Words that Build Bridges Toward a New Tongue

you begin with a sound wrapped around a syllable, or syllables,
a word (or words) like razzmatazz, or ratamacue, then you listen to
a red-boned black man playing a horn like a clue,
like a train or john coltrane or bird, then you play around with sounds
your ears done heard, lift them off a rebound spellbound inside a rue,
because of a cue your memory remembered & knew.
now you add a few nouns & vowels,
words singing like birds, flying through a spring wind thunder clapping,
with roiling, rolling consonants, their feathers echoing colors now
black or white or blue, as a ranky dank pressing flesh beneath them
was immune to trailing blues stretched out behind him,
voices that flew rhythmic as queued soundtracks through the night's
sweet longing, choo-chewing like wailing engines hurtling down isolated
tracks, way out in the dead of night's hushed music,
around the voodoo, bewitching hour of bats, who like words
bruising from a crew of mad hatter good old boys were circling inside
a hushed cave, where a strange blend of language was fashioning itself now
from cries & screams, the whooshing of beating wings
drumming pell-mell clues through
the dark cinematography of a dream bordering on nightmare,
as it wraps itself around you now as would a cocoon,

you find yourself there inside the cave of your head
& you are whatever it is you think you are there, brand new,
you are what you believe in as truth, right then, right there,
when you hear sheets of sounds rushing out of the bell of a saxophone,
it is a stomp down cornucopia of magic spiraling out of a dream,
from a golden axe, shaped like an elephant's trunk, the shape of need here
is a question mark bewitching us with breath, power, mystery, stealth,
is what new language is shaping itself into now inside the neon air
hip-hopping & rapping in voice rhymes of young people,
before us right now is what the mind's ear reminds the tongue of here,
chasing the sound of a freight train moving at full speed, is a syntax,
a jackety-jack of wheels rolling through the slick flow of tracks bedazzling gears,
the song of it all beguiling us with amazement, the rackety-rack of steel spinning
over & down rails, underground or overground, tracks,
the sound we hear is real when we know it
coming from the terrifying mystery of a hip shaman's horn,
we see the music form in the shape of the hot tongue of a bic flame lighter
tonguing out gushed heat,
flames as sounds, as words inside the scorched flow of lava,
inside a tongue that is red, white, & blue, laced with dues paid in philadelphia, in hamlet, north carolina, where a language was fractured there,
congealed, until it hopscotched itself to its own back beat
conundrum, before it pealed across the air clear as a bell ringing cold
on sundays, unleashed a rage in rhythm & tempo, heated voices in sermons,
became a fire there in flight, was volcanic with syllables aglow, the night
flaming with embers washing through the breeze like a tribe of fireflies
swarming the night sky, a voice pure & guttural,
a primal scream looping clues of prophecy here, blue,
or sweetly singing as a slew of birds
tracking across a fondued sky laced with magenta,
their music heard in ringing silver bells as the wind tongue trills melodic
as it breezes lilting languages through chiming leaves trembling

like lovers in heat/time, when the air is all aglow & splendiferous
with greens, yellows, & golds,
bright reds of bougainvilleas,
jacarandas fragrant as voices of doves cooing, sweet pink of flaring
rhododendrons that burst into shapes of trumpet bells evoking
miles playing muted live in memory, clean as a whistle,
is where a poet stretches rubber sentences into bridges of music now,
language reinventing itself daily out of lost & found words,
constructing what it is to speak as a true american here,
today, right now, words moving through poems as magicians through parades,
clowns dressed up as verbs, adverbs, adjectives surrounding nouns with bright
verve, reminds the senses of sweet odor of frangipani perfume,
rhymes & rhythms intoxicating the senses,

this moment sluicing across the air in a rainbow of races,
seductive with music, images moving quickly as faces in an mtv video,
across screens blazing fast as beats moved through bebop, urban slick
as hip-hop brothas chilling wicked in blooming fubu color schemes
rad in baggy jeans, their hand jive flicking & stabbing the air, constantly blur-
ring images—blink & they're gone like pop goes the weasel—
their rhythms nicking edges off slick time in stop-gap measures,
voices locking & leaking into currency, flip & zip,
can-you-dig-it, inside blaring boxes clocking back beats stitching threads
through the culture of hip-hop, attitudes holding everything together there,
as when a guitar player picks blaze out of funk noise,
his cadence up inside & outside time,
as in this poem swinging its voice downwind to cross fragile bridges
strung together with cadences & words, structures underneath
form the bass-groove swaying back & forth over deep chasms,
between mountains of language, where a child hears vocabulary in a swing,
in the backyard of a favorite uncle waxing real with his sho-nuff-to-god,
hope-to-die-ace-boon-coon-throw-downs,
the ones that always got his back each & every
time he smacks scary, wherever he goes, their attitudes high-fivin their eyes
& everything silent here except the wind's screaming terror,
words trying to cross over to the other side, to where the nephew swings,
right here, right now, words flowing through seamless
as eye (w)rap my tongue around a bridge of johnny ace or nat king cole
stitching together a profusion of sweet cadences frank
sinatra & elvis stole, words that breathe inside a living language full of colors,
as choirs of birds singing atop hot telephone wires carry aretha's gospel,
a symphonic elocution of elegant voices,
a cecil taylor bedazzlement of lyrical, discordant chords,
swinging double-bladed axes cutting down trees as they slice through all this
blue air, the bird still singing now over steel tracks
snaking through & in between landscapes, where tupac & biggie now sleep
beside coaltrain(s) blowing through the night's voodoo air, sweet
the feeling here now, still blue as you were charlie parker,
& truly american as slow trains choo-chooing twelve bar blues
through your old stomping ground of kansas city's twelfth & vine,
where you first showed your razzle-dazzle,
your feathers spreading their beauty through wind-chimes
aching with your soliloquizing voice, always on edge,
triple-timing the fire that flowed through your genius ire on time,
until a chicken bone stuck itself inside your throat & damned up your music,
(like that legendary finger stuck in that dike did to tupac, did to biggie, too)
pure smack snaking venom through your veins,
in a deadly slow dance with death you stumbled & scratched,
poisoned your brain until your head nodded off for real, then the bells tolled,
but boy did you jam, jam, boy did you jam until you left, no sweat, boy did you
jam, jambo, jambalaya, gumbo, boy did you jam jam, boy did you jam
& play that horn for real before the pain jammed vomit in your throat,
left those hot cadences cold as methuselah,
fire bird of stricken-heat, chicken-gumbo boy of sound language, boy,
did you jam, jam, boy did you jam, boy did you jam, jam, boy did you jam
riffs run through scales & chords, inverting electric

everything you heard you turned inside out, structures,
blew past every note—& through them, too—
rooted them in your own blue expression of turn everything inside out,
you jambo, gumbo, chicken-liver boy, running up & down jambalaya scales,
pastiche, a coaltrain before coltrane blew down the hushed voodoo night,
a coaltrain burning across flat plains of kansas city, flight & barbecue
sauce up in the flavor of your drenched hot giddiup, scorching as red pepper
chili sauce, yo boy of bebop phrasing in groovin' high, you blew:

bebop, bebop, beedoo beeboli, doodle-li, bebop, bebop,
beedoo beeboli, doodle-li, bebop, bebop,
beedoo beeboli
bop baw baw baw bo de baaaaaaaaa daaaaaaa . . . . . . . .

& you ran it all the way to new york city, minton's & birdland,
chicken eating boy turned hip man skeedaddleing choochooing chords,
so fast the air could hardly digest them, not to mention some human
ears, playing salt peanuts, salt peanuts,
you & diz beautiful beyond words tradin' fours in duet,
fours in traffic, boppin and rappin before tupac & biggie were even born

bird, you uptown in harlem creating language that reinvented itself again
& again before rap seduced rhythms down to scratching old records & words,
skating over samples of james brown & george clinton, toasting & roasting
the language like you & diz did in a dizzy atmosphere, jammin'

beedle-loo-beedle-loo-beedle-loo-bop,
beedle-loo-beedle-loo-beedle-loo-bop,
beedle-loo-beedle-loo-beedle-loo-bop,
beedle-loo, beedle-loo
beedle-loo-beedle-loo-beedle-loo-bop,
beedle-loo-beedle-loo-beedle-loo-bop,
beedle-loo-beedle-loo-beedle-loo-bop,
beedle-loo, beedle-loo

words & sounds building bridges toward a new tongue,
& it all started back in africa, mixed with europe over here, everything else,
found itself here, too, in this gumbo stew, jambalaya,
this salad bowl filled with all kinds of flavors,
this pastiche, collage of language reinventing itself every day,
every moment giving itself props, wherever words are
spoken, patch themselves together with sound, form a sentence,
that becomes a musical line perhaps lifted from armstrong, bird, or miles
a phrase snatched & grafted into language of tupac & biggie, buzzing
in the attitudes of alanis morrisette or jamiroquai scatting
phrased metamorphosed into dance when he reaches back
to grab hold of a language to swing & sing

today, in this moment in time, when everything is evolving,
right now, from cue tips of tongues, a new language
is waiting for you to discover listener, for you to give it some props,
to speak it, wrap your tongue around it, roll it off your assembly line of new
expressions too, so give it up for the new, right here, right now, so speak it,
don't diss it, give the new some props right now,
freak it out with your own
dash of flavor,
say what's up in the air as sound, now
know it's rooted & shaped in the vortex of truth-change,
constant with language & words, sounds & attitude now,
say what's birthing in the womb of air, now
say what's birthing in the womb of air, now:

bustin on the scene clockin banji beastie boys actin like fiends:
down with the fave, funky jam, the noise up in the legit
jack up, someone screaming to kill the ill funky noise living large,
with an ace keepin it real, poppin the rip, doin the nasty to the bump
breakdown in the bricks, where the homies roll bones
to clock dollars, chillin hard through the calendar, gangstas flexin
profiles, while they kick it on the real decked in doo-d00 pants
saggin slow like low riders over their doggy-grips
as they watch aces ball with the pill takin it hard to the rack,
skyin down the box, risin up the god to deal, or flash for the count,
pumpin treys from downtown, nothin but nets

words that build bridges toward a new tongue

beedle-loo-grab-a-groove-drop-some-slick-talk,
jazz-a-phrase-pop-a-blues-new-as-hip-hop,
cruisin-through-rapping-clues-sprung-from-bebop
me-&-you, grooving through
me-&-you, groovin through

me-&-you, singin new ......