WordUp - kalamu's words

SHORT STORY: FOR YOU OWN GOOD

For Your Own Good

By April Vincent & Kalamu ya Salaam

It was a routine day, I mean I was just making my rounds and nothing unusual was happening except my partner was out sick, which really was a good thing. I don’t mean him being sick was good, I mean I liked rolling by myself and getting a chance to talk to people like Mrs. Andrews, who had twelve children but looked like she was a brand new mother with a small baby. I mean she was kind of slim, still had a sparkle in her eyes and… what the hell!

Is that guy beating up on somebody? I flashed my siren. As I got closer I saw him hit the young girl one more time and then look up at me coming toward him. He turned and walked away slowly like nothing was happening.

The girl couldn’t have been more than eighteen or nineteen. She had a bundle of clothes strewn all over the sidewalk. I got out and tried to talk to her. When she looked up at me and peeped my badge hanging around my neck, I could see fear in her eyes. This was stupid, but I understood it. She was more afraid of me, a cop, than she was afraid of that guy who had just been beating on her.

“You ok?”

“I’m fine officer, I was just trying to get some laundry done.”

“The sidewalk ain’t no washing machine and that dude sure wasn’t giving you no soap powder.”

I stared at her and she stared back. Not looking away or nothing, the fear was gone. Maybe I was wrong, maybe she wasn’t afraid. She didn’t answer me, at least not with words; just sort of threw her hands up like as if to say ‘whatever.’ She let out a brief sigh and then bent over and started picking up the clothes. When I stooped down to help, she started talking like she knew me.

“That was my baby’s father, he lives with his mamma but he does the same thing every week, come over here, acts like he’s the king of the world, starts a foolish argument, and leave. This is the first time it’s gotten this bad.”

She was crying. Silent tears rolled down the side of her jaw. She wiped her face with the back of her hand and started picking up her clothes.

“You sure you ok?”

“Yeah, I guess. I don’t know why he thinks just because we have a baby together that I have to be with him. But to be honest with you, sir, I am afraid.”

“You don’t have to be afraid.” She wouldn’t look me in the eye. “You want to press charges on him?”

“No.”

Why would I press charges on the father of my child? That would only make things worse. Is that what this cop wants?

Damn, these girls always be protecting the dogs that end up biting them. She picked up a pair of green shorts. I saw a little pack of weed laying there. She saw me see it and that look of fear crept into her eyes again.

“How old are you?

 “I’m almost 17.”

“You ought to be in somebody’s school.” She turned away, grabbed up an arm full of clothes and started to walk away. “Where you going?”

“I have a baby to take care of, you know.”

The weed was still sitting on the sidewalk. She saw it and she knew I saw it. “You’re forgetting something.”

I know he don’t think I’m about to take a charge for Doe.

“Oh…that’s not for me.”

“That’s what they all say.”

“Well I know you don’t have good reason to believe me, but I can assure you I would never even think about smoking weed. I can’t even afford milk and diapers.”

“Get in.”

“No!”

“Girl, get in and let me take you wherever it is you going. And pick that weed up off the sidewalk, enough for somebody to come along and get the both of us in trouble.”

“I’ll come with you but I hope you don’t expect me to tell you any more of my business. I don’t want to turn my life into an investigation.”

“Somebody need to help you figure out all this mess.”

I could look at her and see the whole story. High school. Fell in love. Hooked up with this dude. He turned her on to getting high. Got her pregnant and now is tired of her. And here she is afraid of me when she should be afraid of her whole damn future.

I may have to deal with a few problems, maybe more than the average teenager, that don’t give you the right to call my life a mess. Nobody’s perfect.

“Look, I’m going to help you out. I might be wasting my time but then again you never know. Come on, let’s go.”

“What makes you think I need your help?”

“Those tears running down the side of your face. Get in. I’m doing this for your own good.”

-end-

_____________________________

[this is actually a writing exercise from school year 2007/2008 in a students at the center class at frederick douglas high school in the ninth ward of new orleans. i asked april if she wanted to write a story together. she said yes. i told her you pick my character and i will start the story, plus you write your character's dialogue and inner thoughts. she smiled mischievously and said, you're a policeman. she was messing with me. i said, ok, and based it on an actual incident that had happened a week before.]

POEM: I DON'T WANT TO LIVE ANYWHERE WHERE THEY ARE KILLING ME

I don’t want to live anywhere where they are killing me

1.

it’s crazy. most of us

kind of assume that where we are born

is home, where our first kiss was, learning to walk, literally,

throwing our first stone at someone in anger,

sitting at the table a mouth full of mother’s meatloaf

or was it strawberry pie, or even monkey bread—

those twisted strings of dough that were a wonderful

combination of chewy cake and sweet stuffing—

catching the bus home from school with friends,

the first drink, wasn’t it when uncle teddy

served you beer at thanksgiving, you were five?

like that, we think of that location in the mythic sense

the high drama that came later, the desperately sought

trysts, sneaking to liaison with someone you know you

ought to avoid, or the first time you got together

with someone whom you wanted the whole world

to know you were committed to being with for life,

or so you thought, how wonderful the world looked

as you lay dreaming on your back your head

secure in a special someone’s lap, or how short

the walk after the dance from the club to the parking lot,

what you wouldn't have given for a reprise of that heaven

the way a lover looks when their whole face smiles

just because you came around the corner with

a yellow tulip in your hand and a pack of almond m&m’s

secreted behind your back as you whispered

smokey’s ooh baby baby into an eagerly awaiting ear

actually those were the preludes—the real high drama

came some years later, the first time calling someone,

anyone, to come and get you out of jail, which you were in

for doing something stupid, something really, really

stupid, and then there was the accident when you banged

up someone’s new car, but those were just the breaks, not

the actual high drama of sitting sullen in some counselor’s

waiting room, your head thrown back to the wall

avoiding the eyes of your better half who was now

the loyal opposition and whose eyes were the same eyes

only smaller in the head of the child to whom you

could not some how find the right words to make sense

of this mess that was formerly your marriage

where these scenes take place, the parlor in which

a cousin's camera has caught you crying, the foggy mirror

where you examined yourself, one flight up in a total

stranger’s house and sheepishly you wonder what were you

doing in this blue tiled bathroom so very early in the morning

when you were supposed to be somewhere else—life is what

some people call this, and where you live your life, shouldn’t

that be the place you call home?

2.

the water. my god the water. the angry water

rain roaring sideways with the force of a freight train,

smashing your resolve to ride it out, or inching

down an interstate at two miles an hour so call evacuating

from the water. the dirty, angry water, running

if you were lucky enough to have wheels and a wallet

with plastic in it. the water. you will dream of

wet mountains falling on you and wake up gasping

for air as though you were drowning, oh the water

deeper than any pool you’ve ever swam in,

water more terrible than anything you can think

of, another middle passage, except this time

they don't even provide ships

I used to wonder how my ancestors survived

the Atlantic, Katrina has answered that question,

I wonder no more—there is a faith that is beyond

faith, a belief when there is nothing left to believe in,

no, not god, well, yes, god, for some, for many, it was

jesus, a few humduallahed, or whatever, but it was also

whatever that visited this terror upon us, and so

to keep believing in whatever, now takes something

the mind can not imagine, the realization that in order

to live you had to survive and in order to survive

you had to do whatever needed to be done, few

of us really, really know what we will do

when we’ve got nothing but have to find something

to keep us going, how you manage your sanity

in the water, corpses floating by, gas flames

bubbling up from some leaking underground line,

and you sitting on a roof and you just pissed

on yourself because, well, because there was

no where to go and do your business, five days

of filth, no water but flood water, no food but

hot sun, no sanitation but being careful where

you stepped, where you slept, where you turned

your back and eliminated, being careful to survive

twelve days later and you still don’t know where

all your family is, if you’ve got faith, you’re about to

use it all—is this some of what our ancestors saw?

3.

it is over a month later and you still can’t walk

on the land that used to be your backyard,

they treat you like a tourist, you can only

be driven down your street in a big bus,

you can only look out the window at what twisted,

funk encrusted little remains of all you ever owned

and some kid with a gun won’t let you go

to get big mama’s bible

this shit is fucked up, that’s what it is,

fucked up and foul, the smell of a million

toilets overflowing, of food that been rotting

for days inside a refrigerator that became

an oven because the electricity was off and

the sun was beaming down ninety degrees or more

and the worse part is that none of what you

already went through is the worst part, the worst

is yet to come as government peoples with

boxes and things they stick into the ground

tell you that even if the water hadn’t drowned

you, something called toxicity has made it

impossible for you to stay here, they are

telling you it is impossible for you to stay

in the house that been in your family

for over fifty years even though it’s still standing

it’s impossible to live here, and what shall

we call this? what shall we tell the children

when they ask: when are we going home?

4.

I don’t want to live anywhere where they have

tried to kill us even if it was once a place

I called home—but still and all, my bones

don’t cotton to Boston, I can’t breath

that thinness they call air in Colorado,

a Minnesota snow angel don’t mean shit

to me, and still and all, even with all of that,

all the many complaints that taint my

appreciation of charity, help and shelter,

even though I know there is no turning back

to drier times, still, as still as a fan when

the man done cut the 'lectric off, still,

regardless of how much I hate the taste

of bland food, still, I may never go back,

not to live, maybe for a used to be

visit, like how every now and then you

go by a graveyard… I am not bitter, I am

just trying to answer the question:

what is life without a home?

what is life, without

a home? and how long does it take

to grow a new one?

—kalamu ya salaam

POEM: BENEATH THE BRIDGE

Beneath the bridge

(A 2006 eulogy for North Claiborne Avenue

from Canal Street down to Elysian Fields)

beneath the bridge on claiborne avenue, there,

where the mardi gras indians used to go and offer up their colorful vows to never bow down as they trodded around mean streets, freely treating our eyeballs to the most prettiest, feathered, multi-hued suits that any man could ever hope to sew and wear in any given lifetime, they hollered the chants of saints, their eyes burning with the fire of the guardians of the flame sounding out sacred syllables in a language without name, words whose meanings we could not specify but whose dynamic intentions none of us could deny;

where once tall oaks grew spreading magnificent branches that embraced whole families of revelers joyfully enjoying a home-cooked holiday brunch, iron horseshoes clanging as poppa p threw a dead ringer and junior dug a serving spoon into aunt juanita’s mustard-colored potato salad while ambrose sat with his latest girl friend snuggling in his lap, lying through his gold-capped teeth about how much money he won betting on the ponies last week and how he was paying for this whole spread out of just a small portion of the purse he achieved when he selected a horse whose number was the same as this girlfriend’s birth date or was it the thirty-something double digit that was both her bust and her butt tape measurement?;

where the concrete construction of a federal expressway created a sound-box that high school bands rolled through inter-threading the ebony thighs of teenage girls with aural ribbons of raucous marching music played with a buck-jump beat the song’s composer never intended or imagined, shouted out with an upful, youthful swagger whose chocolate sweetness was so deep that all you could do was smile, and smile as the parade provided a sonic prescription for whatever ailed you;

where along either side of the street used to thrive haberdasheries (which offered everything worth wearing, from congressional sky pieces to tailored peg-legged pants dyed a diversity of tints & shades selected from a rainbow of pigments that made technicolor seem dull, not to mention stacy adams shoes whose shine was so gleaming you did not need a mirror);

where doctor’s offices and pharmacies, grocery stores and mortuaries, flower shoppes and butcher stalls testified to the industriness of an urban community still shaking country dust off its boots, run right up next to passé-blanc dynasties that had been resident in these homes since the slavery time placages that produced their pale-skinned lineages;

where houston’s school of music was on one side and the negro musicians’ union was on the other, and barbershops and hair salons hosted weekly informal town hall meetings at which every manner of contemporary problem was advised and analyzed in betwixt the salacious shoo-shoo of who did what to whom and why;

where a veritable smorgasbord of eateries such as levatas seafood which specialized in chilled half-shelf oysters deftly shucked as you stood at the rail exchanging mirthful curses with a man whose one good eye could unerringly spy the seam in a tightly sealed oyster’s shell, and the lemon juice squeezed and rubbed onto working hands to eradicate the smell of sucking on and swallowing warm crawfish washed down with quarts of cold beer, or the two huge italians that had a grill called pennies where the sizzling hot sausage was so good, so hot the cap never had to come off the tobasco bottle, and the french bread was fresh and the lettuce crisp and the tomatoes so sweet you lifted a slice and slid it into your mouth grinning in delight at the wonderfully tart taste bursting forth, alerting your salivary glands to the poboy treat shortly to follow;

where music factories called nightclubs and music emporiums better known as joints like the fabled club 77 at which the sunday night sets lasted til monday morning wherefrom some patrons would head straight to work without seeing their homes which they had left on saturday not to return until late after-work on monday where upon one fell out totally oblivious to anything until tuesday morning, hang-outs and haunts in which a young man feeling himself saw a fine woman from the rear, figuring that was all he needed to know, rushed over to her, tapped her on the shoulder and was semi-shocked to see, when she turned around, that this fox was his twelfth grade teacher, and though clearly a bit embarrassed, neither of them was really surprised that the other was there;

where protest marches and marcus garvey celebrations, spring festival carriage and limousine parades with little freckled-faced future creole queens shyly waved a gloved hand at ruffians with holes in their pants as their manhood throbbed at the thought of knocking the little man out of those young girl’s boats;

where tambourines fanned us, sudan regaled us, and the avenue steppers showed how our feet would not fail us as long as we stuck one to the other high stepping and kicking them up, all up and down the way with everyone on the one and yet at the very same time each and all of us, the young, old, short and tall of us, exactly and precisely doin’ what we wanna and only what we wanna;

where fleets of second-liners have carried so many of us off to the great beyond in ceremonies during which coffins were sat on bars and shots of scotch were poured atop the casket, a libational commemoration of another man who done gone to glory or how the unforgettably gorgeous sight of a mother dancing atop the box that held the remains of her son was a socially sanctioned and totally acceptable way to both memorialize a life as well as say her last goodbyes accompanied by the bravado of some young dimple-cheeked trumpeter dueling with an elegant grey-bearded cornetist, the both of them trying to out blow the other, one could have been named Joshua and the other might have been called Gabriel, as their brass notes rang out the strains of i’ll fly away, oh lordy, i’ll fly…;

there, where a once proud avenue is now nothing but a site of sadness, a cemetery for the rusted corpses of flooded cars covered only in the flimsiest scrim of katrina dust caked on like filthy rings in the toilet bowl of a superdome bathroom;

there, beneath the bridge, on north claiborne avenue.

—kalamu ya salaam

POEM: HAIKU #49

haiku #49

thought i left you but

my train rumbles in circles

each station is you

—kalamu ya salaam

POEM: HAIKU #102

haiku #102

your kiss—sensual

wet moonlight slow licking an

ocean's naked waves

—kalamu ya salaam

POEM: HAIKU #79

haiku #79

i enter your church

you receive my offerings

our screaming choirs merge

—kalamu ya salaam

POEM: HAIKU #28

haiku #28

i quiver inside

you like the ground shaking when

a mighty tree falls

—kalamu ya salaam

POEM: SHARING IS HEREDITARY

07_Sharing_Is_Hereditary_Lament_For_My_Father.mp3

(download)

Click here to download:

07_Sharing_Is_Hereditary_Lament_For_My_Father.mp3 (8.31 MB)

Sharing is hereditary

my four foot-eleven mother was world wise yet unburdened

by the cloying cynicism sophistication so often suggests

she projected a generous spirit adeptly balancing gifting

and keeping her nose out of other people's greed, and

equally, my burly country bred father taught us

the eternal lesson: regardless of how you looked

or what others thought, there was no wrong in doing right

the curatorial joy of their prescient caring shaped three

strapping sons who continue to strive to match inola's

exalted social statue and to embody big val's prophetic

folk wisdom, our parents offered the treasury of themselves

and thereby ushered our entrance into the sanctuary

of responsive and responsible manhood wherein we fulfill

ourselves by emptying our hearts into the life cups of others

_____________________

Kalamu ya Salaam – vocals

Stephan Richter – clarinet

Wolfi Schlick – reeds

Frank Bruckner – guitar

Mathis Mayer - cello

Georg Janker - bass

Michael Heilrath - bass

Roland HH Biswurm - drums

Recorded: June 14, 1998 – "ETA Theatre" Munich, Germany

—kalamu ya salaam

POEM: TIME IS A FUNNY THING

time is a funny thing

there have been times when i found myself with literally nothing i could do like when i would sit at a stop sign for what seemed hours trying to figure out how to straighten out the mess i'd made of my marriage, tayari alone with our five young people & me alone at a stop sign, & eventually i just crawled on--it's not like i was the only man who had ever stumbled at that specific crossroads but when i was there the sun shone all night & i saw no one's shadow but my own forlorn form tangled in the rocks & weeds of my emotional life, & although then was years ago, occasionally i am still shook by an invisible hand, it could be when i pause in mid-embrace as i hold a comrade from back in the days i haven't seen in quite a while & they hurl me into a time machine when they innocently ask with a sincerity so certain "how are tayari & the kids, they must be grown now?"

there have been times when i felt i was drawing my last breath & about to bankrupt the bank, especially that sunday morning we went to face down the klan & the night before those hooded ones goose-stepping around garish flame cross light had shot at police in algiers without being arrested which we knew meant targets were pinned on all our chests but we had to go to high noon, such poot or get off the pot days give men & women no choice, & then there was the helpless waiting to exhale of the pulse pounding pause on the unforgettable creaking bus stuck to a motionless stop like a lamb patiently awaiting a slaughter somewhere in the middle of nica. libre between rama and managua, the u.s. armed contras on the other side of the hill, hard working people softly mumbling spanish prayers & attempting to hide anything that might call attention to themselves at the bottom a half mile or so from the peak & no sandanista soldier rescuing cavalry anywhere in sight, & me frankly more worried about the photos & taped interviews i might loose than about whether i would die & yet at the same time after having heard gunfire in the nights i was acutely aware, as fred sanford was fond of seriously joking, that this could be the big one, the one where the bullet singes your skin without a so much as an excuse me

there have been times i paused to count the endless ripples on a lake, to note the shape of each leaf on a tree so tall my myopic eyes could not clearly see the top, to merge my being with the azure luminosity of a spring sky, raise my closed eyes to sun warmth & be clearly seen by any passerby as i stand swaying in the breeze mindlessly enjoying the great goodness of nature's beauty

there have been times i have been so harried with details & overwhelmed by minutiae i must have looked like rockerfeller's accountant around tax time, dragging myself home mentally exhausted, nia reminds me i started to snore during the month we crammed in a half year's worth of work within six weeks when we did the jazzfest posters in 1993 & have not been able since to shake that sleeping disorder

there have been times i've shared with people events which are now noted in history, our names engraved into the consciousness of both friends & foes so audacious was our doing, we were the flesh levers which moved social mountains, the meaningful moments whose significance sometimes can only be read in hindsight because at the time we were just going with the flow doing what we did & such doing just seemed as right as warm rain & inevitable as darkness following sundown

there have been times when i have made statements so stupid there must have been a poltergeist in my mouth misguiding my tongue, i remember one utterance & each time i remember the cruelty of those words i pause & apologize, a friend was going for her phd at the same time she was dating this man she hoped to make her husband, a hope most of us recognized as a longer shot that a three legged horse beating secretariat in a derby run, but still she was proud of both & in one twisted indiscreet swoop i flung assassin words across a room: "yeah, then"--meaning when she got her phd--"then, you can buy a husband," oh the demons of disorder danced that night i'm sure, my only consolation is that i have not unconsciously done anything as callous as that since, & though i know each of us has been awarded an asshole of the month award for some act whose erasure is fervently desired, knowledge of others fucking up does nothing to dim the blemishes on the resume of my own heart

likewise, there have been times when i've made my ancestors proud, particularly my enslaved african ancestors who courageously & creatively figured ways to squeeze banquets from mustard seeds, times i've proved to be worthy of the sacrifices, guidance, love & understanding showered on me by the union of degreeless first black lab tech at va hospital-new orleans, big val ferdinand, whom friends lovingly called "ferd" with the preacher's daughter, quintessential third grade school teacher, inola, my physical & spiritual earth parents, & most significantly times i've caused a child, i've both fathered & inspired, to stick their chest out or cry joy tears to know that their flesh was connected to mine

but that's the way of the world, one day the weight of my big body will be light as dust, blood gone to rain, spirit gone to ghost, then the meaning of my life will be only in the quality & effects of what i did while traveling through, what creations i birthed, what constructs i destroyed or transformed, i will be measured by what i have meant to others & to the overall health of the earth, those nodes are not just mine but indeed are the arc of each generation & every individual, no matter how each of us consumes our time allotment, chewing cautiously deep in rational thought or wolfing the chow down, savoring the taste of each moment or swallowing several mouthfuls as swiftly as we can, fasting or being gluttonous, focused or totally random, the reality is our matter is only a mere morsel in the mouth of galactic motion, what does the sun care what we do with our little piece so small, so overall futile a wrestling with fate & destiny attempting to shape something significant from the brief ticket we purchase in this crazy lottery of living, only people care & that is the sole true way to identify one's humanness, do we care about being here & care about everyone & everything we encounter in time

time is such a funny thing, whether you think about it or not, whether exciting as tongue kissing an exquisite taboo or boring as olive drab painting of army equipment for the 300th repetition, regardless of what we don't or do, the funny thing is that time is a changing that is constantly the same, is both totally silly & movingly profound, is the depth of blue & the velocity of red, the density of black, the blankness of white & the spectrum scale of all the grays in between, no matter how big a ripple we cause plopping into the cosmic pond eventually the lake's face recomposes into smooth placidity, whether we spill piss or perfume, deposit tears or blood, no matter, the planet receives them all just the same because in the end, just as in the beginning, they all & we all, everything big, little, short & tall, equally slip right on away, ain't if funny?

—kalamu ya salaam

POEM: SOON ONE MORNING, I'LL FLY AWAY

Soon One Morning, I'll Fly Away

Where does heart rest, breath originate

where is buried afterbirth, what world is flavored

with the sweetness of mother milk, spiced by a jigger

of father essence unmercifully purifying, trellissed

by the communal touch of kind and kin heat tough

as the sun spear of cloudless august noon

While we trod life's tribulation bridge and seek to craft

some small sweet space from the loam of this bitter earth

whether in shit storm or sun shade there is but one certain

fuel to animate our keeping on, and that be our deep

belief tear-crystal clear, regardless of which exploiter

we labor beneath, the end of our existence is that we black

Weary travelers, being not from here, must death rise & return

to the spirit space wherein we dwelled before we were birthed

—kalamu ya salaam