JUS A LIKL LOVIN
Tell Me
So tell me what
you have to give:
I have strong limbs
to haul in castaways
stomach to swallow time
digest the days
salt skin to sail on smooth
like morning sea and tangy
lips for kissing.
Iām well fixed
for all loveās traffic.
And further, Iāve an ear
open around the clock
you know, like those phone
numbers that you call
at any time. And such soft eyes
that smile and ferret out
the truth. Extraordinary eyes
and gentle ā you can see yourself.
Itās strong and warm and dark,
this womb Iāve got, and
fertile: you can be a child
and play in there, and if
you fall and hurt yourself
itās easy to be mended.
I know it sounds a little much
but thatās the way it seems to me.
So tell me, brother,
What have you to give?
Poems Grow
on window ledges or especial corners
of slightly dirty kitchens where rats hide
or offices where men above the street
desert their cyphers of the market place
to track the clouds for rain or ride the wind
guileless as gulls oblivious of the girl
upon the desk who proffers wilting breasts
for a fast lunch. Ah which of us wants
anything but love? And first upon the hill-
side where bare feet in a goatās wake
avoiding small brown pebbles
know earth as it was made
and women working fields
releasing cotton from the mother tree
milking teats heavy with white
wholesomeness or riding wave
on wave of green cane till
the swell abates and the warm
winds find only calm brown surfaces
thick with the juicy flotsam of the storm
make poems
and men who speak the drum bembe
dundun conga dudups cutter
or blow the brass or play the rhumba box
or lick croix-croix marimba or tack-tack
and women who record all this
to make the tribe for start in blood
send it to school to factory to sea
to office university to death
make poems
and we who write them down
make pictures intermittently
(sweet silhouettes fine profiles
a marked face) but the bright light
that makes these darknesses
moves always always beyond mastery
Griot older than time on Zion Hill
weaving a song into eternity.
Shooting the Horses for Martin Manley
At dawn he rose early again
and went after the horses.
He traps them manes glowing
ripe tangerine like Tintoretto
apocalypse horses-of-morning
snap-snap with his little
black box shoots the world
as it was the first day
green gold with strong legs
and a mane to be tossed
and the damp Mona plains
to be eaten like fire.
And what do you seek
my beloved, in the seed
of the day, when the tenderest
leaf of green light breaks
the earth of the dark?
What coin pulls you
wet from me, clutching
your little machine
obliging you capture
the crucified trees, their crosses
of shadows haunting
the rest of this Sabbath?
Is it wisdom or hope that you stalk?
Would you have me walk
with you?
Shall I sleep as you follow
the hooves of those shadows
the footprints of mountains
the musk of the mist
the tracks of the earliest earth?
I will leave you, my love.
It was Eve who first
murdered the morning.
Dust
And so to bed: on this
sweet tropic evening
sky the colour of red coat plum
whatās there to do
but go to bed?
In round about two minutesā
time three million sperm let loose
going do...