playing. Hide-and-go-seek robbers. Native sons. Running on their knees. Reinventing slavery on asphalt. Peeling their umbilical cords for a gold chain.
And you can see them on Times Square, N.Y.C., Martin, selling their 11-, 12-year-old, 13-, 14-year-old bodies to suburban forefathers.
And you can see them on Market Street in Philadelphia bobbing up bellywise, young fishes for old sharks.
And no cocks are crowing on those mean streets.
Great God, what morning, it’ll be someday, Martin!
That decade fell like a stone on our eyes. Our movements. Rhythms. Loves. Books. Delivered us from the night, drove out the fears keeping some of us hoarse. New births knocking at the womb kept us walking.
We crossed the cities while a backlash of judges tried to turn us into moles with blackrobed words of reverse racism. But we knew. And our knowing was like a sister’s embrace. We crossed the land where famine was fed in public. Where black stomachs exploded on the world’s dais while men embalmed their eyes and tongues in gold. But we knew. And our knowing squatted from memory.
Sitting on our past, we watch the new decade dawning. These are strange days, Martin, when the color of freedom becomes disco fever; when soap operas populate our Zulu braids; as the world turns to the conservative right and general hospitals are closing in Black neighborhoods and the young and the restless are drugged by early morning refer butts. And houses tremble.
These are dangerous days, Martin, when cowboy-riding presidents corral Blacks (and others) in a common crown of thorns; when nuclear-toting generals recite an alphabet of blood; when multinational corporations assassinate ancient cultures while inaugurating new civilizations. Come out come out, wherever you are. Black country. Waiting to be born…
But, Martin, on this day, your 54th birthday–with all the reversals–we have learned that black is the beginning of everything.
it was black in the universe before the sun;
it was black in the mind before we opened our eyes;
it was black In the womb of our mother;
black is the beginning.
and if we are the beginning we will be forever.
Martin. I have learned too that fear is not a black man or woman. Fear cannot disturb the length of those who struggle against material gains for self-aggrandizement. Fear cannot disturb the good of people who have moved to a meeting place where the pulse pounds out freedom and justice for the universe.
Now is the changing of the tides, Martin. You forecast it where leaves dance on the wings of man. Martin. Listen. On this your 54th birthday, listen and you will hear the earth delivering up curfews to the missionaries and the assassins. Listen. And you will hear the tribal songs:
Ayeee Ayooooo Ayeee
Ayeee Ayooooo Ayeee
Malcolm… Ke wa rona*
Robeson… Ke wa rona
Lumumba… Ke wa rona
Fannie Lou… Ke wa rona
Garvey… Ke wa rona
Johnbrown… Ke wa rona
Tubman… Ke wa rona
Mandela… Ke wa rona
(free Mandela,
free Mandela)
Assata… Ke wa rona
As we go with you to the sun,
as we walk in the dawn, turn our eyes
Eastward and let the prophecy come true
and let the prophecy come true.
Great God, Martin, what a morning, it will be!
The poet can make
a barren woman pregnant;
can give her,
known for her pretty smile,
a pair of pirate eyes;
yet cannot write in a land
blighted by drought
unless he puts his instrument down
picks up the vase,
places it square
on his head,
leaves his house
and walks with the millions
seeking cholera-free water.
the winged thang built her dream palace
amid the fine green eyes of a sheltering bough
she did not know it was urban turf
disguised as serenely delusional rural
nor did she know the neighborhood was rife
with slant-mawed felines and those long-taloned
swoopers of prey, she was ignorant of the acidity & oil
that slowly polluted the earth, and was never
to detect the serpent coiled one strong limb below
following her nature she flitted and dove
for whatever blades twigs and mud
could be found under the humming blue
and created a hatchery for her spawn
not knowing all were doomed
Tichaona Chinyelu 
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