Conyus

Underwater Blues

Beneath the blues beat all the earthquake faults
Look like huge black snakes tap dancing at midnight.
That distant sunset looked like a preacher's pot of gold
Even though it was really a General on the horizon moving fast
With an Army of Rock musicians that had bazookas shaped like guitars.
Beneath the blues beat is a world of men and women
With flame throwers and murderous machines
Lighting the sky at dawn with strobe lights and ammonia fields of crystal
Billowing upward in a long blue column of death.
Beneath the blues beat doctor's probe deep into oil fields
With cold hands and snipers outside waiting for a head shot
While pharmaceutical towers constructed on blood money and greed
Rain down ghosts of blue babies and stack corridors with the destitute and ageing.
Beneath the blues beat all the renegade Apaches
Ride on underground trains to Manhattan and Coney Island
Where Federal Agents are wrapped warmly in small pox blankets
And Madison Avenue accountants are scalped with credit cards
And shark skinned suits.
Beneath the blues is a thousand years of drumming
And village griots reciting a history of love and family
To generations of ebony faces with lovely smiles
And eyes shinning like full moons.
Beneath the blues beat all the switchblade cane cutters of Cuba
Sing the underwater blues to slaves aboard the Amistad
Who threw themselves into the deep water of freedom
For future generations of blues singers and unborn trumpeters
Beneath the blues beat all the drowned slaves
Sing the underwater blues to millions of blues people
Who wait in the parlor like a senile butler to murder their oppressor
On plantation row and along the Middle Passage
Beneath the blues Delta blues men follow the Northern Star
To snow ghettos and cities of steel where skyscrapers block out sun
And flowers grow beneath neon lights of mushroom clouds
And angel dust poppy dawns.
That midget you are so in love with,
Was really a giant, who had an operation
After a war injury in Vietnam ,
Defending the Bank of America
You think Vietnam was something?
Korea ? You haven't seen anything yet!
Wait till the Generals finish with Iraq
Afghanistan and the rest of the Middle East
You'll pray for Allah, Buddha, Jesus Christ,
or anybody's God to ease that pain.
Let's bring back all the dead soldiers
For one last dance with their rapiers and rifles
Melted into a waltz of peace love and understanding
For the war mongers to wear around their neck like an albatross.
When the doo whoppers low ride in Oakland
You can hardly hear the shot gun in the distance
Or the ambulance racing through the street
Like a priest searching for altar boys.
They'll come for you at night, and you won't even know it
Because you'll probably be singing the blues and frying cat fish
In some backwater shack on the Louisiana bayou north of Baton Rouge
Where the chemicals make the river thick as buttermilk.
From deep deep space, the moon, earth and sun,
Look very small and vulnerable like a young child
Being slapped around by the schoolyard bully
Or a muscle bound stockbroker on Wall Street.
All I got is my love and that's hanging
On the edge of a depression so deep
That you could fill it with all the blues songs
And cheap whiskey of the world.
Beneath the blues beat a world of reality, illusion, and surprise:
Black swans swimming with White Sharks down Michigan Ave ,
Flamingos etched against Northern Lights like blood oranges in flight,

Hawks dancing with doves on the tip of disabled ballistic missiles,

The children of Mohammed, Jesus Christ, Lao-tzu, and Buddha,
Holding hands on the edge of the precipice of hatred, genocide, and holocaust.

The Song of the Broken Giraffe being sung in bebop by hip exorcist in the Vatican ,

Gargoyles and Priest stand sentinel over mass burials in Uganda , Sudan , and Bosnia ,

The children of Martin killing his dream with rusty needles and lights out shotguns,

Peace clouds at dawn shaped like red roses bleeding at sunset,

Hummingbirds fly backwards in love towards the Trinity,

A whole other ‘New World Order' waiting in the wings to take flight.

Like Archie Bell & the Drells, said,

“I can't stop dancing!”

The New South

ghost smile back at you
from the new south like a noose
hanging from that old tree

The Art of Midnight

Midnight here, and the fog is like a heavyweight boxer.
Knocking out weak street lights with one punch,
And moving on down the block to light poles.
The night is a long judgment of dark tomorrows,
And the fog, a champion of infinite sadness.
Sometimes, when midnight is near the horizon,
You can see a low light over the bay.
Most of the late hours now, are a halo of blues,
Pushing east into the delta like a Muddy Waters song,
About old friends, who come at you,
With open arms and heavy baggage;
None can sing, but they all have guitars
Without strings
And mud on their shoes.
I saw someone the other day,
I thought I knew, and then, they were gone,
Like your life, before you know it.
Not every warbler is a songbird.
And some songs, are not songs at all.
Sometimes at night I cry.
Most times I cry and cry alone,
In the dark, near the ocean, and at midnight.
It's called the Art of Midnight.
As the Japanese say,
“A Lone Crane Set Against The Sky.”

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Cover Design: Joseph McNair