a convoluted life...

A convoluted life is rife with cute rhymes turned too many times
I’ve seen the signs – chalk line stigmata of a Jesús who didn’t rise.
Don’t believe the lies – 30 pieces only buys a vacant burial lot –
A vacant Lot whose wife with an even more vacant look
Stands in horror before the artistry formerly known as Gomorrah
Still as a stylite, the premier and ultimate of the stylites
(who didn’t know their Alpha from their Omega
because they dared not ask “Am I putting myself on a pedestal?”).
The metal still will be put to the fire Whether to burn the bloody silver dross or forge the iron.
And if iron sharpens iron, I’m feeling a bit anemic.
My bulimic spirituality hurls me into a strategic duality
In which I still can’t hide behind Jekyll or Hyde
Because I’ve split too wide the divide between wisdom and understanding.
I’m scampering back and forth between the two sides of this false dichotomy,
Like a racecar going back and forth palindromically,
A palamino push-me pull-me escaping Laban’s curse in dappled confusion,
An appled infusion of sin – what’s this mess I’ve got myself in
In the beginning was the question but now all we’ve got are answers –
Cures spreading like cancer. You can’t dance around the question with words since His worship

Requires a physical response, not just emotions ensconced in saline solution,
Your teary ablutions are just a formula for ablative absolution –
Which requires a grammatical revolution when your stuck in the genitive case, and I can’t get past the accusative…
How long will it take you to realize you’re not just parsing in the wrong language,
You’re making a farce of the Logos with your anguage-lay atin-lay
Don’t you know it’s all greek to me?
Why won’t you just speak to me Dixisti!

You have spoken, and I see from the sticks broken in my hands I’m grasping at straws
But all I pull out are guffaws because my faux paws clinging, claw like a dangling clause

To my own prison of convoluted indecision built out of those sticks I was gripping

On the edge of the cliff and if I just let go what would I be missing?

Listen, it wasn’t glue I was sniffing when I got up this high
So why am I stuck with this withdrawal; falling from the fifty-fifth floor I call,
“So far so good, I think.” – Epiphany! (Being unsure just means my armpits stink.)
Don’t blink you’ll miss the important thing,
Because the landing’s already secure. I’m falling…

- in love with my Savior. What can I do to explain my desperate behavior?
I may be gasping but I can’t blame her on a lack of oxygen
With only one life to write and no right to life, I’m falling out of options,
And into labs stocked with alchemist’s concoctions –
Desperate elixirs, mixtures of false humility and grandiosity –
Fixtures that fuel me to a higher velocity with octanes that are a monstrosity,
Ventricles pumping like pistons with ferocity. Pissed on by a frog y’see, I’m pissed off by my mediocrity
Which thwarts the thumbs off my hands With warts from those damned amphibians,
I feel scammed like an Indian, who’s been Native Americaned into oblivion,
Though he can navigate his Navajo ancestry to go before Amerigo,
Because the merry-go-round of history repeats itself…
Just like my problem of being focused on my-self,
And my life, rife with convoluted rhymes times two "cute" signs:
A lamb and a cross -
The stigmatoin, of the Jesus who did rise, defy the lies with the human cost
Of 30 pieces to buy the alibi Judas only thought he’d lost,
When he hanged himself in that vacant lot, Not knowing it was for this that Joseph’s burial lot became vacant:
It is for this the 30 pieces weren’t taken: for this no more lies there forsaken:
The Body of Christ. - It does rise. Although stigmatized, he has risen!

We have risen indeed! And these eyes have seen the signs too many times
to deny the rhymes echoing through my mind

We are the branches, he is the vine.

Let me be tangled, if it’s in the divine.

Why do I learn another language?

why do I learn another language? so that I can share in your anguish;
A sorrow shared is half a sorrow; but who can share sorrow in a language borrowed?
"O si vous avez des yeux que vos yeux s'emplissent de larmes."[i]
But they don't have eyes: they don't see the harm
in everyone speaking their language atrophied as their minds languish
at your feet is the same damned dish of second hand adverbs and adjectives.
Day after day the same prison food to the non-native tongue tastes so crude

unable to express the subtlety of my mood "I'm not trying to be rude I read all the way through to Jude
but there was no Revelation I was expecting some kind of elevation

but you gave me French when I needed Haitian." I can't describe the sensation

that I saw when I sang
"Chamo Kwoni gibala”[ii] with Nairobi’s orphans
I can't describe the sensation that I saw when I sang
"Nkosi sikelele Africa"[iii] with Desmond Tutu
I can't describe the sensation that I saw when I sang

"Kwaze kwa wonakala"[iv] with a Kenyan woman exiled in Columbus

I can't describe the sensation that I saw “Jesu da ho ya”[v]

I can't describe the sensation that I saw “Hol no mbitiye da”[vi]

I can't describe the sensation that I saw…
because I didn't feel it, except vicariously Oh how the mother tongue must hang precariously
on the lips of a motherless child who's too scared to sleep.

yes a sorrow shared is half a sorrow weeping may remain for a night
but rejoicing, tomorrow. ‘cause the other half of the proverb's also right:
Joy shared is twice a joy;

but how can I, a goy, respond to the holocaust,

How can I a white boy respond to the lives lost
in slavery, imperialism conquest and colonialism?
I can not share your joy or your sorrow,
unless I can learn to respond tomorrow:
“Αντίνο', ου μὲν καλὰ καὶ εσθλὸς εὼν αγορεύεις:

τίς γὰρ δὴ ξεινον καλει άλλοθεν αυτὸς επελθὼν

άλλον γ', ει μὴ των οὶ δημιοεργοὶ έασι,

μάντιν ὴ ιητηρα κακων ὴ τέκτονα δούρων,

ὴ καὶ θέσπιν αοιδόν, ό κεν τέρπησιν αείδων;

ουτοι γὰρ κλητοί γε βροτων επ' απείρονα γαιαν.

πτωχὸν δ' ουκ αν τις καλέοι τρύξοντα ὲαυτόν .”[vii]
to Antinous because each one of us is an Odysseus
and it should not be so odd to see if your Odyssey extends from عربي [viii]

that I should be the one to insist
that لا إله إلا أﷲ[ix] is not bla-bla-bla-bla-bla-bla-bla
I do not envy the chanteur Kabylie

whose شهادة [x] is on lien his tongue has been ripped clean
out of his "dirty mouth" so that now no matter how loud he shouts
it can only be in the language of his oppressor who has tenure, though he's not a professor
I guess you're starting to understand the plight of the Donatist confessor.
maybe he's the one who refused to say monsieur.

that may sound a bit anachronistic but I pray the one whose triptych said "Deo Laudes"[xi] in Latin cryptic

will reach to heaven by and by…
Why? Why?
Why am I being so obscure, that I am just talking to myself? I
don't see eye to eye with anybody else.
Except for you, poor beggar in dirty road-worn rags

and you, orphan, whose soccer ball is made of plastic bags

and you, haggard priest whose brow sags;

for you exiled woman and for you, my Guinéen friend

but most of all it is for the imazighen[xii] who again and again
have been broken and tokened and told then
that their men and women are just children
whose sandbox has outgrown them.
Let me share in your language your anguish,

your languishing vanquish… but let us also share in the banquet:
"Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of my enemy. . .
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord
forever."

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[i] “O if you have eyes, may your eyes fill with tears” – Chants Kabylie 1982 Anonymous Algerian Poet

[ii] The opening line of a traditional Kenyan song in Luo (?) a Bantu language spoken by a minority of Kenyans. The song is about a monkey stealing fruit; an arrangement by Mwashuma Nyatta ’02 was performed by the Kuumba Singers in the spring of 2002.

[iii] “God Bless Africa” – Xhosa, the opening line of the South African National Anthem

[iv] First line from a Swahili Christian song – “When He comes I will be like Him”

[v] Christian song in Kikuyu, a Kenyan language spoken by the largest ethnic group of Kenya

[vi] “What is your Name” – Pulaar, a West African Language

[vii] “Antinous, no fair words are these thou speakest, noble though thou art.

Who, pray, of himself ever seeks out and bids a stranger from abroad,

unless it be one of those that are masters of some public craft,

a prophet, or a healer of ills, or a builder, aye,

Or a divine minstrel, who gives delight with his song?

For these men are bidden all over the boundless earth;

But no one is likely to ask a beggar who will only worry him.”

-Eumaios, Odyssey17.381-387 (transl. A.T. Murray, Loeb Edition)

[viii] ‘arabi – representing any arabic speaking country

[ix] la ilaha illa allah – there is no god but God

[x] shahada – the Muslim statement of faith (which includes the above)

[xi] “Praise God” – Latin, the watchword of the North African Donatist church

[xii] name of the indigenous population of Northern Africa, meaning “free [people]”

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