Thursday, December 28
THE BLACK OUTSIDE
Relying a little less on the odd language we’d been left inside
we turned back to feeling: —
more moan, more mumble.
Stuck in the soulless market, it’s debridement of language
from meaning, we still had soul: —
glory after we’d come to a place
without glory, tenderness after we’d been made symbol
of brutes. Sweet & soft mumbling: —
the language of antiquity, of gods
stretching toward other gods, pleading for the love that deserves
an organ, a horn section:—
Al’s whine connecting
our unrequited love to our unrequited history. Let him riff
there for as long as it takes: —
sound to cross the sea,
for the time it takes my grandmother, losing her memory, to talk
about the weather: —
as a way to slow down a little
& find our music, to echolocate as plant-humans, to feel our way
towards each other: —
in the Black Outside. Song
from the solar plex slipping past the tangle of tongues, soothing
the clockheart singing the end: —
my hands the only hands to touch
its hours. Let time wait on the band playing in a bar on Beale Street
with no concept of time: —
let it understand Black song
as ubiquitous. Blackness as ontological surrealism. Language as a thief
that has disappeared: —
souls only sound can restore:—
Dear beloved, when you
get right down to it, when
you’re feeling lonely: —
(Joy Priest)