Future

Windows

Posted on by Napoleon Dozier

While I was tinkering and thinking about whether a Blues guitar solo should share amicable space with an alto saxophone on a number, I was captured by this captivating photograph of Tsehai Essiebea Farrell which led me on a great train of thought for the lyrics to come. Ethiopia had been on my mind recently because of a conversation I had with a great Ethiopian Artist about an awakening he had. A revelation about his place in the world, his vocation, and the micro of the worlds within his wider perception. So much of the telling if not the toiling of life, both in our written past and living present, has much to do with our vantage point and the dubious nature of our muscle memory where matters of the tender heart are concerned. Uncomfortably numb but our eyes never tire of seeing and being seen. Or do they? Do they know? Do they look in on us and play our hand against better judgement? Our windows remain the seducer and the seduced, for perpetuity. It can seem that way. And what is seen is unseen. What is known is a mystery as I am to you. Always the stranger from eye to eye. Yet familiar in some kind of way. Never fully known.

Shoreditch

Posted on by Napoleon Dozier

I could have been anywhere but of course it would be Shoreditch. If anywhere epitomises the chase for the taste and the life that the city might afford those who would conquer it, the place would be here. I had a recent conversation about it, and we didn’t even have to break it down. If you know, you must have feasted your eyes on the wanton displays of the artful and ambitious in hopes of ‘making it’ with or without the rain that is sure to fall on the hopeless. Every shore that safe guards the dreams of the eternally green hearted and young, knows the way to the ditch. Not bitter. Possibly high. Yet still determined as all Alexanders are fated to be in the lies of greatness.

How Long

Posted on by Napoleon Dozier

The double drummer accents the beaten heart. Take a deep breath and inhale. Perspiration crawls out our eyes for what we have dared to see, enduring the years locked in a moment. Not of wonder. How much better to survive even when you cease to be necessary. Father’s words were never mine to keep. She turns the head as he learns the hard way home. Never cease to be necessary in the bullsweat of silence. Enduring love holds you hostage to freedom. A twinkle of an idea that winks at your foolishness. You earned it too. Your coffee is late. 

Up & Down

Posted on by Napoleon Dozier

He was looking up, sky was looking down cast, hunched over the lessons it was teaching the young man who was closer to eternal life than the riches of mortality.

Sky always wanted legs and would trade places to feel what it was like to stand on ground, manly and rooted to core truth, womanly and mother to the men of war. 

And Speaking Of Hands…

Posted on by Napoleon Dozier

“As to me, I know of nothing else but miracles.”

– Walt Whitman

It has been noticed that I sometimes hold mine as she does hold her own. I wasn’t aware of that until it was pointed out to me. However in my case it may have more to do with the sack of fluid pressing on the nerve which restricts the fingers and forces the hand into a mildly clenched form when not active. Or it might just be that I am my mother’s son and have inherited a physical trait of hers. 

Last December she told me that before I was born she prayed for another boy. She had read an article in a Reader’s Digest magazine titled ‘If your dreams came true’, and that was her dream. I was her dream come true. I was a little startled when she shared that with me. The idea of being someone’s dream is rich food for contemplation. Naturally I was destined to disappoint somewhere years down the line. Lawyer was not becoming of me with my head high up in the clouds. And there are some other things on the vicarious life through your children box that I didn’t tick off. But the hands have not failed to live up to the weight of dreams if not expectations. I’m not the baby in the picture and I’m not the differed dream. Just the dreamer still working with troubled hands that turn inwards but reach out for impossibilities like love. Some do wonder if fate and destiny, like some parents, have favourites. And yet children take sides too. I had only the hands of my mother so there was never a choice to be made. The bastard is fathered by the world he reconfigures. Made up mentors in books and elsewhere fill up his imagination. He chooses to love. He chooses to believe. He chooses to never give up. Bolder than stone. He chooses the hand he was not dealt and the hand he has not felt, to hold. And to be held, not held back.


When I was a child I was taken to see a Palmist who revealed something that would happen to me when I was older. It happened but I survived. Do not let people speak into existence your present or future if it is not for the good of your life. And that goes for your children too. When I was lying in bed in hospital in 2014, looking through an open window, I rejected those words spoken over my life. A hard lesson learnt. I spoke words of my own aspirations and decided I would live on. God would have the last word. And the hands of time would have to fall in line.

Moon

Posted on by Napoleon Dozier

Once upon many moons ago, I met an elderly Japanese Haiku poet in Borders on Oxford Street. A favourite hang out spot of mine in the olden days. He told me his life story in the little English that he knew. A fast friendship was forged. He didn’t have a place to stay so he would spend his daylight hours in the book store and rely on the kindness of strangers, then at night he would wrestle with the odds and chance at finding somewhere to sleep, with all his earthly belongings in a bag for company.

I’ve been thinking about sleep a lot lately. I think about the line in Act IV of Macbeth. The lady’s inability to sleep without the light around her because of her fear of the dark. I’ve been in a dark place too and I have been awake through much of it. Sleeping with the light on in the dark. What light? Sometimes I watch the moon till my eyes tire enough to turn in. I rarely sleep without some light on inside my head. But getting back to the poet. He said to me “be the moon.” What did he mean? Light a way for yourself or someone in need. Perhaps that’s not what he meant but he wrote those few words in a book of his poems that he gave to me. I still wonder what became of him.

To be the moon. To turn the tide. An idea. Light as possibility. Light as love. Uncovered by night. Unbroken by morning. Even as we mourn through dark days and tread lightly on the minds of those who are dear to us, not wanting to hurt the gentle soul that has been pressed down to the bare bones of indifference in the war of being human. Naked enough to be badly disguised by the masks that silence sees through. And does the light come through when we lie? To each other? To ourselves? And do we die if we do not grasp it? Love. Light. The Moon. Us.

Snow

Posted on by Napoleon Dozier

Snow is as unpure as my thoughts when I doubt that the bigger picture cares for none of us.

Frame the framed motion. All stand.

Earlier it rained. Still the water wasn’t deep enough to drown out the image of blood pouring out of his agony as he unsuccessfully attempted to kill himself again. I hate cleaning up blood. Even when its blood of my blood. My cell count is abnormally low but I’d give my blood to facilitate hope. Impure as the snow that falls on the filth. And settles there before dispersing into nothing.

Come softly to bed the night. Eyes lifted in sleep will greet us in the morning haste.

Healer

Posted on by Napoleon Dozier

Choosers at the begging, offer bread for cake money. Healing hand opens up to reach down into a pocket full of ashes where foundations forgot. Smile is on the honey side of life, but not a dry eye in August to ply with tears. Cheers. They’ll drink to this when they swap places in the next life that catches fire before they choose where the burn marks will reside.

Grown

Posted on by Napoleon Dozier

There I was, sitting in the not knowingness. Not a word of corner comfort. Slow burning away in deep space with a mystery. Unsolved. The reward for my unwilful ignorance was six stringed. The fairer the sex, down stroked, the bar chord is tinged with melancholy. This blackberry was sweet but so was I. All of my honey for burnt toast. The sex of it, long behind the love that held on to an idea we dreamed up. But I was blind of heart and nature is in the killing business of kindness. Venus kind, closing out after clamping up, let’s raise a toast for my burns, I’m growing out of my eyes and years.

Flares

Posted on by Napoleon Dozier

Flares will catch you. Not when you see them coming. Moving cool. Not while she occupies your precious time in mind. Dress rehearse the face you will wear when you are recognised by the heart yours mines for.

Flares will learn you well. Before you turn off the lights that bend at corners. Prosperous cheaters of nature’s law of one, hand out your fate full of the spiced choices you picked off like snipered scabs. Your lowers knew of the powers desire thrusts into language. You can’t speak it. Only of it.