The Space Between the Bars

1/18/19

Before meditation:

The hope is that I can catch something

Still swirling in the subconscious

After only five hours of sleep

And a night of Gregory Alan Isakov

A songwriter whose words evoke images

I could only hope to attain,

Who said that if you’re a writer

You know what it is like to continue

Writing the same words or phrases

Who said how he takes songs and posts them up

On a wall in a room where he then decides

Which ten of the forty will make the album

And he noticed that four of his songs included

The way some of the things...

The way some of these things come to me

Like a creek in the evening

Like a light of a boat

In the middle of the ocean

Like the wind of a kite on a Benjamin Franklin

Night. The source of the forced sailor

Taking up reins of the Captain’s child

And the tenderest crew that knew to boil potatoes

And view their duties as collective, and their mission

As one that might come to the forefront, of only

The breasts of their double chested waist coats

Come to them suddenly and lift off the veil

Reveal the empty and crushed cartons of butane

Sticks of oiled cloths, lit to guide the way

Flags half torn and flags raised anew

Pride in their country, East Timor, too

Pride in the sailing and pride in naught

1600 miles to seek what they sought

A blessing of bottle and christening of friend

A survival of witnesses combing the ends

A search for the treasure so often viewed

As one without stepping on anyone’s shoes

But a step nonetheless, clouded in history

Of that dirty old slave ship and the waters between

That triangle of blood and dead bodies floating

And coming across the Atlantic, too, there are ghosts

That take ships because of differences

And you hear about their sinking

And you hear them disappear

And you question not past

For the thought hurts your ear

And it hurts you skin

And it hurts your heart

When like sits with like

And difference tears like apart

When the entire crowd is nothing but white

The privilege of twenty-six dollars

The privilege of songs

Twins with a xylophone at thirty-years old

Opening the case, lined with diamonds

Etched in marble,

She writes her name

Etched on the graves

In the Whitehouse

Lawn. Bones of old slaves

Bones long gone

Brought to the place to build walls for the master

Then expect to be living without any wounds

When your race was the one that created these tombs

Tombs of deceit

Tombs of madness

Tombs of destruction

To aid your progress.

Then you sit in this castle

Looking out to the sea

To see the sailors far off

In the sun, working for you

And whaetver you want

So you come to the windows

You come to the edge

You look out upon

This thought that is dread

You know it has been

Four hundred years

Yet your hand is the battle

Of your ancestry

So you pick up the speech

You pick up the talk

You pick at the scab

And the blood runs off

You let the blood run

Use water to dilute

You think of the past as having

Nothing to do with you

Yet until this can be

Acknowledged and sought

The hidden wound will tear you apart

From within the stretch of the canvas will bleed

And nightmares will sing in dark symphony

Ears will ring in your tell-tale heart

Beating the floor and tearing apart, taking the time

To drive inside and out

Until the wretchedness of yesteryear

Comes up from your mouth

And the boat floats on

And boats come anew

The resurrection is up to you

To retrieve and rewrite this history

Of a whitewashed nation founded on liberty

For one entire crew, trading in slaves

The liberty came in white men’s names

So when the black woman screams in your ear

Pause, and listen for it is her you should hear

Her voice (oppressed) not only for color

But the patriarchy of which you benefit

Your uncle a sailor and a matter of course

He charted the vessel that put you ahead

From the birth to the present

From the truck to the bed

From raisins

Sunshine cannot be made into grapes

And the ironing of church bells will not suffice

To wring out the shirts that once covered the chests

Of your long ago uncles built on the backs

Of men whose names you call out at night

To ask for forgiveness and the insight to know

What can come next along this ocean

Of tears and blood and internal wars fought

After meditation:

Haloragis erecta may be the seaberry from New Zealand

Unable to grow in the heat of New Orleans

Yet you take a seed and watch this become a stem

Watch this become a small trunk, watch branches spread out

Over the edge of the pot, and this wonder keeps it alive

For the time being, you think of other experiments

The Maqui berry, roots eaten by ants and never able

To return to the lush green with which it began

Raisin tree that never sprouted, all of the different passifloras

All of the different butterflies brought by never giving up

And in each case there is a dream in each seed

Hope for a wish for a chance at a word that

Describes the reason for breath, the reason to keep

Sakes and time and notions of heart connected

Keepsakes of rhyme within the collected

Thoughts and emotions and feelings

That serve to drive the soul

That serve to support the soul

That flow between the divine

Within each one of us

This core connects with the seeds of the world

We are each other, and we are responsible

When a species begins its descent, perhaps then

We can pick up the needed tools

Fashioned by homo sapiens, fashioned by a race

With a bent fist, but also a wrist that

Can throw and catch, and collect emotions to
Lift like hot air balloons over fields of trees

Cows and deer drinking from ponds interspersed

Chickens and birds pecking at patties they leave

This system a belief

This system a way that indigenous people

Collected and gathered and gave back to the land

The bones of ancestors deep beneath this bed

Where you sit, deep beneath this house, deep beneath the earth

In Bulbancha, in the city where what happened before

Has been forgotten in the name of European progress

So how to come in and seek out the beauty of a seed

The Wellington bronze some call it, the sea berry

Haloragis erecta, makes you want to learn Latin

With a taste on your tongue and others to stand the test

Of time these apple trees grow on their own according

The plums of chickasaw, the persimmons of yesterday

The chinquapins roasted over an open fire before

Newspapers became an argument and trees a means

For division

When trees were a means for breathing

For lying beneath

For falling in love

For climbing

For watching birds

For a base where nitrogen drops

Where the chickens sit across the street

Sleeping in the branches of the cypress

Where a tea tree does its best, wet feet and all

Seemingly a born receiver of the nitrogen that drops

From the vents of the chickens above

You learn how to say good morning in their language

And you learn that your head can be quiet

Amidst noise there is the sacred totem of wonder

There is the call of your lover from another room

An interruption that might otherwise disturb you

While writing before six in the morning

But to hear her voice, to know the joy with which she wakes

To see how she offers that to you daily

To see how she is able, to pull herself back into the moment

To know that the sawdust that gathers around her bare feet

Is the beginning of her being lifted and ascending to heaven

Where you will bear witness to the angels, to her kin

To the lover within the bars some seek and the bars

Some stay between with just enough space to breathe

Day after day constructing reasons why it can’t be

Reasons why there cannot be silence

Reasons why there cannot be love

So just as one sits within one’s own body

Chanting shri ram jai ram jai jai ram

So can one move through the pains and ills

Of what happens daily in this world

With a tender heart and reindeer nubs showing for

All the world to gather and touch, ever so slightly

With splayed fingers and butcher’s paper

And if there should be blood among those that differ

Let this blood feed the soil and the snakes and the worms

Let what withers and dies become life once again

For it was never dead to begin with, and let

Ladders be channels of peace where we might climb

Together we shall overcome for we were never apart

The illusion required to bypass the guilt is alive and

Well...God only knows of the station at which we will

Cross onto the next thought that might break us free

Unknown in the beginning and along the way

Wards of people without guns

Wards of people with bear hugs

Wards of people gathering outside

Wards of people long known and long gone

When the wishing well along Decatur Street

Fills with nickels and pennies

You will never know which man snatched

The quarters, and you will never know as you drift

Between the ghosts around Jackson Square

What has touched you

Whether this be a body of flesh

Or a body of past

Or a body of performance

For in this wandering, there becomes a becoming.