Tales Read online

  Their teeth. Their smiling. Shit it turns yr stomach.)

  That close thing is always valuable. And only sick people want to speculate about it. Want to see it. When you can’t see it. Nothing to see, except the voyeur bullshit, a kind of distorted diseased intellectualism.

  But it’s the same thing. Wanting to understand what’s going on, rather than just getting in it moving. Like Jake and Ray in my man’s book. Jake moved straight and hard and survived with a fox in Chicago, probably, where he’d come home tired and drunk at nights after work and work this happiness over (her name was Felice). And Ray, a name I’d already saved for my self, sailing around the stupid seas with a “wistful” little brown girl waiting for him while he masturbated among pirates . . . dying from his education. Shit. It’s too stupid to go into.

  Can we make a world and do actual work in it? Can we find actual love in it? Everything. What provides the slim inch of satisfaction in life?

  (But that’s the point, “Satisfaction.” What is that? Hulme spoke of “Canons of Satisfaction.” He meant a hierarchy of what grooves you.

  And what we try to do. Not try. The thinkers try. The extremists, Confucius says, shooting past the mark. But the straight ahead people, who think when that’s what’s called for, who don’t when they don’t have to. Not the Hamlet burden, which is white bullshit, to always be weighing and measuring and analyzing, and reflecting. The reflective vs. the expressive. Mahler vs. Martha and the Vandellas. It’s not even an interesting battle.

  Except we black people caught up in Western values. So deeply. Having understood the most noble attempts of white men to make admirable sense of the world, now, reject them, along with any of them. And the mozarts are as childish as the hitlers.

  Because reflect never did shit for any of us. Express would. Express. NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW.

  Blood Everywhere.

  And heroes march thru

  smiling.

  Unfinished

  Coming into Jocks in Harlem, with friends and the inside redlit up middle-class faggots (no, homosexuals) scattered discreetly around, sharp in their new shit.

  Summer evening, with friends, I said. Their faces float around, and their names. Love, talk, expectation, the leading on. The close light that separates the tribes of life. Where is the spectacular, and the handling of it, and the love of it, and the reward for its being alive and screaming? The love of everything.

  Which is calm enough. These faces hanging in the calm, and the low talk and occasional soft ha-ha of a fag.

  Then you sprawl and talk about what happened that day, that wild summer 65 uptown, when a lot new blood came in, and there were a lot of closer questioners of day to day making-it in America.

  The atmosphere is important. Very important. The tales people will tell even to this day, of shit that simply did not happen. Feet walked by above us. You cd see some through a window. Few people made up biographies for them.

  There were snakes and panthers in the town. Tho a lot of funny shit happened. A lot of fools got exposed. A lot of cowards. A lot of maniacs. Reality syndrome. Black people piled in the street. Negroes piled in certain nigger coolout stations.

  WHITE PHILANTHROPY RUNS AMUCK AGAIN

  Sit in a useless evening not even getting drunk. Just with people and make some remarks. Maybe these dancers were there that night, and there was nothing to talk about because you can’t talk to dancers about academic shit like what the world is. So you can suck-sipping ale out the end of a glass, listen to some vague shit about somebody who told somebody else off, and not even be there. You could be in southcarolina murdering the governor, by strangling him with a wide belt, and your knee cocked in the small of his back.

  People are going about their business. Somebody else comes in the bar, everybody looks up, the fags respond or disrespond, or if it’s somebody somebody knows, there is a little more racket, before the half-white juke box takes over again. And maybe some lightskinned lady with streaks in her hair will wander in mission unknown.

  All settled in time and space, another nothing to add to hundreds of others. The various freaks up and down the streets. Like black blondes or niggers with good jobs. Maybe junkies from southcarolina who came up north to get deadhooked forever, in the evil smells of dying blackness. But they, at least, are real. These dead junkies. In their weird outside world. But then another colored man will stop in the hallways of some shaky white philanthropy and talk to you like he was practicing to be a traitor.

  A multiplicity of failures. But everybody, shit, can claim something. To have made it! Whatever. From whatever to where ever the wind blows enough dollars to cool out bad conscience. Facing us, on the street each day, thousands of fools and cowards.

  So they all join hands and make a fool/coward cartel that controls the minds of ordinary men. And it is this cartel we work against, to kill them. Drown them in their blood, so that the mind might again soar to its completion and a new brightness begin.

  We could sit and joke, or if with heavier friends, philosophize about the day, Malcolm’s death, the number of faggots in The Big Apple, being careful not to offend anybody sitting in our immediate party.

  And simple bullshit incidents lend a personal form to time. And all the facts we want are carried back with the specific context of their happening.

  Red bar faces. The room tilted under the ground, just a few steps down. The gaiety of pretension. These creeps won’t even get like in the Harlem Club, and tear the windows out. These are cool Knee Grows who have a few pesos in their pockets (earned by letting whitey pass gas in their noses). There is a cruel frustration drifts through places like that . . . places filled with young & old black boushies . . . And you could think about white invisible things being dragged back and forth across the ceiling. Maybe they are talismans of white magic, secret, hideous, ofay mojos, their god waves back and forth over black people’s heads, making them long to be white men. It’s too horrible to think about shit like that.

  This kind of thing can be entertaining or no. But it’s always intimidating.

  A guy came into this bar, probably just stopped raining outside. Very light sprinkle. And this guy comes in hooked up in these weird kind of metal crutches, where they have metal straps around the legs. A kind of big brown cat, bulky even strapped and crippled up like he was. He was making some kind of noise when he came into the place. Or it was some kind of rumble accompanied him in, limping like he was on those metal rods. He must been at the bar 10 seconds before he pulls himself over near our table. Metal niggers slid out of his way. I was not even looking.

  But it wasn’t me anyway. I’m here writing, this never happened to this person. It was somebody else.

  At the table sitting watching him approach the friends of the world, all happy at being that. No, these shitty dancers, with lyrical eyelashes, and little tiny walks if they’re technically male, just barely women. The women, the same, only it’s not as spectacular to be women invert like it is for men. The burden of balls.

  Oh the weird smiles that exist in life. Too much. To think about right now, but if you ever get a chance think about that shit. How many different kinds of smiles there are, and what they infer or imply or telegraph.

  When the cripple cat came up to the table he says some shit to one of the guys. Like he had seen him the other night on television. And the guy who had been congratulated for being on television gave a sort of pseudo-humble hero smile (which is not a rare variety actually).

  Yes, yes, yes (addressing the people in invisible dreams). Yes, yes, that is my work, yes, oh wow, groove somebody recognized he and set up the guillotine trap. A long terrorized scream, and the blade, bloody already comed whistling down. Trying to smile at people is experimentation or cliché. I have a standard good natural tooth viewer I use most times in such occasions. But was that me at the table. The one who speaks now. The heart that feeds me my life.

  But this is a story now. There are facts in it anyway, for the careful.


  This was a funny looking guy, he needed to stop smiling so you could get a good look at his face. But that’s probably why he kept smiling . . . a really fucking sinister smile . . . now that I think about it. Or maybe not sinister, but insinuating, dangerous by default.

  And keeps talking and talking, ordering drinks. He began doing this the minute he got up to the table. And fairly loud getting louder with each click of my machine. He was very loud by now. And laughing. But the laughter was decoration for something colder than you ever ran into.

  Yeh I saw you on television, and you gave em hell boy. L the minute I saw that program I wanted to call up the station and tell them crackers how much I agreed with what you were saying. Hand. Hand. Pats—shakes. Smiles. Crackers. Honkies. All the words. I was watching. L was watching like he does, close up and steady, big deep eyes to see. And seeing, can you act my man, the question hung in the world hot as sun. But sunshine is cool, ain’t it? It grows the shit from in my heart. It makes the earth magic start. It’s cool, and beauty, ba-by. Ba-by. Everything is all right. Up tight. Out of sight. Went on and on, warm lights glows walk box walk. Be lady fair sister sliding down bars, Through Wars, and smoke of dead niggers, negroes, coons, woogies, etcetera, killing each other. Killing Each Other. Selves. Selves. Killing Each Other.

  I heard your thing,

  can you dig mine. You

  a success in the West,

  aint that a mess. Up in

  your ches’ Polluted

  Stream. Dead fish,

  animals still to evolve.

  A fluke, like black and

  white together in the

  same head or bed, it

  makes no never mind.

  He came at me, H had tied my hands behind me, got me in the face. It was bad, and blood came out.

  Where. TimeGap

  keys. Senseless

  Strung Gulls low

  over the sea. That

  was another

  incident in the

  spanish lowlands

  with Hannibal’s

  mulattoes, still

  passing for White.

  But yall cain’

  fight.

  Correction. The above is bullshit twisted from another time.

  What happened. He was bleeding his twisted love. Like the story, and the image of piles of dead fish being broken in half by a jew to feed niggers at the seashore. Shure Rastus. We miss understand, by 3 and one half inches.

  Bleed is it bleed bleed bleed. Love, they want white love and there’s nothing like that in the world. There’s no white peace either (Oh you mis understand . . . we sd Peach . . . simple colored monarch. “Arrest Him For Sodomy . . . He Fucked Melville.” I’m in jail listening to the cripple now. He moaning inside he loves you so. Stand up L. He wants to touch you his mouth is close, with Vat 69 breath stinging your pause. He got pause thass why he teach moles to shit outta airplanes.

  He was going to hit L. He loved him so much. He was going to hit. Him. Why he was screaming inside. Inside. Where the true song rages forever like the very sun. Inside he was screaming it was me not you you just said it but it was me I live and am hurt by the motherfucking world so deeply, much deeper than you what the fuck do you know what the motherfucking shit do you know frail ass motherfucker i’m a cripple hurt motherfucker you ever feel 10 thousand passion tender notes eat your face for time.

  He raged now, dropping his crutches on the floor. Inside flowed on out. It was out fire down below, all in the street, fags look out, the cripple, a giant of a man, a motherfucker . . . WATCH OUT L . . . WATCH

  And L, cool, said brother, what you in to?

  The cat came back from outside. He had another drink he came back over. Aw I aint into shit man. I used to sing my ass off though. He began singing. Something about love naturally. A song faggotass Tony Bennett used to sing. But this cat was singing about an actual kingdom, of kings and queens. And he disappeared smiling into the night.

  New Spirit

  I sprung my face and the brains fell out. I saw this little girl. I was sitting thinking about the time the plumber came, I paid him and he didn’t do anything. I was in the basement, looking up at cold morning. My face was leaking, the furnace fire grumbled and I wanted to remember this story, a tale, to tell you, miss, before you left to ride the invisible flesh of the world.

  They were sitting talking about you, Bumi. About stuff they wanted you to be, and think, about an image they had of eating potato salad and going to the girlfriends. A cross around your neck. My face was covered with hot brains. They made a talk-noise, and the people thought it was me. Hello, Bumi, you still there, still hear me??

  They wanted to be angry. Your mother frowned and murmured Christia like it was something she knew about knew, in fact, a christ-jew a beatnik in sandals with a psychedelic twitch. He seed stuff.

  We beat drums through the talk. We beat drums. We chanted to you, baby, wanted you back. Nothing. But they said god was white and you could see him in the chapel of the unity funeral home, waiting for funerals. The undertaker was a stereotype nigger faggunder, taker. He was taking me, baby. Caskets start at . . . he went on picking his soul’s nose.

  Your mother knew that thinking killed you. It made you worry. She had no use for it. She probably right, baby. The shit I put on you. But not no wooden cross to carry. I wanted a woman. I needed the shelter of someone’s arms, and there you were. My friend Jr. Walker put it thus.

  Then the next day they wanted to know whether or not I was going to steal the baby clothes. The furnace of flowers around you. The silent bed. Your sandals. Your stepping rhythms pulling my skin apart, they wanted to know if I was going to give your clothes back.

  See that’s what makes you paranoid, people saying shit like that. And being right among logs, and letters, toads never changing, the mist around that birth spot, where they settle into mud, returned, wait you can’t unebolve (v don’t exist for us) but there they go, back in the water.

  Ceremony:Middleclass negroes

  Yoruba temple

  Nationalists

  Inch of Hippy

  Where was I? Why didn’t I go?

  I was there, love, listening to these people in the front room discuss the night in the hospital when they discussed the night in the front room. Serj can verify this. The night she came to me, in front of a burning building, and we invaded the starroads. And the other woman. And the other woman. And the long black sister she took. The other woman. We weep together. She is not asking me the same questions. She is floating against the sides of the room, being looked at, deciding, whether she wants to be a colored woman. You didn’t have the choice baby, the way you came in, straight off the warm streets, straight into the future.

  Now I’m getting something together to say to them to yr people, all of them. I want you when you want me again. We’ll get together, hang out or something. Even your shadow has split. Nothing here but dumb shit, and me.

  You want to talk to this cat called me from newyork with the white wife, no, i mean with somebody else’s white wife?? No. You want to speak to Sandy or Linda or Moosey or Bobby, or JB or that fat little girl with the big behind? The peace lady? O.K., I’ll tell them what you sd.

  In the hospital the people didn’t seem disturbed, they told jokes. We just don’t realize how many people die. (You cd ride a bicycle O.K., you cd swim, you think this rational shit is easy. I shd cry or scream you cd dance like a mutherfucka, excuse the language, who’m I talking to peaceful dignified spirit, you still know me don’t you saying mother fucka to everything and trying to find something, spirit help me love me don’t leave me.

  The flower wasn’t dying by the window when i screamed at your mother. They hadn’t sung in the afternoon then. They hadn’t gotten lost trying to find the cemetery. The other tale hadn’t been told, the one about the cat with two wives who lost again hands down to his own grim life. You know that story.

  I hadn’t looked down at this dead girl then. With hands folded, an
d smile-pouting. Her lips stuck out more in death, not mad, but damn there was so much she hadn’t done or seen, which makes the shallowness of life that angels blank on so much, finally you know the shit’s not even worthy of pulsating perfection. Oh love.

  But people stood outside in the rain waiting to get in to see this dead girl. And the priest chanted, and the people thought and felt and acted, some wept. Some demanded an investigation of death. Some wanted to sue. Some wrote poems. Some got drunk. Some fucked women in the dark then, not knowing you watched.

  I looked at the newspaper. I took a walk. I thought about a lot of things. I wanted a story, a tale, to tell you. Something you could remember of me, and yrself, to take with you long journey; you were born on the 12th, the second fifth, the reach, at the fifth round, into new humanity. I’m at 7. A first knowing. The realizing, that when I die, if this is last I’ll come no more to these shitty towns. This little girl that dances, don’t be jealous of her spirit, she’s in a box out somewhere in newjersey. Somebody’s gonna build a bench nearby, out of stone. I might come out some late afternoons or mornings, very early, still wet and cold.

  It’s about love, yes it is. And about feeling, and who we are, who we really are alone joined up together with so many hearts to the beginning of the human epic. (I told you these people slid down the rock, plop, back to the one-celled, they thought it was hip, to be so positive.)

  We’ll be alone without you creative child. My youth. My tenderness. My warm creature with the big ass and lips. What we knew turns to dust, at this very moment. How fast you can travel. Baby. How much speed and jive with you, so much, so beautiful, I can’t quite understand. What can I educate you to now, you know so much more than any body. You left it. The dumb part of what I remember. Not even a story. And I know this doesn’t make sense.

  No Body No Place