March Forth.

My friend Jay likes her birth date.
She says its a call to action: March 4th.

Her dread locks are tower blocks,
forehead for sky, nose: a shrouded figure

speeding by, back packed with sketchbooks
and gas masks, jeans patched more times

than he’s matched sticks to spliffs. He is
a loose hoodied slouch with spray cans,

crouched in a train yard, headphoned and
nodding hard to lyrics so deep it digs back

to the African forest where it started, back
to talking drums. Now, they talk in drum

patterns, scattered in urban forests;
rappers rough tones riff against bars

just like spray cans hiss against walls,
they birth brilliance, doubled in the dark

before radio crackles, rail guards arrive ///

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I am considering a physical exchange here, a conflict? a back and forth.. dogs maybe? but am fearful it will clutter the boy… nothing has come clear and crisp enough which invites Occam’s razor (also known as Ockham’s razor) the principle that “entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily”, which really is the golden rule of poetry. But we will see. But I do like the movement to the sprinkled streets. This is close.

————————————————————————————-

signalling: it’s time to go, he packs bag
and goes – a winged shadow – floats

past yellow lines, glides over railings,
air vents, the clouds cry, a poverty stricken

kitten skips the sprinkled streets.

————————————————————————————-

Till Friday, Inua.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 29th, 2009 at 11:15 pm and is filed under Inua Ellams. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.