Works Presented

downtown at midnight		yr poem becuz u r beautiful
african gothic		nancy's husband down the street
the world could fall blue		malcolm x
when gerald dies		poem 4 city lovers
in this city, my city		midday joy

Note: (000, YYMMDD) = the approximate Yahoo Message Board entry number and date.
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downtown at midnight an emptiness a thousand feet high & az round az a dark earth the streets dive down inclines then leap in2 futher in2 deep shadows the office buildings accumulatively straight windowed in perpetual mathematics the reflections 2 an infinite power 1 eye closes another opens something moves across the clean avenues & the stoplights hallucinate the burden of traffic & the trauma still twists sculptures & scaffolds build the night against silence

where r we? generating tall shadows against the sargasso lonliness men die & the city evolves & paints the parking lots a single car az cool parker center in the desolate pan of its emptiness lays still the failing echoes & ominous concrete this iz time used this iz skin pulling back in2 plastic

something comes its labored revving through the chronological stripes of cold neon it iz the blueline carrying ghosts it iz a train roaming the vacant city then it goes the bells like quick seconds illustrating the shrill space between them & in the returning stillness 3 traffic lights away a bus crosses between the sharp buildings its lights flicker like the eyelids of the dreaming

Romus © Copyright, 1999

beyond the shore on the pier laughing the ocean & the inconceivable distance across the channel islands like yr smile & the definitionless brightness & clarity of sundays with u

i am music & u hum me u count me in2 rhythm i am a song about possibility & 4 background singers r singing yr name oh, sundays with u in the watermirror world oh, the luxury of living & loving in the late morning laziness & how i want 2 see u happy all the crazy things i say 2 see u smile & breath & taste yo food then talk 2 soon & laugh outloud & be concerned then elated

somewhere roses r in full bloom somewhere a window iz open & through that quiet window someone can see the beautiful coast

i want to hold u at the edge of the world

the world iz moving toward something eloquent & very beautiful

sometimes i feel that way about u sometimes i feel that way about u

Romus © Copyright, 1999

stop u r dying the lights sistuh spinning the cacophony in the nightclubs the calamity of traffic outside the men whose deaths announce themselves on the marquee under the 2 drink minimum shadows turning coat tails the water in the gin & scotch sistuh sistuh sistuh whose sex r u? what faceless mr. calls u by a child's name 2night? stop u r dying the disdaining ceramic faces crowd shadows dead eyes follow u through the smoke heroin exhilarates u brings the jazz running makes u a star & an event then brings absense makes u weary makes the haunches willowy turns the fingers 2 vines brings a sheen 2 hungry skin eats the gums then the speech it iz charming acid counts the neat spoon laid corpses sistuh sistuh long legged sistuh behind a torrent of dirty hair stop u r dying everywhere the city's arguments rise like abandoned tenements its confrontations r unsettled endless walls midnights among the clocks strange hands climb yo ribs a sharp tongue carving a wound in yo cheekbone heroin pilfering death pronouncing errors in the skin slowing the eyes & the conversations sistuh sistuh in greasy velvet sistuh at the edge of the pusher's shadow stop u r dying languid movement through red rooms slurred darks & grays music monotone az an addicted pimp whose hustle haz become scripted--

i can hear u coming u r lean marbled in rancid leather u hardly move the air the frenzied fresco of night behind u like brazil like morocco u r barcelona empty & lit u exit all the doors 2 night the concierges do their duty they open the night 2 u they open rome where ruins lay beheaded in beautiful silence they open the columned city i can hear u spilling years on asphalt sistuh sistuh i can see u lost in the hotels & fountains i can see u losing time in loud rooms i can see men changing faces & approaching the night in sinister ritual i see women painting sex on their mouths & following heat with their tongues

sistuh stop u r dying a hemisphere away from home exotic thing african girl sassy talker entertainer hostess european black girl lost in the cadence of perpetual war lost in a sea of curious hands dark nipple woman belly like cinnamon eyes like inverted night shooting heroin in the alleys of europe shuddering in rooms where yo sex iz passed around like a joint gaunt harlot shaped by brutality sistuh silent on the verge of deportation sistuh in berlin in that city with no incense sistuh wandering paris like a darkness seeking death stop u r dying stop while gabon seeks identity stop while nigerians perm their hair in london stop while brothas in chicago burn the sky stop while black argentinians r not seen as viable citizens while canada reluctantly tolerates jamaicans stop while we offend helsinki while cuba fashions a blackless dictatorship sistuh sistuh sistuh dragging night across europe sistuh in a crown of sirens & screams stop u r dying       u r dying            u r dying                 u r dying                      u r dying                           u r dying                               u r dying                                    u r dying                                         u r dying                                              u r dying...

Romus © Copyright, 1999

no nancy's husband down the street would not let me be expensive sure or right he would have me stay in at night & with the same difference approach the day 4 sure he could be heard 2 mumble low through hiz straight teeth & say-- they r less unangelic 2dark indeed & r poor criminal & plotting given 2 vices ...scarred the bear the mark of ham's seed-- nancy's husband down the street thinks we r simple meat served with rum in pickle jars he would not smile at the memories of my grandmother's hair threadbone bare wise infinite with smiles cavernous seas no nancy's husband down the street would tell u so then unleash his legions of angry men let them go & no i at best surmise they would come hard urgent patriotic political ranking the reasons high 4 us & r dearest words or dinners could not turn their angry tide no nancy's husband down the street pain's the god 2 take give him power & leave us strewn eclipsed unangelic in hiz wake

Romus © Copyright, 1999

the world could fall blue if i could not kiss u u see i am saving all my beauty 4 u this iz love not the hot irregular rhythms of the sun not crowds where we meet then move on 2gether nor is it the summation of a child's smile looking 2 turn u out not the soft affirmations of the moon polishing iron & spinning silver at midnight but this iz love a world falling blue in 2's

Romus © Copyright, 1999

malcolm in the intricate corridors of the cold city like fire in2 fire where evening distinguishes between dusk & manlit infernos malcolm in prayer az alleys form viens that extend themsleves in2 night & thrust silence in2 the nostrils of shadowless men

he lived we r certain of that loud conspicuously in an amerika begging integration in jazz tinged lies he waz the intellectual who dared be efficient he waz an acrobat in a dnagerous game he is the blurred figure exiting the photograph the ache in r collective memories boston michigan omaha prison he left his scent & his smells prohibited harvests & made the machines stop he made the way 4 new incense & stood against the lore of amerika while death hunted him in the mosques & streets

the slow angry august birthing assasins in the empty morning trumpet horn & harlem waz alive febuary tha audobon ballroom its chairs curiously straight betty the girls the new york febuary of brown steel & crisp air the clear horizon north tolerant or the building's interruptions men singing & all along he never wished the day would not come the worn velvet of hiz red body that day in the audobon ballroom far from the world & language the worn velvet of hiz red body

& yet he waz alive az conspirators took hiz jacket & greeted him with false smiles he waz malcolm coming full circle an obelisk among lesser things praying minister father teacher leader all praises due allah all praises due allah only the mistakes r mine

Romus © Copyright, 1999

when gerald dies when breath iz but relative memory & the sky turns itself from watching sunsets will run routinely over sparkling golden seas & oceans will cool off in2 sleepier blues & the world will repeat itself & fiegn astonishment at the news & another black boy will be born & inconspicuously run the course of hiz life will wait in midnight shadows & flash through diamond moonlight like a knife will not escape the vast & ignoble city no matter how hard he tries life will continue 2 be immaculate when gerald dies

& gerald waz a leaper faster than gold catches the eye ran & played waz loud & frayed tassled & torn about & happy gerald strolled through lazy days & grew & grew hiz new hair on hiz chin oiled & nappy & defiant he & a thousand others like him he & a thousand other black men in the unemployable summer in midday where despair & handicaps meet where men inexplicably loose their form in the heat & graduate 2 stoic obstructions along the noonday street

& in this summer there will be a thinning downtown a serengetti a numbering down a raking a private holocaust a watering from black 2 brown by way of bullet or some even more intimate steel a taking a reduction by attrition & deadly action by fists by elbow by bootheel a shaking a falling off an unmaking throughout the summer & gerald with hiz new manhood so grand that he can feel himself tall & expanding the world waits 4 gerald 2 be taken 2 find himself 2 be concrete bound 2 be swallowed by sound 2 learn the dance of insolent steel & wounds that never heal & patient men know that this iz the only available wisdom in a city where no one iz wise & life will continue 2 be immaculate when gerald dies

Romus © Copyright, 1999

they took city buses & sat close whispered the way they nuzzled they pressed such sweet delirium oh, what fine bright days they tangoed their 2's in the wide streets a simple mess an afternoon in bells the adventurous chance they laughed they loved & wildly danced

Romus © Copyright, 1999

in those cities piling fervor & despair in the common electricity of a people tilted toward the future i have been mired in circumstance & gregariously met each trouble laughing & when riots spread across the poor dens & those people chorused in madness that waz loneliness mixed in hunger i threw my fire in2 the tumult i churned in that violent crowd

across these cities this iron in the eye of the blue sky i have sought sanctuary in places where men lay dying & loved women in rooms sparse az the city midnight & when we ate bread hulled from mold & shivered in dark places lined in dreams i moved from desire 2 need & nearly lost myself an undertow dark az an old slave’s singing

i say mine’s iz the history of the city & i saw those buildings rise saw avenues roll out of the vision of cancerous men i saw schools that instructed boys in dying & i saw them dissected by automatic men & left disfigured with the weekly trash

& i saw the people hungry gaunt az corpses i saw famine redden the day & i saw soldiers come home smelling of atrocities & chanting death words in foreign languages i saw war widow women saw the naked willows populate the city in bloodless winter & cast skeletons like veins across the weary evening & in those years where martyrdom waz an all too common currency & could not be traded 4 shelter i set my face & the withering text of my speech in the gray mountains of disappearing numbers

somewhere along the river 2day it is us u & me the sun makes gold run in soprano like it is building & not rising just coming unaware of its beauty like it has no sense 2 build in2 the atmosphere & overtake the city birds shiver in the bushes reeds offer their many fingers in insincere profanity we r in the only green the only softness beneath the city’s breast u r insincere too gilded az the river who knows nothing expensive but the reflection of lights but that is yo tragedy & the river’s too both oblivious in youth uneventful in yo own memories u are a statue with virgin lovers taking first kisses at yo feet i watch u restless & healthy u laugh & scoff at the silly ducks u liken them 2 the shadowy beggars whose hunger iz questionable u liken them 2 summers littered with simple dumb inconveniences u curse the languageless ducks clamoring 4 food at the shore u say the river bores u i, looking out over my life & loves feel old hungers limp in2 my chest & suggest that we depart 4 home

Romus © Copyright, 1999

2day in the park in an afternoon laden in pearls & diamonds in the easiness of a large city changing traffic lights in a gregarious subtle hilarity 2day in the park among the polite strangers whose words lift the day in2 midsky where we walk & our childhoods speak forgotten truth from under calloused skin here where cancer does not exist here where we r not eroded by hate here where children are cherished here in the rich expectant beauty here in an cool oasis of trust here in midday linen & language where lovers lay out their longings like white sheets dazzling in the goldenrod day i saw a man & a woman talking laying on the grass two people lovers or longtime intimate friends & i watched them taking the tall bright day & cataloging the colors i saw them with their clean hands draw great blue panes of air big az city blocks & i saw them prepare their skins 4 the long walk of the infinite winters & when some seagulls came & lingered nearby they threw food & laughed 2gether & when sunflecked shadows tore shade & strew the day across them like glitter when the bushes shivered in the earth’s midday revolution & smiled at the afternoon’s cordial calamities there where the hours received children & spun color in accumulative intensity this man and this woman turned in2 one another

then he held her and they watched the traffic & they counted cars & were warm & they inspected the buildings & the trees the daylit horizon & the empty homes

oh, life here among the men the ocean’s blues & shimmering coasts i drape myself 2day in the easiness of a life lived in carnivals of incense & gentle people i stand in the vision of vast open spaces where memory wanders & always returns wearing ribbons of color speaking languages that laugh in a clarity lucid az catholic bells across the sunday morning

i hold my time here in the name of love

Romus © Copyright, 1999