Welcome Surprises

1/12/19

The day cannot start, interruptions,

Miss B comes, shoulders slumped, tears in her eyes

And in your haste you have forgotten

Life is more than a lost phone

Life is the connections that come with that phone

For you have thought only of the peace

The quiet of no dings, no vibrations

And totally forgot the seventy-five dollars promised

For work that she needed done on her car.

She came all the way cross the canal, she says,

“That man told me not to drive that car.

That man told me not to drive on that tire

That man told me thirty...then he said fifty.

I thought you was…”

You explain about your phone, about how you are sorry.

She tells you that she knows you not like that

How she knows that some people low down and dirty

How she not like some of these drug addicts and alcoholics

And she’s not: you’ve known her over five years

Honest and dependable, she comes into your house

Makes pralines for your family and talks

To your mom on the phone

And ooh can she talk and don’t dare

Fall into her trap when she asks,

“How old you think I is?”

She has become your friend, is your friend.”

In your truck, she tells you about ASI, about how

She trying to find a way to save

She tells about, “I told that boy

They got these mens. They whistling at me.

I’m sixty-three years old. They got these black women

Some white women too. They give blow jobs

For five dollars. I’m just waiting for you. What that

Man would’ve thought if I said, “Seventy-five dollars?”

She tells me about Trina in Dallas, Texas, how she buying a condo

“Got three floors with a bedroom on every floor. Imagine that,”

She says, hand waving as if a captain on a ship

“Looking out from every window.” Trina she taught to fight

Trina she tried to send to Catholic schools, only

A hundred and thirty-eight dollars back then

“And these parents these days,” she says. She’s buying shoes and

Jackets for her grandkids. “You seen these kids come into school.”

In the truck, she tells you how she used to be a CNA

How she used to make good money

How she made a mistake

When a white woman came in crying about how

My husband dying and he need somebody around

And she went to work for them taking cash under the table

And she missed two quarters or two something

You don’t quite understand other than

She lost her social security

And she talking fast now about learning to save

And the white lady

And how Miss B’s own husband dead

How he would’ve been seventy-three today

And how her license plates coming from Mississippi

And how you have to have a light bill

Something. How you have to

Pull it all together and make it work

And you think about you

Because that is what so many

Do. And you think about schools

And you tell her how they’re still segregated

And she says, “Don’t nobody want

To send their kids to them schools.”

She says, “It’s always been that way,” and

Again she brings up the hundred and thirty-eight dollars

How she taught Trina to fight

How Trina served time,

And how Trina has that condo now

Three floors high, in Dallas

Hundred and eighty thousand dollars

How she’s going there, June probably, how

Her son, he gonna give her three hundred

Dollars come March, come tax season

And you imagine her, standing

On the third floor, opening a window

To let in the Dallas breeze

And look out on the world

She raised for her daughter.

After meditation:

What if every material object could be seen

As a prayer flag there temporarily

Blowing in the wind with gift of presence

And what if instead of holding hands we might

Hold each other close in the dance of presence

And what if acceptance really is the answer?

What if the only question was how to love?

Would you fly down from up above

And sit with the rest of us?

Would there be room at the table for everybody?

Would there be the story of heaven and hell

Of who is feeding whom, of one-armed people

Of the moon

In this place where nothing is waste, where

All returns to the earth some day.

Consider everything you have as sacred

Consider every place as being blessed

As being a witness to the breath that connects

All go before you, and all come after

And all are connected, in this walk

In these houses, in this rotting of wood

In this opening of holes, in this falling apart.

Lift what you might to move closer

Walk into the place of discomfort

Whether this be a fire with those unknown

Or a dance recital for a baby boy

For when the realization of being tamed hits

You cannot help but attempt to be free

And then you will fully see the rooster on the sidewalk

Before you. The stuffed bear tied to the front

Of the passing truck. Only when

You stop speaking in absolutes will everything

Become absolutely true, to dig deeper

And to ask what is happening before you

To see the moment

To climb down from the stairs when the truck returns

To realize that inside is Lonnie and Noel

And to know that Noel was your student in Marrero

And now he is here in the 9th

And that Teddy Bear been riding for four years

And some people tell Mr. Lonnie he got to wash it

But he say the rain will wash it,

He say instead of hanging it on a pole like some people do

He thought his sister would’ve wanted to let it ride

Along with him so that more people might see

And you tell him how you write, how you do what you do

How he would be saved in perpetuity, entering into this poem

You tell him how happy you are for the blessing, for the chance

To be a part of the teddy bear, and a part of Noel’s life

And in this you realize how it is so much more than tests and grades

You see the life inside, and you wonder about the mouses

The ones you took from Carrie’s house, from the humane traps

And brought all the way to Marrero,

You wonder if and how they are living

You wonder about connections like prayer flags giving and taking

About people fading, about Teddy Bears making your day,

About patience and love and being on your way

About relating, about them knowing where you live

About giving to and for each other. About love.

In this manner, you never know what will come next, but you do know this:

Love and understanding will come with listening and rising up will come

With everyone. With every sound. With that barbaric yelp

Of the voice of every child. Realize there is power

Realize we are on your side. Realize that the

Eyes of a child will open your own, will stop to show you the moment

And even when the inspiration does not come

Write about the sawdust on your front porch, the overturned benches

Keep trying until eventually the steps lead you to what is next

This is perfection: lack of expectation

Sitting, the moment, the beginning of something greater

LL Cool J, and even though I was white and in Cedar Falls, Iowa

That power hit me, as did NWA

as does

The sounds of George Jones and Dolly Parton move villages in Africa

For it has been reported that though they know no English

They can hear the sound of longing in the music, longing

For home, for connection, for each other,

And in those songs I heard in the eighties, Public Enemy

And the rest, and those already mentioned, there was the fight

The troubled mind of mine wanting to rise up and against

Wanting to question, and though I knew no history,

I knew power, I knew the strength behind the words

I knew the mix, and that was when I first believed

In the power of language

When my cousin was Cool Chris

And I, Mc Z, with my first line:

It’s too easy for Mc Z to rock the mic.