Quincy Troupe

CHORUSES
for Allen Ginsberg, 1926 -1997, and Lucy Goldman

I.
within the muted flight of daybreak, inside its leaked, trembling light
of birth, after the cracked shell of night's dome has split open,
cut loose a flurry of pitched voices grown from different, linguistic sperm,
we hear a cacophony of opposing rhythms integrated inside the body of a song,
carried as if upon the widespread feathered wings of a bird across the sky
of imagination, as in the circling, beating mantra the heart knows
as breath becoming choruses, becoming soundtracks
lifted off a poet's chanting tongue, syllables become moments
within moments, are transformed into song
that sings beautiful as any morning glory colors when the sun slants down,
cuts through whatever is there with its golden blades, becomes beams
bright & sharp as voices heard anywhere hands meet drumheads of skin
tightly pulled, the rhythms vibrating there in skimming waves
washing in or out at you as if they were imitating foaming sound rolling in from
the sea, curling tips of its waves into shape of grigri lips that can be cataclysmic
as foam sudsing off lips of madmen moaning, or roaring,
or doing whatever it is that madmen do, in katmandu, in the center
of nepal, or on the streets of new york city, where voices fire up pitches
fast as old satchel paige threw a baseball down the heart of the plate
or snaked it across inside or outside corners disguised as an aspirin,
like sound nicks away edges of language, chips off syllables & meaning,
until the voice cracks words electric as static,
perhaps resembles the sound lightning bolts make when ripping off small pieces
of dark space & sky
when thunder cracks its jagged whip across the night's high gloom

there, where wolves sing love songs to the moon, where lookeloos crane
their necks on freeways trying to Spot hale-bopp comet's streaking silver ice tail,
who listen to songs of beck over the radio hightailing it lickety-split through
this dark out West, burning rubber signatures into asphalt, as cars
wheel in & out of traffic, screech brakes, shape a kind of music, a new language
only the initiate know & imitate as it twists itself around again & again,
doubles-back in the way rhythm turns in & back on itself,

like a concrete pretzel claiming its own place as it curls into space,
lifts off in the shape of interwoven, interlocking freeway ribbons carrying cars
& speech above our heads on conveyer belts as motors screaming high speed
octane, zooming around curves like crazed vagabonds
hitting moments of sweet need, as music fills the air with magical incantations
wrapped in voices that track down sound, then double back blue as terror
recycles itself through years when good old boys guzzled beers
on back roads of america in a slew of cars that sped down roads twisted as limbs
of people suffering from rheumatoid arthritis, gunracks over their faces,
grinning like cheshire cats who just ate a slew of canary birds,
yellow feathers scattered allover that sordid history
& everywhere blood on whiskers of hyenas, blood frozen in ice-
cold stares of serial killers, blood in drawing rooms of politicians practicing
blood sports, bulls hitting us in washington, blood on the cheese face of a leering",
moon after eclipse hung down over rancho santa fe, blood on grimacing faces !
bursting from bloated black bodies in rwanda, blood exploding from that
incinerated house in waco, texas, blood shooting from the eyes of a child before
he pulled the trigger in paducah, kentucky, blood in the speeches of ministers
pontificating from pulpits, blood all up in the curdling screams sliced clean
through by razors, blood smeared allover the blues
choruses of screams heard chilling after explosions in jerusalem,
in the choruses of hand grenades tattooing the nights of bulgaria, colombia,
in the choruses of machine gun bursts stitching the evenings of mexico city,
los angeles, that snuffed out the life of notorious bi.g., tupac in las vegas,
choruses of fire meeting choruses of bullets, choruses of hand grenades
greeting the imploding language of love, blood on the syllables, choruses
spewing blood on musical notes that sing of these times everywhere

& blood on money pulled from ocean bottoms by deep-sea divers,
blood up in the voices of poets impregnating stanzas with music,
blood on tongues cut off because they sang beautiful images of love,
blood where the land mines littered the earth with eyeballs,
skulls, &: severed hands that point accusatory fingers stiff as bones in the mud,
& choruses &: blood &: choruses &: blood, choruses &: blood,

behold the time-clocks ticking inside blood irrigating flesh,

inside the moment when the poet knows language as a wellspring,
inside the moment when truth is understood as a two-headed sword that is
duplicitous as the notion there is a true beauty in flesh, lyrical with movement,
final as death, time marches on, leaves' flesh imprinted with maps of spiderweb
sites, that spread across the body's internet, as songs pealing across
this embezzled air tantalize us with history of our continued failure

II.
when we sing we hear &. know the music best, hear it with hearts
imitating breath, the rhythm of drumbeats in cadences
true poets hear, the heartbeat of their breath in time signatures spread,
scored like music across fleet pages scrolling the mind, dreams composed within
language, when words become musical notes or chords, language is traced back
where it first burst from song as anchored root,
grew into a melody (a sweet flower smelled in springtime,
summer, when birds clear their throats of seeds, open piccolo beaks
& run tremolos beautiful, at dizzy gillespie speed)

& there is joy in the sweet singing of melodies,
beauty in the voice marveling at the sweet, blessed curves of a lover's
ripe body, in the way a woman's mind is shaped, her thighs, breasts, her lips
caressing in the way a dress might caress the sensuousness of her body,
pure joy in the rapture of her kiss, blood boiling over there with sweet heat,
glory in her song, glory in the choruses of blood singing
beneath her flesh, choruses of heartbeats drumming faster &. faster still,
glory in the mind running over from a space rooted in love,
where a poet creates from inside a moment of stillness, silence,
when metaphor is ejaculated from mystery into language,
sluices from the brain as words scaffolded onto the page like archipelagos
strung out in a sea of air like notes blown complete from a bell of a trumpet,
becomes poetry when form connects structure with magic, when breath
carries poetry with the indelible smell of damp rooms after lovemaking,
rumpled sheets stained with semen, history, the claustrophobic odor of cigarettes
when jamming their crooked, burnt-out butts into overflowing ashtrays,
into rooms drenched with stale smell of whiskey &. garbage
& all this forms a question mark, a gesture--

a hand curved in space & bent at the wrist-a fragrance of mystery evoking
the, color of pastel drenched with lilting speech of the caribbean hinting of soft
seas, the air there filled, fragrant with garlic, peanut oil, saffron,
orange-gold sunsets laced with magenta, pink streaked with magical coral
reefs, purple threaded like veins through blue, the feel of it is a chorus,
is a song lifted from the blood of the sky by a poet who sings
another prayer at sunset, practices ancient science of cabala,
cabala lore, cabala, cabala lore, cabala

III.
& eye heard you passed away today alIen ginsberg, heard it over the radio--
like eye heard about miles' passing over the idiot tube-that you went home
surrounded by friends &. peace, heard you wrote till you slipped into a coma
after you wrote a last poem called "fame and death,"
you left us great poems allen, poems that fused blues &. jewish chants, rock 'n' roll
& jazz riffs you left behind as gifts to remind us of a life lived fast to the fullest,
in "absolute defiance," you were a bridge between the sacred,
the transcendental, the underground demon &. the buddhist-shaman-priest,
you were the guru speaking of wars when skulls were used to cradle silver coins
flashing under the light of human skin stretched tight into lampshades
used to filter heat from glaring lightbulbs-&. the silver flashing there
like glittering smiles, evil as death--o great bard breathing in &. out,
spoken blues chants coursing through your lines gone home to rest,
gone home to rest beside your mother &. father in spirit &. shivah,
it was a great love you gave us, allen, a great love that makes me remember
you now with affection &. awe, 0 great son of whitman, blake, &. williams,
your love of mystery, gemara, your love of flesh &. magic, blood of poetry
coursing through choruses of your river-veins, love
coursing through memory of chicken soup, roasted eggs, love,
the smell of challah bread evoking candles burning on the sabbath,
on the lower east side where you walked hip-di-dip, a little strut &. bounce
in the dip of your stride, you walked amongst jews wearing yarmulkes-
&. though you moved a little odd down there on passover,
buddhist that you were, you still moved,
many of them will still sit seven days of shivah for you,
many will lift their voices in solemn kaddish prayers--

& so eye baptize you here with rhythmys of black church gospel
with rhythms pulled from some of your favorite voices--
ray charles, bessie smith, ma rainey, charlie parker, &. john coltrane--
have washed your memory down with holy cadences--cool &. hot
as water-rinsed in blues &. jazz riffs, chanted from voices
& baptized in holy rivers of cabala, cabala lore,

cabala, cabala lore, cabala, cabala lore

& blood &. choruses, blood &. choruses,
baptized in rivers of blood &. choruses

cabala, cabala lore, cabala, cabala lore

coursing through poetry that burst from your river-veins,
coursing through poetry that burst from your river-veins,

shalom o great mystic bard, shalom

SESTINA FOR 39 SILENT ANGELS

there was no screaming to announce hale-bopp comet's second tail,
no screaming when those 39 people left their bodies--
their containers--behind, covered their faces with purple
silk shrouds, folded triangles, lay down smiling &: fell into the steep sleep
marshall applewhite had prescribed for them deep inside that death
mansion in rancho santa fe, they knew themselves as angels,

sleuths at creating web sites, cruising the internet, space angels
flying on wings of ancient dreams upward to hale-bopp comet's tail,
(& the only way to get there through the invisible doorway of death)
launched through skies of their minds, they willed their bodies
on earth, as people of jonestown did, to be recycled through sleep,
bodies board-stiff & bloated, looking for peace, skin purple,

going black as the clothes they wore, covered 39 faces with purple
symbols the color of lenten holy week when jesus rose up to join angels,
39 travelers wore black nike shoes, weaved through 39 catacombs of sleep,
dreamed themselves up like 39 shooting stars to hale-bopp comet's tail
of silver ice, where they would transform their bodies--
18 buzz-haired castrated males, 21 females surfing death's

internet-to pass through heaven's-gate's needle eye--&: death
not even a stopover here for these souls to rest dressed in black &: purple,
quarters for phone calls, 5 dollar bills for whatever urges their bodies
needed-before flying through space 39 dreams, they would be truly angels
rendezvousing with the mothership hidden inside hale-bopp comet's tail,
live with extraterrestrials there in a sleeve of silver ice after sleep

cut them loose to flow through steep mystery above as sleep
like rocket fuel fell away over stages, left them asphyxiated in death
after phenobarbital, apple sauce, & vodka, they knew the silver ice tail
as the sign they were waiting for to cover themselves with shrouds of purple,
leave behind computer screens--skies--they flew purely as angels
now toward a higher Source than conflicting urges of their bodies--

a tangle of web sites, conquered & controlled, their bodies-
surrendering the improvisation of living, they swam in sleep,
drifting slowly as motorless boats on the sea-were homeless angels,
i took 39 pot pies & cheese cakes for their journey, they kissed death
hard with dry mouths, 39 people down from 1000, pursed lips of purple
open in wonder, they flew up to enter hale-bopp comet's tail

of silver ice particles, gaseous bodies grinning there like death
skulls flashing inside sleep, inside where eye am dreaming now of purple,
faith flashing bright as new angels inside hale-bopp comet's third tail

TIME LINE OF BREATH & MUSIC

for Richard Muhal Abrams

fragments blocked out in the air of a sentence,
a man on the other side of a time line
is breathing music up inside silence, is listening too,
the speech of chords riffing from top to bottom,
inside the melancholia of a moment,
back in the zone when space was caught up in the beauty
surrounding singing, the great voice anchored deep within
song, its branches running way down into the soil itself,
where the roots of trees snake their fingers down
like music branching out from different sources
to become song, to become elements of magic
climbing winged compositions of breezes,
carrying flagged newspaper pages flapping
their stingray images above, overhead, cracking
& whipping sound before they split in two, as couples do screaming-
twin birds flying in opposite directions-when they break apart
like atoms, before each fragment splits apart quick
as a note or chord sliced off the solo of a pianist's blurring fingers,
when the music block steps its way into mathematics,
pulls apart, comes back together again, is elastic

moments when breath & music kiss elusive
as mystery, the sound always shifting
the bull's-eye target, an illusion created for ears
weaves a tapestry of footsteps clopping over cobble-
stone streets, somewhere back in all that history, as here, where
a man sits high up in the gabled leaves of his imagination creating
inside a womb of silence, where a syntax of wings & breath is
translated into the language of stop & go traffic
lights, flashing divas, cornucopias shaped
like goat horns blowing out an endless supply
of edible solos, moments are sliced off like shaved glass
slivers of light, glancing off & cutting through the dark
moments of shade, like voices free-falling in time,
they lay their grids of expression over
the night or day in a time line of breath & music,
become melodies of this life that we hear & sing

© 1999-2005 by Quincy Troupe