Читать книгу Morning Breaks In The Elevator - Lemn Sissay - Страница 8

For David Murray

It’s got to scream like a thousand shivers.

Shake down, break down, run like rivers of black fire-waves.

Rise demons and spirits from the Senegalese caves.

Rise Beloved and Seth! Rise the dead!

For this sound digs, digs down-down were the deep down

Is down with the deep down til it reaches the beaches of Goree.

Until it stabs-stabs as it grab-grabs the minute minute. Hold fast.

It flows through passages, right, like a flock of carrion crows

And stings and blows and stings and blows,

Makes sadness sing high and swing low.

SWEET CHARIOTS OF FIRE!

Quotes wrapped in rolled notes, stick into the spokesmen’s eyes.

The hoaxmen of the mainstream deep scream.

Deep Davis deep. So deep, Davis, I can’t sleep for the

Sweeping sounds of your underground. This landscape

Littered with mounds. Rise! Spirits. Rise Uncoil. Break the soil –

The bread of the dead, the salt of the earth. Rise

And flow like mercurial contours on a midnight sky. Cry.

Till the tears solidify. Fly Spirits till you become a song.

Eye to eye. Right to wrong. Untie pain. Dance again

Till juices jive down your scarred backbones.

This is the other world – live – and yet home.

This sound electrifies, soars on the edge of the head.

Waken the dead and tell them it’s here, “it’s here”,

For duppies to wind and spirits to near home – at last.

To brutify then purify then reunify the past.

Rise Malcolm, the Jews, the blues and the Soledad brothers

Shout. Bleed. Breath. Heal. Shout. Breath. Heal. Bleed

I swear I saw another slave freed, its soul freed, it gather speed,

It push me over the edge of the ledge, dredging the graveyards,

the spirits – Charlie’s playing cards on the tomb, a dead man’s womb.

Don’t you get it. It’s genetic. A musical hallucinogenic. Insane –

The music of love through the instruments of pain,

Shooting from the lip, from the tip of the tongues of the wronged.

Hang on, hang on with your finger tips. Pray you don’t slip

Cause we climbing the timing the landscape of mine

Turn this poem sideways it’s like a New York skyline

A state of mind.

And through to the solo light. Right. Solo.

How does it go? It glides like an eagle inches from the waves

With a rush that sounds like caves should sound like.

It rips through all mind-binds, breaks all seals, tears all seems - seams,

Chilled as fresh-iced screams, angry as sweated dreams.

It bites like a baby, kicks like a dog, slicker than a card trick.

Demons spit and twist as spirits hit notes high (ha!) and snare.

This is where contrasts explode and it’s natural to find

Sharpness next to curves next to shadows next to verve,

And new definitions of time. It is the blood of the vein.

The music of love through the instruments of pain.

Hot cold shy bold rock rolled blue soul. Rise!

Makes an old man young a young girl old. Rise!

It’s a slick wild blast, cast from chains of slaves.

I found my jazz. Rise. I found my jazz. Rise.

I found my jazz and was saved.

Rise spirits.