Eugene B. Redmond

O! WHERE HAS NIGHT FLOWN? O!

Interplanetary lady:

Between whose legs the moon languishes:
And, in embryo, the dew-braided sun
Sizzles in another region of your galaxy;
And my need growing to gluttonous fever -
Which your clasp circumferences with cool bars of passion;
And my muscular tranquilizer is a tower:

O arched bomb of jelly!
O balm for ails and itches
And lacerations between your legs --
Where night sleeps with leopards
Where night pants like a race-dog
Where night throbs like a laundromat:
Becomes magic wand to ward off day,
To keep the dark lid on this room of ecstasy;

Not that my love cannot thrive on sunlight

/for our eyes are suns,/

But for the sake of blue flames
Burning in an orange warmth
Aboard the moon in you - O long gone night!
O morning when, again, we meet our oppressors!
O morning when we meet our forefathers' makers!
O mourning where the Armageddon of orgasms unhums

in sunstrokes!

O mourning when the second-coming is the last coming--

and then none!

O mourning when dew is all that's left of our night-lit orgy!
O morning, 0 daybreak; 0 night-breaking wind in the mouth

of morning!

O morning! O slithers through the blinds of night!
O drapes fallen from the hinges of the dark!
O all my needs and flanks telescoped by the sun!
O woman-length vortex for the vibrations of my heats!
O woman-length maelstrom for the relics of my passion!
O museum! 0 tapestry and mural and subterranean self!
O submarine-of-a-woman twirling in Ocean-I!

in Sea-I!
in river-I!

O where has night flown/

With its nostrils of dark air?
With its electric landscapes?
With its comings-and-goings / comings-and-goings?

And O! how much darkness can you hold in your hand?
And O! how much darkness can we belly-grip between us?
And O! how much darkness can an idea contain?
And O! what is the weight of darkness?
And O! how long /yes, how long/ is darkness?
And O! how dark is need; how many days make up a second

of sorrow?

And O! O! where has the night flown!
With you, and the moon, between your legs?

LADY: A LOVE NAMED FREEDOM

Last night
I crept from my cage of color

/the prison of my past/

And made love
To a lady named Freedom;
She was countless
And, almost, mountless - but I made it!
Made her:
Achieved that voluptuous summit,
Then rode her vertical luxury:
Her jewelry-laden lap of pain
Into the valley of mirrors

/valley of echoes/

Into the dry mouth of night
Into the arms of Freedom

/an armless woman/

Where I, in birthday nakedness,
Diluted my chant with prayer:
Where the wind made of me a rocking-chair

/back-and-forth: back-and-forth/;

Miss Freedom, in a gown of flesh,
Stretched out, straddled me in her armlessly abandoned passion:

And Aretha appeared in Goddess-Glare
And Angela came as Lordess of Love
Roberta with "quiet-fire" to scorch me on, on
Sojourner appearing with a proclamation of my manhood

And Lady Freedom softening to a night
Of feminine opportunity:
A cavern of Blacklites I enter
To find my brain erecting

Inside a web of blood-lines
Inside a fire of new youth--
Inside a flame that licks my testicles
And tells me to leap to the roof
Of Chance and mount the charcoal queen
Shaken from kitchen sleep
Belly-dancing her way out of shackles!

Last night I crept
Crept from the cage of my color,
Made love to a Lady named Freedom:
Incestuously succumbed to my siamese twin,
My brother known as night;
Last night I left the cage of color,
The mystique of my hue,
And retraced the rainbow
For the whereabouts of God.

LOVE IS NOT A WORD

Do hot ensnarl me in a sphere of nouns
Nor cage me in a lair of adjectives:
My need is no funeral song for freedom--
My heat is not electronic:

Do not calibrate my sun with thermometers
Nor pierce my "secret parts" with telescopes:
My cause is not a tableau of codes
My cry is not stereophonic:

Do not titillate the totem of my thought
Nor advertise, on open market, my privacy:
My rampant passion is not a freak for laboratories
My pain is not catatonic:

Do not ring me with monotonous vows
Nor sting me with laconic lectures, with commands:
My need is not a force to fence in--
My itch is not metronomic:

Do not label me with foreign lore
Do not place this epiphany in frames
Do not lock my indivisible rhythm in names
Do not color-in my pageless, endless book
Do not describe my dialog with trees
Nor transcribe what the moon whispers
Do not record the voice in my eyes:
Yet look look look look, and
Don't dismiss me as a synonym for love.

HEART-WOUNDS DO NOT HEAL

For asylum from such wounds
There is always a scab:
/some mascara/
Sunglasses for flooding wells in the face
/laughter/
Withdrawalism or anonymous liquids in a glass
/humor/
Laces or silks or high-hats
/excuses/
A new surge: a new risk: a new squeeze
/vanity/
An analysis, a tear-length night, resoluteness
/indulgence/
Long sleeves for clawed flesh, for itch-marks
/wherewithal/
And night dawns a mirror of daylight
On the immediacy of the mind
/worry/
And, again, the reflection is actual
/a sigh refracted in screams/
/and a ballistics test says the tears came from blood/
Where the bed is a cage in which to wrestle with night
Or be still and listen to the gasping of the dark
Or the heart /wounded and wounded and wounded/
Which will not heal
And the ghosts you cannot kill!

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Cover Design: Joseph McNair