Survival

Rice

Posted on by Napoleon Dozier

“You’re jealous of God!” That’s what the voice inside his head told him to say to me. Of course its a lie. Why would I be jealous of a sick man who is not God but is constantly being told that he is by the demons that hang out in his mind? Exactly. However the tormented still need to be fed. I made rice so that we would at least agree on something. He had two helpings of boiled hope on a plate. It doesn’t matter if my brother remembers that it was made by me. What does matter is that he survived today’s attempt on his life. If he was God i’d blame him for his insanity but that is not the case. Madness doesn’t need a disclaimer. Nor does pain. Nor does love. Nor does charity. Nor does mercy. We do what we can and sometimes what we must. And in between we eat what is cooked. Unceremoniously. Circumstance usually stays for dinner. God has a plate too.

Two Years

Posted on by Napoleon Dozier

A tower on fire burning lung after the flames were put out and the blood cries out. No Cain at the site of the murder. No justice. Just us. Souls taken up higher than the smoke, fly down to watch the mourners arise to a new day with their heads held up by rage and despair, and hearts bowed down and bowled over by the agony and incredulity of what happened. What really did happen?

We who knew the dead watched the conversation turn to the custody of the truth and the enquiry about the meaning of an event that forever changed the world of those who were loved and unloved in life, death and the afterlife. An afterthought in the aftermath, is the price of life that is haggled in the courtroom. Payment for the life of the dead, is a future for the children of Grenfell. But is it money? Or is it the mercy of confession? A courtroom of lies still engulfs the air, we share breathing space in the now. Two years dead and burried, yet the living have not the forecast of rest. And God be judge of the classified red ink on white papers.

 

Baldwin

Posted on by Napoleon Dozier

Today is a wedding ceremony. A marriage of possibilities. My cousin has exchanged vows and time will study and tell what it has seen, heard and known under God. Black life like black bodies have long been a surrealistic feast for the voyeuristic eyes of fetishists and fantasists. Joseph Conrad could not open his eyes even behind the safety of his pen, to straddle his imaginative reconstructions of the monolithic burden bearers in the heart of darkness situated in the continent of his mind’s perception.

Baldwin generously invested the deformed and fragmented faces of exotica with the unusual idea that they were worthy of being depicted as fully human, even in a foreign land. The continent is not a country. And a country in this context is not a geographical destination. The poetry of Baldwin is not merely the words sentenced to a page but rather the lives affirmed by his words dancing to the tune past the margins of hate and redeemed by love. In his writings love is the great pacifier even when it sets fire to our expectations and challenges our notions of who is worthy of grace, and the horrors that transgress the invisible inhabitants who are generational custodians of a manifested multifaceted curse with wings.

Barry Jenkins painted the poetry of James Baldwin beautifully in ‘If Beale Street Cold Talk’. Next week lovers around the world will serenade each other with cards, gifts and kisses flavoured with wine and chocolates. Babies will be conceived. Lies will be ever more creative. Truths with be earnest and unsparing. Death will still be in business. Card or no card. Life will go on. Love in its bittersweetness covers the multitude and will endure the fall out. A torn page is the pity that a chapter can afford to lose.

“Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word “love” here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace – not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.”

– James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

Wettest Eye

Posted on by Napoleon Dozier

Wettest eye watering skinned brother on the inside, arachnid crawling out, side eyed, hunger bites the heart of fear, and the killer, mother knows best, knows not the fright that drives him to stomp small creatures and their secrets, like vaporous confessions that rise up with death.

Smoke city. A body burns, like nations, like bodies burning nations. Iraq hid in flames of refutation.

Web swinger, entrapped in the ganda, hung to dry on the rope that pulled him up to the measure of Spider men, climbed into company love of misery and a tail wagged for the milk of magnesia and human kindness, as mythical as the love that murders with good intentions to broadcast.

Charity. Just spare me the charity of words like the vain in life who speak of the ignoble dead, fishing in blood rivers. Dead as purpose of Pompey. Restless in peace.

Patriots

Posted on by Napoleon Dozier

Patriots are foreigners too. Like poets. Dead ones seem to outlive the living. Their words are the ideas that dreamers cling on to for a fictive future.

The living are dreamers at dawn. Walking on corn toes. Curved. Running the zig zag. They are pragmatic with crayons. And they laugh loud and unclear like the noise they speak.

Home is where the heart is heavy. If you cut through the chatter and chit it’s all bullsweat. Now if you knew where to bury the living, I’d hand you a shovel. No words. No songs. No honour to purchase.

They’ve got that one day exclusive on offer. Get your love at half the pain. All foreign currencies accepted. Faces are guilty but eyes are blameless.

Forged

Posted on by Napoleon Dozier

Hamburger aroma of weed smoke arising, latching onto hipster attire, Engineer’s banter louder than boom bap mutations, mute DJ slaying the Latin, cap on forward, sideways glancer catching a vibe, luscious lady, copper smooth, eyes find mine in hers, stepping out my mind to mingle with hers, just a sec or two, not a game, mature as you and I tonight, wrinkled and frank, digesting the jest, next questions begat more doubts than assurances, grown folks are childhood inventions, nurtured natures and fallen angels run the roost, while tall babies wag tails with tales, I’m talking and listening, I’m watching and fiddling with your thoughts and my attention spans the expanse of your face, the crevices, the creaky foot path across your mind and mine, gapping the bridge when I’d rather be inside of you, twister sister, mind over mister, feline recline, I’ve got you forged onto me.

 

 

Calella

Posted on by Napoleon Dozier

20170630_121244.jpgCalella leaning, tilting for tips, toes standing up for the streets, with bended hearts so hip to hope. Don’t stain the carpet when you cushion the fall. Don’t rumble young man, and don’t call the law. Don’t scratch the considerate air that carried your balls higher than the crawling Spiders you fear, and the Tuesday flings that booted you out on the curb of slithering desires, bouncing your love into a glass of shampain. Who’d be a patriot for all the basket cases and fresh faced beauties bolted to sleep in their bubbles of pantomime glee. I got you.

 

 

Niap

Posted on by Napoleon Dozier

Niap is a leftie loving bruised cheek. Sober side right will make a grown man cry for mercy. Niap is a disfigured sum of money. Run from the left only to be slighted by oppositional cool. Both sides know drama but Niap swells like old love that filled the belly. You like new love that promises you its promiscuous Moon made high and all the honey you can eat for a day. Niap won’t ever leave you. Everlasting Niap, the darling of foreknowledge, flogs the joy out of pleasure principles, you’ll have to chew on the right side of your heart in the knighted morning. Save some freedom for me.

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Apostle

Posted on by Napoleon Dozier

Sainted night. Pablo’s streets are wise to the cold. Awake to the lights that stalk our shadows. Not a soul to sell. Peepers shut up shop too. I made merry with the easy lay of Death’s past. We jumped over jargon. Word weary on the dry eye. Trouble likes to talk. Leg of lamb awaits the victor. Laid down in your head for a little while. Tried to find you. Pull your straps up, when your done eating the remains of the day. It might be for Balletic fools gold, that the poor courier tarrys long. Easy going as you lay your head on the pillow of song that is cast out of her like the gloom. Night in shining armour, you’ll tempt the morning out of her when she sees you. Hands free. Wired up to Heaven.

 

As I Am Today

Posted on by Napoleon Dozier

Like daylight on wings, a year has passed. Facebook didn’t bake me a Cake but its cool. A lot of small deaths have happened since that day. Usually the face stays the same but I find that the neck changes. Oh and I’ve discovered more strands of grey amidst new faces and adopted words. There have been a lot of changes in relative terms and even my own eyes have concealed pertinent things from me when its been necessary to do so. The main thing about the passing year is where I find myself in my ongoing story. I’m happy to say that after a year, a deep wound has healed. The dressing is finally off, and the emotional scar matches the one on my forehead. Its distinctive but not too big. I can’t say for sure that time rubbed the salt in it. Time and I don’t have that type of relationship. Its hands off and head up. I’d say living has a lot to do with the choice one makes to dig a grave or dig the foundation on which to rebuild after the fire which has all but consumed the life behind the projected image that is perceived by everything that leans against it. Long sentences be damned and sentenced to death but not so easily. Death is as passionate as life, but its not as picky. The meat and potatoes of life is first you do what you must to survive. Then once that mountain has been conquered, you do what you must to protect your heart (your love). Then you live forward. By limp, or by crawl. If the back is bent, and that hump is conspiring to keep you down, then you find something to hold you up and steady. Then you walk. In time you may run again, and flying isn’t as far gone an idea if you can pick up speed. Love is a kind of regal audacity. The lighter the load on the heart, the heavier the love. I’d like to believe that I still have the capacity for the heavy love that knew no boundaries. Once was. To see. Once again. To be.fb_img_1475612103961