Authors: Saul Williams
The earthquake hit
Your husband gives you
a
bit of water
Poured through a small hole
You see light for the first time in over a week
That night
Dusty rescuers
Pass your stretcher
Carefully
Hand to hand
Over the hills of broken brick
You are one of the last ones found
Alive
Your husband would not give up
Stupid reporter at the scene
Shoves a microphone into your face
Asks you if you knew you would survive
“Of course, why not?!” You say in perfect English
And then to the amazement of all
You start to
sing!
An IV in your arm as you carefully
Get into your car
Your grateful husband
Drives you all away so
You can see for yourself
What has happened to your island
After two weeks
An 85-year-old woman is found
Under the rubble of a church
She is frail but alive
Stained-glass windows not shattered
And then another miracle
Under a house
A skeletal six-year-old boy
Is found
He is smiling!
His face dusty
He takes it all in
His arms are open wide
Everyone at the scene cheers
He cheers
He is passed to his crying father
Who never gave up
in spirit scrapping seafloor merriment
i arrive
wild
with
banshee reverie
seeking beyond
broken securities coveting access to my body
beyond
salvaged excrement
and fingers groping for self in mirrors of me
i stand in spirit ruling she body
shipping unseen
carrying burnt and ashen fears ogling to nest
wearing shards of smiles shattered yesterday
so flowers reach
i arrive standing here
spitting from bone black bones
chamber of
solar symphonies
hunting flesh's grief
i tell no tales
i tell knowings of wreckage and gold
so sing me, sing me
pursing dawn's reverie
in
spirit mourning
exhumed seepage
i stand keeping space for
dream
s undealt
release
and seek beyond
secluded safety
where communal sutures are necessity
when child is a dead field
none wants to turn nor cultivate
for fear incapability and that she won't harvest
i arrive rooted resilient
spiriting heart's burst against rooting timbers' sway
where presence barnacles low tides
surviving to sound of her
sea calls
in response she clings
a chamber of solar symphonies and bone black bones
hunting flesh's grief
i tell no tales
i tell knowings of wreckage and gold
so sing me, sing me tilling dawn's reverie
in spirit sucking sweet of bees, i stand predisposition
breaking decay,
drafting
nectar from my skin
and momentum of
wind
where ancestors keep
seeking beyond
padded throats hoping for something without claiming
what do i call her
whatever i name
here,
summoning
spirit of undoing
a past pattern mistress reading feelings for belief
i shine
existence
with an unbound rag
and seek beyond
suicide's repetitive plight
hunting flesh's grief from bone black bones
a chamber of solar symphonies
i tell no tales
i tell knowings of wreckage and gold
so sing me, sing me bringing dawn's reverie
in spirit feeding fury, i arrive hidden
a panther
carving
hymns of being and light
seeking beyond
shame housing secrets silently knotted in plastic
and stuffed in pipes of ovaries
growing beyond surgical cuttings
as above so i below
i pray to woman i know
in spirit tossing change
elevating broken hyperboles
misnamed conformities
seeking beyond
kneeling or prostrate
opening keys and shifting biology
i arrive here, standing
spitting from bone black bones
a chamber of solar symphonies
hunting flesh's grief
i tell no tales
i tell knowings of wreckage and gold
so sing me, sing me
i am dawn's reverie
They appear in the empty morning
thin blue whips, branching veins in their wrists,
the sweat and blood of Jesus on their tongues.
Suddenly everything is so comforting:
lakes frozen to the bottom,
a forest cathedral
,
a trembling
voice
that sings.
Frozen pop canticles,
written in wormwood tomes,
measured on moral metronome
,
played by the dollhouse quartet;
Little maiden blue, burqa blessed,
she holds
monstrous
stories told
in the spaces of her
lyre
; infantile,
how her voice is muffled by the cloth
Somnambulist siren
, she wonders
whether the screams or the carapace,
crunching shell splintering,
count as musique concrete
Cordial contessa, she sings blessedly
of cinematic corpses laid on silver platters
and how the cracked light reflects guilt
on the soles left by the entrance.
Salome,
come
twirl in furs from Venus,
complete this revolution
of love,
take a bullet from erotic submersibles
as they
come up
and over your plaid skirt
I cry every time I watch the scene where you burst
through
the
church doors
Singing louder than the choir hired to replace you, Hummingbird.
As if it were that easy to erase you like blackboards after school
You left permanent fingerprints on your father's heartbeat
The day you reached
through your mother's insides
and had to be pulled out arms first
What a peculiar melody you are
often mimicked but not quite duplicated
Gospel nursed you on her tit
But the gossip of church folk taste worse
than that of spoiled milk
Collection plates could never buy you the sequin gowns worn by Billie and Ella
So with the
passing
of each season you grew salty
borrowing the sharp tongues of
neighbors to butcher your
name Sugar
forever to be known as Shug
The beckon of Big cities never reminded you of your surname,
called you whatever you
saw fit
Detroit, Chicago, and New York found your southern
hospitality charming.
A foreigner
amongst family
when your flesh tones
mirror a crowded room
The first time you heard yourself on wax you were a puddle
on the recording room floor
The first person you rang, your father
When the butterflies
escape
d your throat the dial tone swatted them away
A Daddy's girl never
fully
recovers from heartbreak
So you sing the Blues
Bare yourself naked every time you step foot onstage
Belting each note from your abdomen
in hopes of luring back the winged creatures that
once belonged to you.
You've never been monogamous in your adult life teetering back and forth between Jim,
Jack and Jameson
Some might say you have a problem, call it daddy issues
But their words fall flat.
They are out of tune with your nature
How sad it is
To be revered by everyone except those your heart
bleeds for the most
Funny how you taught Ms. Celie every lesson you refused to learn
Forgiveness is a gift not forced but earned
One day,
a righteous indignation will rise up in you
and past-life yous will fill your shoes and walk down familiar roads un-traveled
the ancestor's spirits will cry out a Negro Spiritual that lines your uterus with rebellion
your guardian angel will deflect the darts
of those whose business this is none of
and when you walk down the center isle with no groom in sight staring at eyes that blinked
you into existence
Speak the peace that has finally returned to your countryside
Wrap the branches of your fig tree around that which gave you breath
and know, that you are finally
Home
I was born into a Disney menagerie with not a single goal.
It is 1967 anybody
with an amp
could have an ambitious hallucination.
When I wake from the cell of my dressing room, I feel the bird's flight
in my body. The wing pang, lifting heave, locating itself above
my slumped shoulders and shoveling vines with my single voice.
It's just
a voice
, brunette with bangs, floating, dirigible,
ready to explode
but can't. So I snatch a pair of drumsticks and love
their suspicious feel
in my hands. Secretly, I want to smash glass.
I hate the color of an obedient deed so why do I sing its octave?
Notes that open in compassion, ribcage propped apart. My heart
lodged
to
o close to my ribs. I'm a tree-limb steady in a high ball
generation of
acid
and Joplin slang.
From the surface of a mirror, my body emits hues
of yellowish orange. I hear the click of distasteful tongues
disturb my perfect
silence
. The motion of twirled knitting sticks
and the way yarn licks the air as it snarls towards me.
The crocheted mass,
an exquisite
dangle from my lap.
That's the music that's mine. I don't want sex, just synchronicity.
There is a stadium grace when I sing. Sand and the streets
breathe the same
cacophony
of sing-song jangle and station wagons.
I'm able to fill
a
cavity
with a 4/4 drum riff wedded
with the
throat call of longing
.
The camera adds 30 pounds. But pounds of what?
30 pounds of silverware
30 pounds of fan mail
30 pounds of stroganoff
My
heart beats
so fast I enter slumber. I hear
the
winged timpani
in my chest. I enter a sleep . . . A black note
floods the swollen roof of my mouth, an empty beehive home,
a Los Angeles suburb . . .
If only the skeleton of
a
girl like the white key of a withering
piano
could sing. An ambulance siren . . . that
bird's contralto
.
My mother picks me up. Karen, I'm sorry . . .
The clock of attachment stops.
Having been a child-star actress is a
double-edged
dildo.
(Insert a metaphor about getting fucked here.)
No one should have to look back to see
the bright future
ahead of them
. The future holds
then pushes you
a
way.
So I'm done
trying to muzzle the
sterilized bevel of
a best friend.
I'm gonna tie those pamphlets for
cures
around this needle
and wave the white flag.
I just want to lean into the duct tape
this vial is holding up to my mouth.
Cut
creativity's circulation
off.
Get some rubber nooses together and gang-bang my arm.
Growth has out
grown
me.
I
'd rather
n
o
t
be a w
o
rd
associated with weeds and dicks.
I'd rather spend all that
future brightness
looking up L
a
Brea's
sparkling
skirt at
dawn
.
Hitchhiking up that boulevard's famous slit,
catching a ride with some opiates and trading spit.
I've heard Junk is starring in Scorsese's next movie.
This syringe knows people.
Forget my Mother and Father in all this.
They are
a language
that died on
an ancient tongue
.
I'm going solo now. I'm going to floss my teeth
with the pubic hair of the Hollywood night air,
memorize my lines before I snort them.
I w
an
t to know what it feels like
to die in the
arm
s of missing limbs.
T
o f
ade to black,
then fade
th
r
ough
tha
t
.
To get on my knees and crawl
on all fours into character.
To end an act in my own skin,
covered in
someone else's
skeleton
.
I used to live with a bottle of whisky and my panties crumpled on the floor of some man's hard wood. That is not to say that I was always drunk or that he was just a man and not Billy, Jim, or Ben, sometimes Kathy, Mia, or Beth when I was twenty.
I used to remind myself that I was living,
a modern goblet cradled in
my palm like messiah-made Vermouth; Or, as if the glass were a
breast
waiting to feed me.