Monday, February 13, 2012

Strange Brother



Strange Brother
__________________

“Black men create
this love thing:
a fated argosy
prorogued by words”
—Alden Reimonenq,
“Black Male Cocoons,”
Milking Black Bull

Ahmos ZuBolton

Nobody told me—nobody told me there was no turning back once I fell in love. It wasn’t’ simple—once I went black there was no turning back, man.

I already knew it—or at least I could feel it that way back in the ‘60’s. I fell in love with—with the curvy muscularity his black male muse.

Jet-black, slippery—gluing my Quentin queer lips to Bon’s young maleness. Plenty of egg yolk—but then the draft board got him.

There was no excuse—not to get loaded each day. My dumpy apartment—there in back of the bookstore in the student ghetto.

I shrugged off “Viet Nam’—lots of Acapulco gold into my dinge chicken lament. Tiger town long dayz & nights. I almost flunked out.

Campus Dinge Romance

What a nice young piece of Mississippi—erect, penis envy chills up & down my spine, uncut impulses. Every day shameless—black licorice & pink head
sliding back foreskin.

Halloween tricking—tricking & treating with my Negro god. My handsome dinge Moses—how I went down on him. Go Down Moses—man, oh, man.

We went to classes—me still tasting his negritude there in Allen Hall. I had this inside track on Miss Faulkner—and the English Department knew it too.

Gay Mardi Gras

How my Mardi Gras drag queen sisters—caught on real fast. Crisscrossing the quad—they’d give me a smirk and a knowing wink.

They were all such Betty Davis queens—into torturing each other like Baby Jane. Pushing poor Blanch—down the stairs in her wheelchair.

View Carré bitchy—when I showed off my black lover. Ahmos Zubolton could do it so nice—sipping mint juleps & pursing his lips at them.

I was such a tainted bougainvillea vine back then—with my shameless pickled pig-feet lips—and my twisty veiny arms wrapped around my black god.

Allen Hall

Those lovely ‘30s murals—gracing those busy hallways so tres nostalgic. Time stood still back then for me—a Huey P. Long Banana Republic for my long awaited deep south denouement

All these years later—bullet holes still in the walls the State Capitol. Ancient Carib Empire—cotton, sugar cane and rum run by slave traders.

And there I was back then—naked on a slave block. My turn to be slave—my turn to be down on my knees.

Miss Faulkner Knows

The pecan trees leaned—the magnolias moaned and groaned. The old oaks ached bad—but not as bad as me back then, honey.

All my books mildewing—just like me rotting my life away. As I lied down there dying back then—nothing but a somnambulant English major in heat.

He tasted bitter—he tasted both sweet & sour. He was so moody—he was Editor of The Delta. He was my Charles Bon—seancing him back into time.

It was Yoknapatawpha time—time for delta dinge romance. Pascagoula gulf breezes blew thru the window—the Mississippi muse kept me up all night.

Self Fellatio

My young black lover—18-year-old hedonist giving himself head. My dinge Narcissus—in love with himself so vain. I made him share it.

No more wasting it—no more masturbating it. No more perversion, baby. I needed it bad—flexing his young black beauty. His fine mandingo meat.

H didn’t want to—that made it even better. The way he struggled—down deep in his Mississippi soul.

Hoodoo VooDoo Boyfriend

Long before I read—Ishmael Reed’s poetry. Long before I read his Mumbo Jumbo—I like had the hots for this Mississippi man.

“Cry Little Sister”—that’s all I did back then. Just looking at his handsome young writer’s body in bed. Long and lanky—

He was Jacques Tourneau’s black stud—standing nude, erect. My young handsome zombie lover—down there in Big Baton Rouge.

Was it Congo drums in the background—that I kept hearing when we made love? Or was it my beating heart—knowing, knowing, knowing it couldn’t last?

James Baldwin

A lot of young black men—ended up there in Paris.
The diaspora of black writers—not just queeny James Baldwin—but butchy Chester Himes and Richard Wright as well.

Parisian black literati—weren’t bowed in suppression
like back in the states. New thoughts burnt in the Parisian night—Cotton coming to Paris as well as Harlem.

Mississippi Muse

I could feel it deep—deep down inside me. Down by the levee at night—doing the down low along River Road.

A Southern calmness—an Old Black Magic. It be taking root down inside me—down there past the cane fields at night.

That’s where I parked it—my baby-black & blue Cadillac. It was a gas-hog—and so was I. A garish ’59 monstrosity—with chrome tits and sleek fins.

If only that big old Cadillac—could talk, honey. Those big chrome tits—and backseat. Like Jayne Mansfield’s limousine—before her fatal crash.

Beauchamp Baccalaureate

No Black Studies back then—mid-60s integration on campus back then. Back when the Viet Nam war—ROTC was mandatory pimping fascismo.

Creative writing squelched—no MFA Writing Program yet. Ginsberg forbidden—along with Walt Whitman. No room in the straight canon—for beatnik decadence either.

The Delta Journal—I fell for this cute black guy. Ahmos Zubolton—young editor in chief. He published my first poem—then he broke my heart.

Snopes Literature

William Faulkner eventually becoming—my Yoknapatawpha entrance into the decadent Southern Dixie Lit underground.

Like Cocteau’s Orphee—Zubolton was my Heurtebise guide. He drove a mean sleek Rolls Royce hearse—down thru the liquid mirror.

Down to see Miss Dis of Ole Miss—a couple of butchy black leather motorcycle dudes our escorts down to hell. I was just a dumb Snopes kid—a hare-lipped white trash pinhead fool

While up there in Memphis—Miss Reba’s whore house was my home. And Alabama Red banged me all night long—until I bled.

Pulp Fiction Poetry

It didn’t take long—storytelling a “fixup”* for my Sanctuary travails. Faulkner needed bucks—and so did I.

Rowan Oaks be expensive—Short Stories for sale. Pastiche & parody—quilting those short stories together later as novels.
__________________

*fixup—a term used by
writers to describe a book
made up of previously
published stories fitted
together—usually with the
addition of newly written or
published material—so that
they read like a novel

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