TEE-POETRY
ALHUMDULELLAH (FROM "LADY T")
Life is pristinus and deep
A bordello and a shallow ovation
A phantasm, set somewhere between rhythm and rhyme
Tubular bells and the bottom line is
Reality is a clap of hands or a pat on the back, so few and far between.
I am a saxaphone solo, seductive and pure, resonant
and silent, nebulous and clear, tabooed and promiscious, "wild and peaceful".
I am upper suburbia and I am Venice harlem.
I am one million and one contradictions to my complacent life.
Lady Tee - imperfect happy me, loved and hated and I can't please everyone
Aah but I try.
I am the answer to a question asked - where are you going?
I am the answer to a question asked - where have you been?
To and from Bali Hai and New Orleans -
all in the same overture.
Romantically I am the warrior and the pacifist,
the woman and the child, a calm and angry soul
And I can hang tough, even when things are moving fast.
And you, you are a pure and simple breed, out of the mouths of babies
Your simplicity will quench the dryest soul.
Sweet chariot of humanity, you will never die.
Sweet children of Yahweh, you have made my burlapped world blue velvet.
You and I are no more or less than each other -
small fragments of the master's imagination, all so important.
For it takes a million fragments to build one dream come true.
Eli - you have placed me here in Sodom ,
I have visited Gomorrah.
I have seen the blood of the prophets on unlean hands.
Grant that I may save at least one soul, even if not mine.
Alas! Alas! The great city, her destruction has come about.
I have felt the pains of striving to be free,
no irons or screws to crush my thumbs - 'tis the ignorant thoughts of man that have bonded me.
I have been persecuted and labeled just like you
Aah but you label Campbell's soup cans...
not people!
FROM "IT MUST BE MAGIC"
On the Venice rocks - just me, the Master,
The children, and my box
Bluesin' sounds decibels high
Twenty questions tell me why I have not twenty answers?
Tears in Atlanta - Tears in Liverpool
Tears in my bedroom when they chased me home from school
Nigger lover this and nigger lover that
Oh yes I've been called it all - alternating fisticuffs
Memories past but not forgotten
The dye is cast - soon ripe - soon rotten
"Ars Longa Vita Brevis - Art is long and Life is short"
My euphonic heartache do I brag, complain or sport
I have done some things I swore i'd never do
A credo assimilated and not believed
Life has robbed me of my innocence
And yes confection surely drips.
From the mouths of vermin lips...an intrinsic facade
I've been icy cold, blanketing myself in lyric and
Eating melodies to survive
Groovin' on the chitlin's circuit and diggin' the so called dives
Trying to make things tasty
That really are quite bland
"Now is the winter of my discontent"
For in fact it is not that grand
Is it not enough to say you care
You've got to spread the word - have you heard
Jesus was just a man - the Bible tells us so
He gave more than just his hands and he never said no.
"FROM NAKED TO THE WORLD"
The Verbs
The Nouns
The Double Entendres
The Nakedness that we use as an action word
Can we categorize a mixed emotion
And is it possible that vulnerability
Can not lay forever in the cut
Where old wounds bleed and scars never heal
With a child's heart, I have lived
For the sensual sexulaity of Marvin
And the purity of Minnie
I drown in still waters when Donny sings to me
I know heaven rocks
How can I ex-per-ess to you
What music has meant to me
How Rachmaninoff makes me think of you
Always in time and how the Primordial soup
Thickens when I say
That my world spins on your axis....
Just because I make my living in the Land of Prose
Does not lessen the pain of the words I just said
There are equal parts of join and pain
In every note i sing
In every inflection of every word
The scale balances out somehow
If not in my life then perhaps in yours
"A million and one selfish hearts and but one
Altruist too many"
If I loved you
In all of my lives madly and incurably
As you might have expected
If I gave you my essence
Keeping nothing for myself
If i loved you so much that I would even forgive you
When you wouldn't allow me
To keep a sand of my own time
Or a capsule - as you might have expected
Would that be enough - enough love
In all "seriousity," I am
Surrealistically speaking as the pillow talks
Loud and clear
There is something in here for you
For I have seen you, naked to
Ah - The World...
THE PRIMORDIAL SOUP KITCHEN SOCIETY (FROM "IVORY")
I come full circle mother
Ever wild and ever peaceful
City upon city piled high upon my back
Ten thousand years befor Christ
I tilled this earth
And from me sprang poetry, astrology,
music, sensuality,
Symmetry and industrialization.
Mine was the first important work of
society.
Since day one I ruled supreme.
I reigned my lands nobly and justly .
Loving my sons and daughters equally well
I possess outer beauty coupled with
inner strength
I have always been woman
And I have always been a backbone
I have been called many names
by many peoples.
Athene, Dianna, Minerva, Hacate,
Hera, Rhamnusia
Quan Yin, Amaterasu.
"But the
Egyptians which are
excellent in all kinds of ancient
knowledge do call me
By my true name, Queen Isis."
"From out of Africa I came."
I gave my
angels charge over thee to keep
thee safe in the fruit of my womb.
Jesus
I am Mary the mother of grace
And my smile will light your
primordial dawn.
I am Queen of the Nile.
The lion and every living beast submit
tenderly
To me, for I am the last word momma.
And the first true wonder of the
world.
I am a direct descendant
Of the royal house of David and the
tribe of Judah
My blood is blue and my lineage
is long
They can destry my record, but
I keep coming back.
For I am a symbol of what will
survive.
For my mother and yours.
IRONS IN THE FIRE ESSAY-January 15, 1980
A bleak plague-a terminal life. Giving birth to the end result - rebirth
- one million and one selfish hearts but one altruist too many. I have
considered suicide when the rainbow was enuf. I must survive to tell the
story. I have been colored in and faded out. My hand she quivers, and
yet my pen still writes. "If life is death and peace is wrath -or if you
feel I've chosen to embark on a most precocious path, let me be the judge
of my own cessation, for I am the only one who knows how far of how fast
I go. Verily I can not say if what, what is now shall be eturnal or if
the happiness we may have found this present day shall also be
nocturnal." So much beauty to be seen- chil'ren, fly away. Open thine
not so blind eyes to the salt and pepper of the earth. You are worth
your weight in gold. Gold like the sun- your body hot, an incandescent
strength. Siege forth sweet sage. Can it be this was we rage has all be
fought before. I tiptoed through the forest smelling jasmine in the air-
mine eyes have seen the glory, when the glory was not there. I raise my
hands to the heavens when words are lost. The Pilates and the Herolds
cannot satiisfy the cross...the master of this Christian destiny will
suffice my wearied mind. The father and his siblings, the body, the
bread, bread and wine, my cup runneth over and truly I am free. I am
caught up in a holocaust, a holocaust of you and me. I am a symbol of
you- a symbol of what will survive, for every chaple pristine, begets a
Mary Christine but each barrio, each ghetto is also my family tree- I am
what I am- simply Tee.
(thanks to Jeanien for bringing this TEE -essay , to my attention , and sending it to me)
