Deconstruction of the Blues

Awake

43 AWAKE Like being hit by lightning. I couldn’t sleep. Four days and nights trekking on the ocean bottom. Mud. The water gone. Each day moments edged in heat edge to edge. The nights miraculous that they contracted hour hour that I slid through a baby turning on a spit. Flat silvery fear about it. I’d forgotten how to sleep. Sleep no longer happened to me. Benny Slendered (many splendord times car crash cut my momma loose Chidi Ahanitou Water gone. Whiteness in the dark. My mother’s hoarse anger. Her longing tenderness. It was love struggle to the death. But that had never stopped my sleep before. Back in this room where I grew through high school forty years gone shriveled bean on a stalk. The joints had never stretched. Open. Wind from high school. Blown back from the past. Calm. Sane. Sky and ash. roll out roll out Zeroed in in the coalbin tunneling down beneath the school Chidi Ahanitou Halls silent as they’d never been. Hallmark halls. Sweet and empty clutched for sanity if I had a past I might have a future. But Perri was still there pressed against me as we danced at the graduation party. The whole curve and dip of her. Astonishing. Pressed against me. Innerstarred. No no no no no no no I said. But why she said nonplussed scarified. Why she said Why not? Ooooooh yes Oooooow god Fuck you fucker Ooooooh yes Yes yes yes Chidi Ahanitou 44 Trekking waterless seas. Satellite dishes of mud. Worming inside the hours. Relent relent you sad flayed fool. Show her some love while there’s still time. For her care her devotion her dreams. Whole blasted waste of it. Leaning against death forty years gone. Turn hold turn wait turn hope turn despair. Station to station. How can this be happening? Eyes open inside my head. ...