Eugene B. Redmond

THE FALLEN ALTO

In a junk heap
I saw you
Muzzled by a tin can,
Your stained,
Twisted self
No longer
Weaving life from
Course winds
Filtering
Through
A dozen nostrils
And one gaping mouth.

In your
Breathless
But unsunken frame
Insects dwell
And coccoons cling.
You create still!

Would your
Master,
Left voiceless
By your old age,
Know you now?

NIGHT LOVE: POSTSCRIPT

Dry rings of love. Lull.
Sheets rippled rolled. Ridges. Horizons of the bed.
/stillwaves of clothe/
Your legs listless plows. Bone-fled flesh.
In a fleshgarden
Orgasms grow. Sensual insignia.
Music. Night search. Liquid neon
Morning. Chill vault quiver.
First yawn of day.
Trees shudder. Showers for the mat of dawn.
Sun blinks. Sun bleats.
Dry rings of love. Love is a bedwetter.
Saliva on your thighs: Damballah's inscription.
Lust of last night: nude-scrawled bed-rings.
Hissdrone of shower. Bathroom giggle, gurgle, gurgle.
Marvin Gaye's moan: "Trouble Man" Trouble.
Trouble:
/nobody knows de trubble I be . . ./
Sun tears. Shower hissdrone. Your
Thighs cry: cringe from the sun's hexing eye.
Night shrinks back into your woods. Night shrinks.
Shrinks back into the womb of God.

III

FORTY-FIVE MINUTES TO THE CEMETERY

Rain,
Earlier in East St. Louis and now in New York.
The skies continue to mourn for the fallen poet and warrior,
Mojo-handler and prophet.

Four passengers in the fourth car,
Divided by a generation of intellect,
But feeling a common pain,
A mutual bewildmmt:
Four grit faces of the oppressed.

The dead poet rode in the first car
But was present in the whole train:
Smiling in approval at our candid talk.
Dumas was like that. "Man, let's just tell it ," he used to say.
Yes, and he had given direction to the
pen of the younger poet earler thit morning
Several stories up, adrift in a big bird of steel.

Our talk was shop:
"Henry and I finished Commerce High School together,"
The driver intimated. .-
A middleage friend of the poet's mother said:
"They're killing off all our good men; I tell ya, a black man
Today speaks his piece at the risk of losing his life!'

New Yorkers talk differently than East St. Louisans,
The younger poet observed to himself.

The cars of the procession,
Standing out with bright eyes against the dim day,
Sped cautiously toward Farmingdale National Cemetery
Where white marble headstones stood mute and ma cab^:
Quite geometrically adnged in a sprawling well kept
ocean of green.

Again talk: 'They're slaughtering our boys in Vietnam,"
the middleage lady
Quipped; "this graveyard will be filled up soon."
A bus carrying the Army Honor Guard joined us at the
entrance to the cemetery.

The guard gave a trifling, sloppy salute to the fallen poet
Who had served his country.
More talk as we departed the graveside:
"Young David walks just like his daddy,"
The driver informed us about Dumas' eldest son.

"Neither of the boys understand what's going on,"
The driver's mother noted.
'Who does?" the young poet asked himself.

A confession from the middleage lady: "Can't cry no more.
Just won't no more tears come out - all dried up!'
Her eyes looked like worn rubies, inquisitive jewels
Polished to worn perfection
By having seen many things
Including the dead poet's "good looking"
Remains.
The driver echoed her: "Henry was beautiful; he looked
Just like he was sleep."

The driver was a spirit lifter, also an interior observer:
"Henry thought too deep for the average person."
Upon leaving the cemetery
The procession broke up.
Cars bearing license plates from various places sped on or
turned off,
Went their way and my way.

The skies lifted their hung heads.
Mrs. Dumas smiled finally and played with her sons,
David and Michael.
The boys, cast in the same physical mold as their father,
Were impeccably dressed.

©2006 by Eugene B Redmond

Cover Design: Joseph McNair