Month: Oct 2015

Has It Come To This?

Posted on by Napoleon Dozier

“History without myth is surely a wasteland; but myths
are compelling only when they are at odds with
history. When they replace the need to make history,
they are a dead end, and merely smug.”

                            – Greil Marcus

What did you see?

Ghostly guitar, keeping determined, uncertain time
with the drum, like a scorned staccato lover,
preceeded by a mournful horn crying for yesterday and
tomorrow, crying for real, crying, crying for
something real, trying not to die, twinkling,
twinkling our little star, piano tip-toe as soft as
snow, delicate as life, jazzy organ stirs to rise our
love, twirls her hair, reminds us of moments and
kisses, memories and music lingers and why we only die
twice at most, but then love outlives us all, even in
our worst dressed season, before the slang turns to
something new or loses interest with you, and what
does it profit a man to gain the whole world and you
know the rest, and the sound of spirit and soul
struggling to exist, to articulate, to comprehend with
a sure hand, and naked expression can be messy, and
misunderstood, like emotions can behave in ways we
have yet to learn, like change we have yet to embrace,
with strange faces, freaky fingers, frank and fearless
but dare not touch the sacred things, wash your hands,
right or left, it seems too hard to go deep without a
guide, and do instructions always make right if the
root is wrong, and pains the brain beyond the
realisation that it has come to this…or has it? Was
he dreaming? Or was it a reality of dreamy
imprecision, sensually welcomed into the epic fantasy
art of living a love that never existed in the
material world, but who would deny him the twisted
pleasure of romantic pain; the brutal beauty of a
floating mirage, like a cloud hovering just above his
head (a grey halo), walking wounded awakens dormant
desire from the shackles of dangerously repressed
passion, fool-hardy though he may be, but hardly a
fool on a hill he never climbed, and guilt is a
mountain we have all climbed, but the glory of love is
the peak turned upside down, inside out and all the
way round.

See what you did?

A Refrain

Posted on by Napoleon Dozier

Tomorrow will not be a work in progress before a refrain,
(before) the rain settles, and snow falls,
and they raise a hand to strike my cheek or wipe my
brow. I hold the pearl in my eye (the other hand), and
plant the seed of graceful song, and rub the soil
between soft palms (when we see eye to I), before
lost trains of thought, we wore our best years at a
distant glance, and thought we’d meet on Andalusian
hills, to dine with dreams we didn’t make, to share
stories we haven’t lived, and paint pictures we could
scarcely imagine.

Tomorrow will not be an excuse for today’s unfinished
business, talkin’ bout how good it feels to get another
chance at life’s poker table, to play your five
stringed instrument, like a child making three special
wishes by a fountain, with your lungs pumped full of
hot air, and the mercy of the wind at the back of your
neck, to dabble again, and maybe with a little lady
luck, razzle, dazzle a fortune born of sweat beads and
high blood pressure, and fly you away on a ready made
bed of thornless roses, with a song in mind for when
you cross over, hoping that the hill won’t roll over,
when tomorrow strikes you and your waterfall
resolutions, slippery, just as quickly, money like
water trickles through fingers, pressed together,
pockets shut tighter than fists, breath held longer
than destiny’s late shifts, but you don’t feel much
younger than first love, now dare you ask older,
wiser, brother, sister, friend in disguise, what the
wind behind your back is saying, when she ain’t
blowing you away. The voice I hear says, “What you
don’t do today will not deliver you tomorrow”, as
surely as one day bears no resemblance with another.
Tomorrow will be decided today.

Neon Blue

Posted on by Napoleon Dozier

Neon Blue, dark room, hypnotic, swirling figures, soft, loose, playing in his mind, or is it just the fading gleam of impossible light falling out of his eyes? He loses himself in the blur, the crack on the wall, the silent space between his thoughts and the spoken words which escape his mouth. She kisses him violently. He observes her well, because she will not pass his way again. They never do, and he reasons that it’s better not to know why. There is so much knowledge in this world, and yet too little is understood. The woman behind the painted face must be deeply wounded to need him so much in the saliva sea of desire, where tongues tease and wrestle to gain advantage like an apocalyptic gender war. If she were not so aesthetically pleasing to his primordial senses, he would not have embraced her cavalier and unorthodox approach to an introduction. Still he wonders what could have tormented her to the point of surrender, as she collapsed her arms onto his broad shoulders to bear the burden of a slender body of secrets, revealed only in the language of faint gestures which escaped her countenance subconsciously. At the very least she would pause for breath, but not while he breathes new hope and life into her womb. She is kissing him but he is not kissing her. Swirling, turning, spinning inside out, head upside down, she wants to believe in him. She needs to believe that her kiss means more than what it really is. In her desperation she fails to accept that a kiss is not the truth, but merely what one would wish to be true. He is holding her firmly; hands wrapped tightly around her waist. His fingers will soon be nervously tracing the curve of her backside. He didn’t plan on getting turned on this early in the night, but he cannot deny her what he thinks she wants. He is still too fresh and needs to be intoxicated, so that he can steady himself and get a grip on his manhood. She has already stolen his mind, he won’t make it if the shaking doesn’t stop. They share another sharp intake of breath before continuing their ice dance like faceless shadows clothed in their earnest pretence. His calloused heart is caught up in the web of the fantasy at play, cowardly trying to resist the flames of passion, but spurred on by the fatal flaw in every man. Creeping down the lower levels of his esteem, he fears he is not a Man. Of all the strangers that dance in the neon blue light of dark rooms, why was he chosen? What does she see in him? And why is it so clearly the first and last time that they will ever hold each other this way? They cannot see what they are doing, and they do not really believe in the moment they are creating. But on the surface there is something more beautiful about the black lie they are living, which transcends the fears and insecurities that men and women impose on each other. It lives in the ignorance that cocoons them from the pain of uncompromising and irrepressible truth, and the myth of a merciless, timeless King.

Small Death

Posted on by Napoleon Dozier

Mother tongue is cool, and you can be the conscience of my indiscretion, or the remedy that triggers a poet’s latent talent out of the comfort zone and complacency of a reclining chair. Dormant, but not dead. Though he used to die a small death everyday, he thinks it would be best to live a lot, stop the rot from dot to dot like her heart forgot to die again today. And now we come to you and I, and now we wonder how and why? Wondering how high…is the drop? How long…till it stops? Its not the pain that troubles you, cause death serves a purpose of its own agenda, though I’d sooner be a warning sign for danger than the fool that got in the way of a stranger called Providence. And if it bites like last winter, and sister warm blood tastes better, then you should know that the fraud will be the block buster ’till further notice, but notice how your past reminds you of how far away your future cast you, drawing doodles with your minds eye, can’t see too well with your past life, and dearly beloved is a dwelling place for the restless, rowdy like premature ambition, a mission statement wears your age with contempt, crowded with sentiment on insecurity highway, down below, the parched valley raises up another question mark to consider in cubic shapes of monochrome colour, yeah underneath that red Sun, rising to fall, waking to sleep through fog, the distance, the drift, and your wondering how high is the summit of your desire, to climb back up from your small death, on the string of the loose change that barren land loaned you, the countless grains of Sahara’s sand timer tickles the unfancied soles of your feet into motion, defeats stagnation, anticipates the storm, marches on like the aftermath of the Somme, but will not carry the dead on depressed shoulders, and empty stomach.

REMARK 54

Posted on by Napoleon Dozier

What’s it about? 
Maybe its about remarks made about you
or remarks made about me.
It might be remarks made about Thierry Henry not being
able to deliver at crunch time, or remarks about the
way you look, the way I speak, the sound I make, the
colour of my skin, the colour of my sin, remarks about
rumours and lies and stuff like that, and
possibilities, and enemies you thought were friends
indeed, and vice versa to infinity. It may well be
remarks about the signs of the times, the calamities
of the minds, too great to think alike, but fast enough
to fall too quick into sinking sand, the chaos and
disorder of the disorder, the great tribulation, the
impending doom, the climate change that warms our
Winters, but carbon anoints a singer, a voice pollutes
the air. Sometimes we need to clear our throat of
remarks which poison the unchanging heart, the
unbreaking heart and the heart-broken, yet still love
remains, bolder than stone, heard what he say, Sly
talkin’, start me up a resolution before the year is
out, cause that old time revolution won’t do, when there’s
a riot goin’ on, but you and I aren’t fighting, when the
pain inside is biting, when the pain inside is hiding,
when you and I aren’t talking, when the blue in you is true. And we didn’t need to go to school to learn that things unsaid say more than the things we say, and language has nothing
to do with words, cause them big words are always
getting in the way, between our eye to eye, and you
can’t really see me behind those adjectives, and I
can’t find you inside your metaphors, but when you
speak silence i’m right there with you, i’m loving
you in mute, i’m watching you in high definition, i’m
hearing you in surround sound, and I realise we don’t
know each other very well, and we don’t like the
same music, we don’t walk to the same beat, grooving
down a one way street that leads to a
dead end job? Relationship? And we keep on keepin’
on with those time tested excuses, but we keep on non the
less, cause we know how to play the game, and how to
light that fancy flame, and how to jive with that crazy
talk about everything else that’s hip, artfully
skipping around the danger zone of emotional contact.
“Oh you look so good. You dress very well.” Does it take
you long to paint your face so pretty? To wear your
designer lies so fiercely? To tighten cheeks and button lips? To
ride the smile and the frown so easy? To look so suave
and cool? To stand so tall and proud? To raise your
head as you raise your glass? To drink it all in and
hold your stomach tight? And laugh out loud, those
reconfigured tears of a clown? Remarks about this,
remarks about that, remarks about him, remarks about
her and what you heard or didn’t hear, and what he
said or didn’t say, or what they did or didn’t do, and
everything in-between. Tell your mother, tell your
father, tell your brother and your sister, tell your
husband, tell your wife about your mother and your
father, and your brother, and your sister, and your
husband, and your wife, and the enemy behind the word
you said or didn’t say, and what she heard or didn’t
hear, and what they did or didn’t do, and everything
in-between, and upside down, and inside out, and why
you lied, and why she cried, and how we tried, and how
we died, and not just once, but with everything that
leans against us. Was it our past, and the old clothes
we keep for comfort? To remind us, to endear us to
dry-cleaned memories, souvenirs to soothe our worries
away, to dynamite our distractions of fear, the future
shock of losing out at the poker table, just like last
week, just like yesterday, and the shame still
lingers. We committed no crime, but we are guilty of
losing our innocence, and at the same time guilty of
dreaming too much with bad grammar, and poor
punctuation, without paragraph, and weak narration,
yet still we dare to speak of the possibility of
impossibilities. Of how far we can see. Of how
remarkable we can be. And what becomes the world if
nobody speaks of remarkable things? And what becomes
your world? Remarks about this, remarks about that,
and what you heard or what they said and everything
in-between, inside out, upside down and all around,
everything you did and didn’t do, everything you are
and never were.