I guess I should also say that if when I'm reading it seems
as though someone's clicking some kind of channel changer,
it's--
that's just my poetry, right?
Sometimes it's on Ritalin, sometimes it's on Demerol,
you know what I mean?
And so it does its thing.
[NON-ENGLISH SINGING]
"An ochre song called you from the corners of post existence.
You appeared a silent apparition of language
and I became pregnant with the word.
The word took flight upon crimson oceans of light.
Oceans of light screaming prayer into vermilion angles
of wrangled space.
Angled space sank like an obsidian siren
into the mad mouth of my pocket.
My pocket dangled a jangling death
from the tongue of a stone victrola.
A stone victrola coughed a murder
of crows shrieking translucent blue music.
Blue music circles the bells of waiting and insistent speech.
My speech oracles itself toward the sword of your memory.
Your memory cast at the shadows of my castrated breath.
My breath crying the kiss of an ochre song,
called you from the corners of post existence.
You appeared a silent apparition of language
and I became pregnant with the word.
And the word was born.
The word was born still.
The word was still born in the center of turbulent awakening.
The word became sunlight, carving her arpeggio
into the archipelago, a flat unfolding
blackness the word became.
The word became the shards of dead stars
that bled the egg of plants and planet the word became.
The word became the misspelled literature of tree
caught the abysmal womb of the eye.
The word became.
The word became the silent hymn now singing
in the ancient azure stone and I saw the word.
Saw the word knocked up.
Knocked up, snorting her death in syllables,
drinking her liver in the dilapidated taverns of bars
without nuance or name.
The word there, her fingers bleeding blood, red, and raw
from clawing the insides of 40-ounce coffins.
Sever the leg of the x.
Manifest itself as man, riddled 41 times
by the mystery of lead.
Left to die, eyes open watching while life
bled from a hole in the head, back to the I.
I saw the word.
I saw the word is the lying, how the hungry vowel, the dying
child dragged to death, decapitated, sodomized by wood.
I saw the word.
I saw the word as a Black boy's body resurrected
after three days from the river bottoms of a nation's
bloodied conscience.
I saw the word.
I saw the word as a man beaten mercilessly because he
loved the loins of other men.
I saw the word would manifest herself again
as female, will manifest herself again as female.
Her thighs were still slick but the slime of patriarchy.
I saw the word.
The word was entered.
The word was entered by her father so many times,
she learned to believe his sickness was sacred.
And I love the word, danced with the word.
Seven insistent sources to six AM with the word,
and the word was no longer afraid or ashamed to throw
her head back and her arms skyward
and in white flashes of teeth and sweat drenched hair,
mouthing incomprehensible mumbling
to the rumblings of unsound sound,
the words sucked my tongue as I wrote this.
The word spit hibiscus balm into my mouth.
The word and I love that night, love that night,
love that night.
[VOCALIZING]
I came into, unto, cried and died inside the word
that night, and the word grew pregnant, pregnant, pregnant,
but the word grew inside, grew inside the word.
The word gave birth.
[SCREAMING]
The word gave birth to the word, and the word
became a brown child's fingers wiping tears away
from her father's eyes.
The word became.
The word became a brown child's kisses blooming
in spite of the hurricane.
The word became.
The word became a brown child's kisses,
reaching out to embrace the brown, thin, wrinkled hands
of brown, thin, wrinkled arms of brown, thin, wrinkled women,
stirring pots of 5:00 AM grits in a cornerstone called
Mississippi.
The word lives inside of the universal shit
thin spaces between, in and exhalation.
Travels herself around the azure stone,
traverses herself around the azure stone,
trapped and encased in condominiums of skin
forgetting and refusing to remember that she is I am."
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]