Mixed Relationship
1 Toward evening, under the wide skies, much like Montana but only here in the Maryland counties, we are titular and free, letting ourselves lean into the solidity of a melting day, like lions up for fooling around. You see this often on Animal Planet: fine animals, proud to be instinctive beings in the throes of cavorting. I had a black lab who was at the center of things, his happiness, a furry relief. He stayed in my lap more than the skirted others: then he jumped the fence and ran off to the city of colorful memories, paved with somber highways. Such lucky ones on four legs: its managing on the two, the unwieldy two, that is the legendary chore--from the Eden of God's book or the Eden of cascading worlds, bouncing off each other--this cosmic pinball machine. But we are humans. We gave it the brand named reverence, in this case. Watching the wind is no easy thing, like the balance of power that we let go into the restless air, driven to defeat, driven to the pain of, oddly, being me. A notice of the yards that burned, that gave away our freedom; lists upon lists upon lists--the American way, as laurels are rested on and as you squeeze the delighted, eager part of me, and I scream a red tinged scream. Nothing feels as good as your flesh. It moves slowly and distinctly across my mind even when more pressing matters fill my mind; the competition is amazing and fierce; my black past, your white past--and a thousand miles of spirited walking. 2 I am an American, here due to blood, chains and fate and I am awash in your Anglo-Saxon ocean. Since making music stands ear to ear beside itself, as in roman-a-clef novels, I could stretch myself and recieve your euro-signals, the way a caretaker might, his strategy. Some are evil but still not nervy enough to do evil, but only think it, keeping the evil hidden in their hearts, displaying only when know one sees, and then only as metaphor: eyeful of eugenics, like bummed out bees. 3 The stage is set, and with it, gloomy lighting, the basis of all theatre or the messiness of human acting. Scrapping the fallacy of my grief: I interrupted you, life is like that. And when the wind thinks it knows better, we will start all over again. Toward evening. Toward common beliefs. I thought of saving it all for last, the Richard Wright haiku, how it differs from Native Son; how it lasts as a testament to the black mind, of which I don't necessarily make that limited claim, and in turn handing my universality over to a segregated god. But Wright's hopeful haikus, how they softened, for me, Bigger's crime. Sweet Mary, sweet burned up Mary. Flourishing like strong cities caught in terrible winds, beaches with skinny pales bathers who stutter, the mildness of life is lost, lost lost...so it is your utterly soft skin I request, which makes everything far less dank. It makes everything a Euro amusement park, of which I don't know if I have lost my mother or not--but I refuse to walk around screaming till I have figured it out. © Lamont Palmer
