"JD"

O James Douglas,
our own quadroon Moses,
should I place a violet on your grave
or hawk a little spit
for your betraying ways?
O white man, black when out

of favour. our fates braided
like rutting snakes. the cabal
that is négritude. the counter
conspiracy
to make a black northwest be. O

James Douglas,
you held the keys
like a lesser Legba—laughing, shuffling passports,
passing
in your black and white
archival stance. decked nonetheless
in what I dream as Garvey-like imperial plumage. company

man. on the winning team.
backing the right horse. the best telegony.
one thousand eight hundred and fifty-eight years from Christ.
in the wilderness. far from home
and the Caribbean
and ancient Rome. Britannia rules
the roost
and waves
a few
blacks on through
from slavery to

the freedom to be
loyal man
power for a crown expansion. man
acled to the company town
and second-hand scansion.

O James Douglas,
did you ever see yourself
in us?
did you ever stop
in your war versus the wilderness
and think

we?

*

"DJ"

stimulator of the inner simulacra
                                                turner of the worlds
lobe and hip at one with the word
                                                conduit of the herd
shepherd of the unheard
                                    hands on the vinyl
needle in the curve
                        turntable arm prosthetic
phantom limb pinning down the intersections—

jungle and house       soul and techno       euro and rhythm and blues

cues the anticipation
                        plays our feet and strums our blood
alcohol permeates the paradigmatic paradigmatic
                                                digs his fingers into static
crossfades the synth with beaten blood
                                                            like a clock of tactic
turns the syntagmatic backwards
                                                scratches ‘bring that beat back’
catches
            the loop on the off
beat       matches
                        that per minute mix like magic
makes the walls shake and the bass roll dashes
                                                                        your soul
against the table’s glasses
                                    the waitress passes

on the next round she wades in
delivers sapphires of liqueur
under black light
gets our orders all wrong
we pass and swivel and change chairs
to put the drinks wrongside right
the waitress wades back through the bass       the mix
the sound’s humidity
the tindery contagion of humanity and electricity
touching touching
and she’s gone

a hand on the texts and tomes       the keeper
spins limbs       the griot
holds in his collection the keys to corporeal
wisdom       this body of texts
these twelve inch tablets of counterclockwiseness       the old
school warmth of vinyl and tubes       the blues
in the hyperbolic hip hop and trickster electronica
more singles in the crates than scrolls in the ancient library
of Alexandria

castanets
from hinges
snare drum
from this splintered jamb
bass from pane
we kick the damn
door down       chant
from chastisement
sticks
from names that wound
like a clock past tense wound
recyclers
scavengers
swallowers
excreters
of sound

dip
the divine stylus       drop
the needle
flip
through files
for the right disc       switch
the crossfader to the left side
snare
knock knocking       lift
the right
drop it       drop
the needle on the next
cut cutting
rock
knock knock knocking
Papa       Labas
open the doors
straddle the roles
dip       your oar
of ear
or ear
d’or
pan west
then north
then on       and on
back backwards and back to back
ear we are
ear for or
rockin in
our fly new gear
our hype blue camouflage       .

*

Company

this land
            is the company’s own
ed, paid for.  I wander it.
prospecting, guessing, divining ground.  counting
days till
this transforms to home.  in

my holy ghostly breath, I whisper fissured worksongs in
to hollowness.  songs like the bones of eagle’s wings under
cutting some corner of blue.  wings
like spades cutting.  under
wind and blue.  in the in
terior, prospecting, guessing, cutting, carrying
pieces back to Victoria where
wood clapped

together makes side
walks, creaking, sounding
like scars.  my boots cracking
in the half-made streets, tacking
from saloon to general store, mud caking,
British Columbia itself flushed, hardening,
shaping.  they call

the HBC cash ‘script.’  you can ex
change it for bottled destiny.  ships in
side or sin
sold by the shot.  bottle of hot
white
gin.  bottle that could be chopped, used
for slide                              guitar.  turned
to wailing.  but ain’t.  I

just shuffle on in
to the in
terior again, an emptier of earth, shovelling,
this my dusty hustle, a dirt rustler.  three cards face
down, I shuffle
script for bread, breath, heart, preciousness.
gold an earth bone ex
posed.  I, the sluice
shaker, the cash-maker.  chasing
money money pounds almighty.  singin, workin, spinnin
a silver pan at the river’s shoulder—

            good great God Lord, give me strength
            to take another stone up from the well of stones.
            good great God Lord give me strength
            to take my heart on home someday.

panning, like a fool, for Pangaea.  hymning—

            church on Sunday, next to the white folks.
            canon-shaped choruses, Anglican-cold.
            church on Sunday, nuggets of wisdom.
            church on Sunday, niggers of gold.

my mind reaches, wishing
for the wailing of a preacher
to bring me.  to make me be
lieve, to amen in
to Psalm 137.  every

time I hear the word or
take a rock out of this here
heaven, I cave.  break.  down in
to tears to hear some
familiar speeching.  every
time I hear the word nearly
perching me.  every
time I hear the word, and in
side the word, gold

or

honey

from the rock.  like the word
made flesh.  like A
dam and Eve peopling.  multiplying.
calling one down.  and if she carrying
low, a girl.  names over
flowing.  like a walking
song­­— 

Camarilla Indigo Ellie Amaranth Epiphany Apocrypha Peripeteia Smith.

simply
seeking nothing but some un
picked-over dreams; a seat in the pew,
if not in the front, not in the back.  a psalm
or two.  and if the preacher is with
out soul, we’ll
hum to the creak of the floor boards.  sync
opate it in our minds.  tap our feet at least.  us, the shufflers

of dust.  a sister beats
the rugs of others’ houses
for a living.  dashing.  dashing.  we,
a people of the dash.  and I,
my church,
founded on the dashing stones.  whichever

pieces make it through the sluice gates shining
enough
to gather and wash and sell and melt and mould
enough
to trade for tokens or trinkets or tickets to take us
someday
good great
God Lord
all the way back where we came from.

*

Crooked Blues

a
lone buoy, beached
in a rent-by-the-day.  seein
the bones bleachin, fleshin
up
like this Pacific
wrappin
it
self in
to
these foot
prints, rinsing.
starfish.
anemones.
pools.
port sided
and derided.  in

            the flesh.  lasting four un
                                    storied centuries.  in the sea breathing
            backwards, up
                                    side down and free.  dreaming, bobbing,
            and we’ve
                                    ing.

helix of his ear catching
the rhythm.  glasses catching
other glasses.  hands open like holsters.
awake.  temperate baptism.
an eye that simmers
in the sight of any enemy.  stare you in
to sewering the cue.  just staring, just chewing on a tooth
pick.

ain’t no God
damned Moses
come to this here parting of sorrows.
ain’t no flock, no con
gregation.  ain’t got
nothing in these parts, this neck
of the woods.

ain’t no God
damned Moses come.
no shepherd
to tread
water.  ain’t no
one wringing bread or roses
from the pavement.  ain’t no past
oral poems.  ain’t no wake of blues.  ain’t no
mother wit to take the weight
of being take your pick of names.

ain’t no God
damned Moses comin.  no
ancient Greek lucky breaks, no laurel
wreathes for Negroes.  no
deus ex machina.  no
fields of satyrs, nymphs, or centres.  half
man, half.  no
image worth a damn, God.  no
door through this epidermis.  no
image worth a sucking stone.  no
nothing worth a palmed snake.
withering visuals.  fake.  rolling
the cue a
cross the table
in measure.  this game.  this cue.  wooden.  not
the cross, not
the ankh, not
the clock, but
the

CR OO K

hustle on; breakin; fifty bones on the table; eyes cuttin side; ways; spheres clackin; I; spookin; spoken; takin; this cracker for ten blue tokens; frocked proper; English; on it; side; Boston block cocked; corner pocket; exact; pocketing; cash locked; sucker licked; one; two; eye; in; tight; English;

and so;
let it be broke.

*

To Poitier

In the age of the generation that birthed me,
a new thing called “the black leading man” was born,
and one man, the only man, the man, our man

Mister

Poitier was the one, the only, the international
ambassador of Integration for the Black Diaspora, the representative
of every black on the planet. Like Atlas, Sidney,

you took the weight
of their fear
of a black planet
on your shoulders,
and got to get with Katherine Houghton to boot. You,

Sidney, in Blackboard Jungle, were the unironic Negro
of yore, the soothsayer oozing “Can’t we all just get along?”
as you got over.

You, Sidney, were the one-and-only, lonely-at-the-top, shining
example, the exception
to every stereotype, the original black-face-in-a-high-place, an ace
of spades sent to trump
and placate the Great
Unintegrated ingrates at the gate.

You, Sidney, dark, nappy and representative,
fluent and fine,
were all of us at once;
his, hers, theirs, ours, and mine.

You were cool and stoical enough
not to throttle Tony Curtis
after being chained to him for ninety minutes.

You colonized England in reverse, teaching
a classroom full of Cockney racists
how to speak BBC English.

You came to dinner and ate your fill. Veni, vidi, vici:
you came, they saw, and we got to move to the suburbs.

Sidney: I am a creation of the Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?-generation,
of the post-first-on-screen-interracial-kiss baby boom. In age and features,
I am the offspring of those flickering images.
And the disembodied voice of me
says to the pixelated image of you --
our one-man fifth column behind the Technicolor lines,
our Ebon thin end of the wedge -- this is

for you
from me
with love.

*

Loxodromic

for Marianne Nicolson and Ian Skedd

a voice is a box of reeping, a dream
a dicotyledon of speaking.
unlocking makes purchase by re-revealing
submarine cables. coloured, keening,
sung
krakens, reeling,
role and role out a whole cracking Occident.

from the moon’s floor to the bight of thinking,
from the seeding descent to the shell of telegraphy,

of Valentia Island to Trinity Bay,
of a breathless expression,
a last westless east, a leached hereless list
for this low slow
perch of hiss

as though through the throats
of a dole of punctuating rock doves --

            [Paul Reuter flew pigeons released stock threw air
            from Brussels to Aachen for a falling
            of figures on wings of flushing vestige
            through solid moulting into air threw
            temporal ink the invisible digits
            went where a whistle opts not to centre]

I stand in the penumbra of myself, my eyes
Neruda was tired of his shadow, I’m
of the response and call numb
the lung undone come mumbling up off
the floor of the ocean for no
holy corona of from.

Valentia Island to Trinity Bay
Brussels to Aachen

            [Alex Haley tracked the word across the written in
            saline keel quill stole to Juffere away
            from Spotsylvania and back to where the occult griot
            opened up in him an ink sea of pages in confidence
            evidence on the plage the word The
            African cowry game traces the helix flown long
            the god that owns the word is always a huckster
            a river a banjo a name a season a word is a skinless drum]

west I go as the crazed crows commute
east, singing at one hundred and ten km per hour “I’m
Looking Through You” twice through confused
as to whether I’m lead or backing,
Saul as the storytelling actually seems to fall
out of the sun, as I break apart from
Coquitlam, the paved name of native slaves of natives
set free too far from home to go

again, a twister of tricksters I see against
this con of a sun. they descend against
sequence and “You Keep Me Hangin’ On”
on Boundary Road northbound until the streets
drive the history back to an accident of contact.

            [shotgun to Manhatten from Montreal I read the road map as she drove
            and all I could see was lyrical time in the boxed lines flying]