Close
A Dixieland chorus of separate lines / Just lucky to be in the same key, in the same room.
Adam Dyer at the 2015 UUA General Assembly. (© Nancy Pierce)
That first breath must be delicious.
It must be more tantalizing, more intoxicating than any drug, fragrant like no flower will ever be enticing like no body scent. It must be all of this, and more yet without words or memories, how do we know?
That first glorious rush of air wants us to keep breathing wants our hearts to keep beating wants our eyes to open and see wants our souls to open and say “yes.”
The first breath wants us to live all our life saying, please God, let me live let me breathe for just one day more until we breathe our very last.
(1,2,3 . . .)
Just as soon as it began We forgot how it started. Like a Coltrane tune We are so absorbed in trying to follow To figure out We forget that we are part of it. Every tune needs ears And every ear needs a tune. Some let the sounds wash past them And others are Tapping Clapping Snapping A slap happy chorus Embodied instruments Becoming part of the beat.
“Jazz is a heartbeat . . . its heartbeat is yours” Said Langston, Played Mingus, Sang Ella. The sound that swings, blues and rocks, Is us, Is U-S. Its dissonance is our politics Its harmony, our dream. The drum thumps brutal as the master’s whip The cymbals sizzle like Native bodies ablaze The saxophones wail and climax like rape The horns push their Musical Destiny While the bass bubbles underneath like God,
Underscoring the only true sounds,
Nature and time.
Improbable Unfathomable Unconscionable Unconscious
The United States of Otherness We are jazz. African rhythm Played on European instruments Toying with Asian harmonies In a language made of Middle Eastern letters While standing on the First People’s land Where none of us belongs. Yet that is the brutal beauty of any combo Because the instruments are not alike, The players are individuals, None of them belong where they are And none of them belong together. A Dixieland chorus of separate lines Just lucky to be in the same key, in the same room. Yet they make the most beautiful music With depth, range, beauty, heart.
Hearty . . . “Chop Suey.”
Jazz is a heartbeat, Our heartbeat is jazz.
Gentle man, shower me Be the rain Not raging storms Or thundering skies But gentle man, feeding rivers When gently you flow.
Gentle man, sway with me Be the wind Not raging gale Or roaring twister But gentle man, leaning forests When gently you blow.
Gentle man, hold me Be the ocean Not under current Or ripped tide But gentle man, molding shores When gently you undertow.
Gentle man, shine on me Be the sun Not blinding rays Or searing heat But gentle man, warming golden harvests When gently you glow.
So, gentle man, love me Be elemental Not brutal hand Or selfish heart But gentle man, planting seeds of truth That gently, gently grow.
Potent. You cannot understand my potency If you only see my body. Yes, I know . . . I am beautiful. You long to touch, taste, smell, succumb To what you see as brutal and raw. I am the black male body.
Primitive. Ha . . . but my “primitive” is Too sophisticated for your palette Too rich for your belly Too delicate for your nose. I am the black male body.
I have been both prison and palace, Prisoner and prince, King and conquered, Kin and concubine, And surely my history predates you For where would “Eve” be without “Adam”? Yes, she birthed the world But I set her on fire. We devoured each other in our own big bang . . . together we made humanity.
I am the black male body. But I am not just sex. I am not just your perversion of pieces. I am not a tool poised to penetrate at will. I am my own pain and joy, Dreams and anguish. I am love and war,
And I am not you.
I speak in languages you can’t imagine, Dance to rhythms you’ll never hear, Sing songs in harmony That you can only try to get near. My magic so slick You don’t even know it’s a trick. Yes, I am all that and a lover. I am the black male body.
Each morning I wake And see “me” as one of many
Brown bodies Brown bodies
And my own skin and hair Has the same shadows and light As what I see online . . .
Lifeless and limp Or trying but failing to flee Battered and broken . . . never free
Could be me . . .
Scattered in streets Grotesque golliwogs Raggedy animated By “white” imagination Like puppets . . . playthings For the progeny of hate
Used for a target, tune, or fuck Diversions of passion Co-opted visions The promise of “change”
Living on the wrong side of “gentrified” A fetish for the hipster “dark side” Always “columbused” then ghettoized
Sacrificed to places Where water poisons And viruses thrive . . .
Where language fails And walls rise . . .
Where war rages And rape cries . . .
Where profit outpaces peace And hope dies
Yet, the blessed curse Of genetic fecundity Means no onslaught of nature Or man-made conflict Or in-bred hatred Can delete the DNA That comes back for more, Millennium and again. It is the human penchant For pandemic procreativity That means there will always be
Do not believe what we are taught to be. Each morning we all must arise To see ourselves among the many
Embracing these colors of earth Breathing the sigh of the sky Quaking with the power of mountains alive And feeling the spray of oceans As we rise to celebrate
Where dance is blood Where song is vision Where touch is art Where rhythm of heart Pulses through words And tumbles in rhyme, Lovingly schooling the wicked And scorning the vainly wise.
These are the real
Each one is precious And holds the legacy Of what it means to be wholly alive in
Excerpted with permission from Love Beyond God: Meditations (Skinner House Books, 2016).
Please note: newsletter on hiatus