a Shadowman

There was movement in the corner of my perception, a flicker in the corner of my eye, the shadows in the hallway stirred like coffee in a black cup.  Something blacker than the unlit corridor.  A silhouette in the umbra.  A shadow within the shadows, formless and lithe and moving on its own power.  I moved, I followed it down the walkway and up the stairs.  There, at the end of the hall, the shadow man faced me.

I turned on the balls of my feet, and expertly it matched my movement.  I stalked in, fear pushing me forward in the desperate animal need to destroy all that I don’t understand.  Because I fear what I don’t understand.  And I don’t understand shadow folk tiptoeing around in my house.  I don’t understand why they’re here and fear their dark and willful intentions.  I step in and try to weigh my foe, I try to gauge his fight potential with a skillful glance.  His shoulders are as wide as mine, his legs and arms easily as stout.  So he spends time in the gym trying to make himself strong.  Trying to make himself ready for a moment like this one.  For trouble like me. 

His training won’t be enough. 

I slide in and he matches my speed, a skillful mimic, but he can’t match my unpredictability –can’t copy the fluidity of madness which I have mastered to bring chaos into the fray as an ally when I need it throw a left roundhouse punch and he matches my speed trying to block it.  While he’s preoccupied with that my right hand snakes forward in a lethal straight punch that crumbles his face with a loud crunch.

The lights come up, an explosion of frequency cacophonous to the eyes and mind.  It paralyzes me for an instant, half a moment, but I turn around trying to pinion the source of the violent “click” that preceded the artificial sunrise.  There, at the other end of the hallway was my mother in her comfy microfiber imitation velvet blue robe, her wavy hair stifled beneath a nylon cap so tight that I could see her thoughts through it.

“Boy”, she sang the words; sarcasm and disgust intermingle like fresh irritation from each syllable.  “What have you done to my mirror”?!

I turn back to the shadow man.  And all I see where he had stood was a gaping maw in the sheetrock and splinters of silver coated glass smeared with blood, my blood, where the fancy hall mirror had been.  Damn.  There goes next week’s check.

Rage Against The Shadow Of A Goddamned Doubt

The false gods are fallen, broke down, bawlin’
Too late to keep the faith when heaven is callin
No trumpet sounds to downtown; the dark water soiled it
like acid rain swirling drains, but looka’, fast forward
to Oshun drowned beneath waves of garbage
to a brotha' named J-sun who walked on water
or Fort Knox, the golden boy you caught with your daughter
and fashion plate A-shone, the pilot through rubble
2el Farrar's cinematic hip-hop furrows
The soulful ballad sounds from Poetic Justice
to Slayer-man, gun in hand to protect little lambs
and Santa Klaus’s ill shadow on a rant again 
My faith in God so strong, made me wonder, Lawd
what about the son of thunder
and the words whispered wickedly behind enemy lines
we took the weapons from them Shadow Dudes and blew they minds
gripped doubts tight as big booty on Fridays night
in the Valley of Dry Bonez, stood tall and spit wize
the strangest of words and I made sure they heard
 I doubt
     I doubt I’ll fail again
I doubt I’ll know a fight I won’t win
I doubt I’ll spend three more months in corporate chains
Or the world will go a year not knowin' my name
I doubt I’ll go on six months before I meet that hon
Smiling face angelic, blessed by the sun
doubt my pen won’t change the world
doubt not the Sun, spite of what you heard 
Embrace the moon, as a son of the knight
They say, "Step out of the boat, Bro', Run to that life"
But I await the Good Lord to bid me come
So if I don’t tread rough shod on ocean blue
I’m playin’ blackjack with hurricanes till six past June
Didn’t I wonder why I been feelin' so dozed under 
I just wondered when the Sun would Say
 
"Now is the come up"

1 May 2006

excerpt from: Seeing Eden

     They sent me back to work.  They sent me back to the gray box of shame and degradation, then re-connected me to a machine.  I sat in a meeting with my brother, James, who worked in another department across the hall.  We met with my boss, who had been his boss until he moved his way up the ant pile.   

     I sat in her office, stared into a space

between her and me and pretended to listen to whatever they were babbling on about.  It sounded like the adult characters in a Charlie Brown cartoon.  Indistinct words belched out into the already verbally polluted atmosphere -blahblahblahblah- and it meant something to them, but it was utter nonsense to me.  I just sat there pretending I was a normal person -pretending- like I had learned to do decades ago when I realized that I didn’t fit in.  I pretended.  The big stupid smile lit my dark circular face like a star atop a hideous black Christmas tree.  I wore my glasses as part of my disguise.  Like a coffee colored Kal El pretending to be Superman, pretending to be Clark Kent.  I pretended that I wanted to be back at the place that terrified me, the place that had stressed me out and tried to kill me.  I thought, when it found out that I had survived the unimaginable murder attempt, that I somehow trudged onward after the death of my art and my dreams, it would try to kill me again.  Instead, it welcomed me back with opened arms, embraced me at the door and smiled whispering to me “Welcome Back, zombie”.  I tripped grinning and foolish back into its trap.  I knew it would take a second shot at the dreamer.  It sent its invisible assassins -mediocrity and necessity- back to their posts upon the high towers, commanded them to get the metaphasic cannons loaded and cocked for another shot. 

Imaginarium; the twelve strand rebellion

    

   I imagine myself on a rock; a fragment of the Earth -Gibraltar, firm and sure- that had survived the final onslaught.  I imagine my castle, my beautiful dark fortress, a thing of my own design; a stunning improbability teetering at the center of this black granite continent, hovering magnificence through the decimated remains of our Earth.  I sit on the rooftop, basking in the light of the red-orange sun.  I imagine myself growing stronger in the sweet radiance, my body changing in its infinite wake, heat and fury showering me in a tangerine dream.  Every cell of my once inept body is now swollen with true power, with the ancient energy of the tellurians of the first Earth.  I see the secrets of the universe as they dance in holy unison before me.  A comic book hero, not shackled by someone else’s definition of duty and responsibility -not driven by the impossible missions assigned by the self important and thoughtless so-called-leaders of the world.  Not a super human slave that bends to the whims of the masses.  Then, I think about God. 

     I think that God must be laughing from Her throne above the catastrophe we made; laughing at the small minds of these so called kings and queens of the world as they plot in their vanity, plan in their deceit, and hope in their insufficiency.  She laughs, because they think they’re in control.  They think they are, but they’re not.  They’re not in control of anything.  She laughs as their plans fall apart, one move plotted against the vast mind of random chance -chance, who plays for bewilderment and discombobulation, while the wagers of war fight to win; to win territory: to win the imagined rights to something or someone: to win an idea, even when the world knows nothing of how to bring an idea to fruition, how to make it a viable and useful and living thing.  How to create.  They fight to win, when there is no victory, not in the grave where they are going.  They can’t see the truth.  They miss the truth, even though the truth is obvious enough for a six year old child to see. 

     The truth; the world has grown fetid on corruption and misery and it needs to end.  If it doesn’t, the Earth won’t survive.  The truth; that the world had begun and ended at many times and we are the last attempt -the recent incarnation.  That’s why the Book of Genesis, chapter one verse twenty eight reads “be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the Earth”.  Replenish the Earth.  Replenish.

     The survivors of the deconstructed world still mutter in their sorrow, languish in some long dead agony that is still real and fresh and stinging to them.  They don’t find comfort in the new.  Their souls are distressed.  Their spirits are at bay with ghosts of their own creation, because the world has taught them how to hold on to their negativity and let is fester and become rank and rancid within them, then eat them alive.  But God spared me.  God spared me by shutting down certain critical aspects of my biological machine to set me free of myself.  And while those around me, those who thought they knew me better than any other, looked upon me as some low and down trodden thing; I arise.   
     I ascend, and I take them into good times with me.  Prosperity rains down on me like a thousand storms; good fortune like legions of hurricanes -a maelstrom of blessings tempestuous and free.  I could not escape them if I wanted to.