cLOUDDEAD – The Teen Keen Skip

Comment on Moving Backwards – A Tribe Called Quest

“I have been feeling like a row of cups, some of them full and some of them not. Spilled one day, filled the next, empty then overflowing. The changes have been too fast, too sudden, to follow. I am an inconsistent row of cups. I am thirsty, I am prosperous, I am doomed, I am safe, I am among friends, I am alone. Just a row of cups. When Tribe’s Jarobi and Tip arrive, with Anderson.Paak and Consequence, it is as if they are holding pitchers of water. It is free refills. Music that’s pure relief – rhyme and rhythm, beat and leap, restoration. The reminder of a kind of solidarity – kinship despite difference – or of other artists’ dexterity – an admiration for everything you can’t do, but others can. Moving backwards but making progress; this isn’t my song but I’ll borrow it.” – Sean: saidthegramophone.com

after all by Dena Rash Guzman

this is scatterbrain
a theory of a war-torn mind
a disturbance of experience
thus a theory of melancholia
meets its manic parent

(don’t let me spend all the money)
(don’t let me near the knives)
(don’t let me let me let me out)

this is why I quit writing
how I put my faith in garbage
where I went from advocate to patient
thus a theory of mania
meets its melancholic cousin

(don’t leave me all alone)
(don’t let me drown)
(don’t let me drown)

this is where I get off
this is the place I relearn joy
this is when! I regain balance
I hold my loved ones close
a reward after reconstruction

(don’t let me drop hope)
(don’t forget I’m in here)
(don’t let me let me let me out)
(don’t let me drown)

The Dead

It has come again –
The dead
It’s creeping in

I don’t mind it
It’s really not that bad
So, I let it in

It comes whether you want it to,
Or not
You can’t will it away

The dead doesn’t work like that
It is concentrated power
It’s consecrated too

The dead is a valley
In between two mountains
You must journey through

What is the difference,
Between the dead and winter?
Nothing.

Winter
Is a coat
The dead wears.

lowercase noises

Something to write to.

The Warrior

The warrior will die one thousand deaths
Just to die one thousand more
For the cause that began as breath
For the cause that was born

I have seen the fearsome warrior fight
Many battles won and lost
He will not cease at good moon’s night
He will not stop for icy frost

He will never tire of wars ahead
Too much blood to be spilled
There’s so much blood that lines his bed
So many husbands that he’s killed

I know the fearsome warrior well
Bound to battle and never free
The lust for blood, he’s under spell
I should know, the warrior’s me

That lustful man is me

You and I: Mask and Mask by Adam Cornford

You are the God-made image of God
I am a flat-faced ape with an overgrown brain

You are the composed captain of your fate I
am an ocean’s bone-coral colony of specialized cells

You are identity’s animate armor striding through
time I am a superposed standing wave in a ceaseless flow

Your body is towered clay with a soul folded in My body is
a ramifying weave of energy trees and information trees

Your skin is a sheath for unregarded meat My skin
is the sail of a vessel voyaging in all directions

at once You are first person singular
I am first people singular

Eyes

My eyes are polyamorous, lingering and twisting,
playing tricks on my Sunday School heart.

They feed my brain the food it wants but doesn’t need.
Empty calories for empty Saturdays.

Alone, with dark hooded thoughts; talons that rip me open until
I’m that moment before catatonic and the one right after vulnerable.

I’ve seen these moving pixels dance one hundred times before,
But today I hope they’ll glimmer and glint just for me.

I’ll draw the lights in until that fateful day
When I carve my eyes clean out of my head.

Keb’ Mo’ – I’ll be Your Water

Jody

Walk into the service with your head hung low; a sign of misplaced respect for the deceased. Hug old friends and shake the hands of people you only slightly remember.

The deacons tell you to pick up a stone from a basket at the entrance. Curious, you think, but you gladly hold the small gray stone in your palm and massage the smooth surface with your fingers.

Smile and wince simultaneously at folks who nod as you pass them by in the tight pews. Too tight, you think, why do they make them so close together?

Throw the back of your brown, tweed sportcoat behind you. Notice, for the first time, that every man is wearing a black or navy blue suit with a white shirt and a dark tie and every woman is wearing a black dress with white fringe somewhere. 

Organ music swells. You wonder how they build instruments like that. So encompassing, the sound.

The service begins. The minister speaks like poetry. A rhythm that’s unmistakable. There’s no words out of place. Each word is as beautiful as the last. Each word carries a cosmic weight.

Friends and siblings speak effortlessly about her kindness, her wit, her writing, her love. Your friends cry when her sons get up to speak. When was the last time you saw any of them cry? You can’t recall really, but it’s been a long time, you’re sure of that.

They get through their short speeches with indelible strength. They pause when they must, to choke back all the things that come rushing forth. You are proud of them and wonder how you will do when you find yourself in their shoes one day.

You feel something hanging all around the room. God? You ask the inside of your head. He doesn’t answer audibly, though, maybe he doesn’t need to.

Her husband speaks. He is a good man and his goodness is profound in that moment. How deep his love is for her. Is not was. Is.

Piano playing, poems recited, favorite blues songs echo from the speakers. All of it quiet reflection for a woman who was like a second mother to you. You cry too, but mostly because it’s beautiful.

The minister tells the congregation to remember the stone they are holding in their hand. This stone is from Rhode Island. She has been going to the beach where the stones were collected since she was a small child. Feel the weight of the stone. Feel its texture. Cup it in your hands. Now, imagine that in one of her many years at that beach, she may have picked up the stone you are holding in yours hands. Then, think of a word that describes your relationship with her.

“Mother”

That’s the only word in your head. Mother to her sons. Mother to her son’s friends; adopted and brought in to the family.

The minister asks everyone to get up, row by row, and place the stone in a basin at the front; an act of letting go.

You let the stone go and listen to the sound it makes as it hits the rocks below it with a slight thud. It sounds like a final page turning and a book closing. It sounds like closure.  

You throw your arms around her sons and her husband. You sing a hymn you’ve never heard and you leave; with your eyes forward and your head up, a true sign of respect for your second mom.