fela
(for fela anikulapo-kuti and his “music written in blood”)
blak- mouthed mansion
full of furious fight chants;
balconies where lectric blues basslines
commune wit revolution’s
seductive underbelly moan;
a hallelujah chorus 28 voices strong
harmonizes before the battle field
breaks into empty trenches;
a melody cuts the calendar
into something other than defeat —
today – sweet love
bread and shakara tomorrow
a moon in the morning time,
each a place to escape the street
Where War fights Time
broken tongues aim their anthem
at that colo-mentality,
shouts of pain spread like pidgin
dancing contrary to the lash;
no different than any people
wearing chains
beneath a free-flowing blouse,
an earthquake of sweat
trembles his face
like petrified bones of opposite people;
his horn swings low
to scoop the marrow of oppression,
stretches it across nigeria
like jimbaye skin
pushing against gravity and all other states
that imprison the indigenous
he keeps asking,
how can we liberate worlds,
to let go of this cargo
massed in burlap
like callused brown fleece,
tossed like a holocaust
of skeletal leftovers
in a coomb of history and bloodshed?
how can we speed up our vision
to see freedom in close reflection?
i hear all this
in his collection of horns
some going down deep
as weeping valleys
others riding up the sleeve
like a believer’s last gust
of fight-wind