Morning Breaks In The Elevator. Lemn Sissay
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of grey in fading streets
The radiating bloodshot in a child’s eye
The dark stains in her linen sheets
If you can see oil separate on water
The turquoise of leaves on trees
The reddened flush of your lover’s cheeks
The violet peace of calmed seas
If you can see the bluest eye
The purple in the petals of the rose
The blue anger, the venom, of the volcano
The creeping orange of the lava flows
If you can see the red dust of the famished road
The white air tight strike of Nike’s sign
If you can see the skin tone of a Lucien Freud
The colours of his frozen subject in mime
If you can see the white mist of the oasis
The red, white and blue that you defended
If you can see it all through the blackest pupil
The colours stretching, the rainbow suspended
If you can see the breached blue of the evening
And the caramel curls in the swirls of your tea
Why is it you say you are colour blind
When you see me?
For David Murray
It’s got to scream like a thousand shivers.
Shake down, break down, run like rivers of black fire-waves.
Rise demons and spirits from the Senegalese caves.
Rise Beloved and Seth! Rise the dead!
For this sound digs, digs down-down were the deep down
Is down with the deep down til it reaches the beaches of Goree.
Until it stabs-stabs as it grab-grabs the minute minute. Hold fast.
It flows through passages, right, like a flock of carrion crows
And stings and blows and stings and blows,
Makes sadness sing high and swing low.
SWEET CHARIOTS OF FIRE!
Quotes wrapped in rolled notes, stick into the spokesmen’s eyes.
The hoaxmen of the mainstream deep scream.
Deep Davis deep. So deep, Davis, I can’t sleep for the
Sweeping sounds of your underground. This landscape
Littered with mounds. Rise! Spirits. Rise Uncoil. Break the soil –
The bread of the dead, the salt of the earth. Rise
And flow like mercurial contours on a midnight sky. Cry.
Till the tears solidify. Fly Spirits till you become a song.
Eye to eye. Right to wrong. Untie pain. Dance again
Till juices jive down your scarred backbones.
This is the other world – live – and yet home.
This sound electrifies, soars on the edge of the head.
Waken the dead and tell them it’s here, “it’s here”,
For duppies to wind and spirits to near home – at last.
To brutify then purify then reunify the past.
Rise Malcolm, the Jews, the blues and the Soledad brothers
Shout. Bleed. Breath. Heal. Shout. Breath. Heal. Bleed
I swear I saw another slave freed, its soul freed, it gather speed,
It push me over the edge of the ledge, dredging the graveyards,
the spirits – Charlie’s playing cards on the tomb, a dead man’s womb.
Don’t you get it. It’s genetic. A musical hallucinogenic. Insane –
The music of love through the instruments of pain,
Shooting from the lip, from the tip of the tongues of the wronged.
Hang on, hang on with your finger tips. Pray you don’t slip
Cause we climbing the timing the landscape of mine
Turn this poem sideways it’s like a New York skyline
A state of mind.
And through to the solo light. Right. Solo.
How does it go? It glides like an eagle inches from the waves
With a rush that sounds like caves should sound like.
It rips through all mind-binds, breaks all seals, tears all seems - seams,
Chilled as fresh-iced screams, angry as sweated dreams.
It bites like a baby, kicks like a dog, slicker than a card trick.
Demons spit and twist as spirits hit notes high (ha!) and snare.
This is where contrasts explode and it’s natural to find
Sharpness next to curves next to shadows next to verve,
And new definitions of time. It is the blood of the vein.
The music of love through the instruments of pain.
Hot cold shy bold rock rolled blue soul. Rise!
Makes an old man young a young girl old. Rise!
It’s a slick wild blast, cast from chains of slaves.
I found my jazz. Rise. I found my jazz. Rise.
I found my jazz and was saved.
Rise spirits.
If there was ever one
Whom when you were sleeping
Would wipe your tears
When in dreams you were weeping;
Who would offer you time
When others demand;
Whose love lay more infinite
Than grains of sand.
If there was ever one
To whom you could cry;
Who would gather each tear
And blow it dry;
Who would offer help
On the mountains of time;
Who would stop to let each sunset
Soothe the jaded mind.
If there was ever one
To whom when you run
Will push back the clouds
So you are bathed in sun;
Who would open arms
If you would fall;
Who would show you everything
If you lost it all.
If there was ever one
Who when you achieve
Was there before the dream