Yusef Komunyakaa is one of
my favorite authors, largely because many of his lines serve to reinforce in my
mind important elements of poetry such as effective metaphors and telling the
story without bogging down the reader by overtelling it.
Komunyakaa was the subject of an excellent 1997
interview, available on the Web here. It’s a bit long, but very well worth the
read. I think one of his best
advice for writers is not to be afraid to be open with deeper emotions, as
these things can have a substantial effect on a poem that is rarely achieved if
the writer keeps up a wall. Also
stressed is the importance as a writer to surprise yourself.
The first Komunyakka poem I read was Facing it, which I thought was pretty
good at the time (and still do). Later
I came across many others, including Yellow Jackets, which I’ve memorized for
it’s powerful metaphors and effective succinctness.
In his poem Facing It, the subject, a memorial,
and the author’s thoughts while viewing, may seem unconventional for a
poem. However, I couldn’t help but
be impressed by its vivid imagery.
Reading the lines, Komunyakaa makes it so easy to envision what he describes. It makes me feel like I’m there! I sometimes remind myself of this poem when writing, as a
reminder to write vividly. I like the way he describes various observations via
the reflection in the memorial wall.
My black face fades,
hiding inside the black granite.
I said I wouldn’t,
dammit: No tears.
I’m stone. I’m flesh.
My clouded reflection eyes me
like a bird of prey, the profile of night
slanted against morning. I turn
this way—the stone lets me go.
I turn that way—I’m inside
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
again, depending on the light
to make a difference.
I go down the 58,022 names,
half-expecting to find
my own in letters like smoke.
I touch the name Andrew Johnson;
I see the booby trap’s white flash.
Names shimmer on a woman’s blouse
but when she walks away
the names stay on the wall.
Brushstrokes flash, a red bird’s
wings cutting across my stare.
The sky. A plane in the sky.
A white vet’s image floats
closer to me, then his pale eyes
look through mine. I’m a window
He’s lost his right arm
inside the stone. In the black
mirror
a woman’s trying to erase names:
No, she’s brushing a boy’s hair.
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When the plowblade struck
An old stump hiding under
The soil like a beggar's
Rotten tooth, they swarmed up
& Mister Jackson left the plow
Wedged like a whaler's harpoon.
The horse was midnight
Against dusk, tethered to somebody's
Pocketwatch. He shivered, but not
The way women shook their heads
Before mirrors at the five
& dime--a deeper connection
To the low field's evening star.
He stood there, in tracechains,
Lathered in froth, just
Stopped by a great, goofy
Calmness. He whinnied
Once, & then the whole
Beautiful, blue-black sky
Fell on his back.
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I have almost nailed my left thumb to the 2 x 4 brace that holds the deck
together. This Saturday morning in June, I have sawed 2 x 6s, T-squared
and leveled everything with three bubbles sealed in green glass, and now
the sweat on my tongue tastes like what I am. I know I'm alone, using
leverage to swing the long boards into place, but at times it seems as if
there are two of us working side by side like old lovers guessing each other's
moves.
This hammer is the only thing I own of yours, and it makes me feel I have
carpentered for years. Even the crooked nails are going in straight. The
handsaw glides through grease. The toenailed stubs hold. The deck has
risen up around me, and now it's strong enough to support my weight, to
not sway with this old, silly, wrong-footed dance I'm about to throw my
whole body into.
Plumbed from sky to ground, this morning's work can take nearly any-
thing! With so much uproar and punishment, footwork and euphoria, I'm
almost happy this Saturday.
I walk back inside and here you are. Plain and simple as the sunlight on the
tools outside. Daddy, if you'd come back a week ago, or day before yester-
day, I would have been ready to sit down and have a long talk with you.
There were things I wanted to say. So many questions I wanted to ask, but
now they've been answered with as much salt and truth as we can expect
from the living.
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Komunyakaa Table of Contents
Thanks for the tree
between me & a
sniper's bullet.
I don't know what made
the grass
sway seconds before
the Viet Cong
raised his soundless
rifle.
Some voice always
followed,
telling me which foot
to put down first.
Thanks for deflecting
the ricochet
against that anarchy
of dusk.
I was back in San
Francisco
wrapped up in a
woman's wild colors,
causing some dark
bird's love call
to be shattered by
daylight
when my hands reached
up
& pulled a branch
away
from my face. Thanks
for the vague white
flower
that pointed to the
gleaming metal
reflecting how it is
to be broken
like mist over the
grass,
as we played some
deadly
game for blind gods.
What made me spot the
monarch
writhing on a single
thread
tied to a farmer's
gate,
holding the day
together
like an unfingered
guitar string,
is beyond me. Maybe
the hills
grew weary &
leaned a little in the heat.
Again, thanks for the
dud
hand grenade tossed at
my feet
outside Chu Lai. I'm
still
falling through its
silence.
I don't know why the
intrepid
sun touched the
bayonet,
but I know that
something
stood among those lost
trees
& moved only when
I moved.
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There are teeth marks
on everything he loves.
When he enters the long room
more solemn than a threadbare Joseph coat,
the Minister of Hard Knocks & Golden Keys
begins to shuffle his feet.
The Ink on contracts disappears.
Another stool pigeon leans
over a wrought-iron balcony.
Blood money's at work.
While men in black wetsuits
drag Blue Lake, his hands dally
at the hem of his daughter's skirt.
In the brain's shooting gallery
he goes down real slow.
His heart suspended in a mirror,
shadow of a crow over a lake.
With his fingers around his throat
he moans like a statue
of straw on a hillside.
Ready to auction off his hands
to the highest bidder,
he knows how death waits
in us like a light switch.
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The South China Sea
drives in another herd.
The volleyball's a punching bag:
Clem's already lost a tooth
& Johnny's left eye is swollen shut.
Frozen airlifted steaks burn
on a wire grill, & miles away
machine guns can be heard.
Pretending we're somewhere else,
we play harder.
Lee Otis, the point man,
high on Buddha grass,
buries himself up to his neck
in sand. "Can you see me now?
In this spot they gonna build
a Hilton. Invest in Paradise.
Bang, bozos! You're dead."
Frenchie's cassette player
unravels Hendrix's "Purple Haze."
Snake, 17, from Daytona,
sits at the water's edge,
the ash on his cigarette
pointing to the ground
like a crooked finger. CJ,
who in three days will trip
a fragmentation mine,
runs after the ball
into the whitecaps,
laughing
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The boat's tarred and shellacked to a water-repellent finish, just
sway-
dancing with the current's ebb, light as a woman in love. It pushes
off
again, cutting through lotus blossoms, sediment, guilt,
unforgivable dark-
ness. Anything with half a root or heart could grow in this lagoon.
There's a pull against what's hidden from day, all that hurts. At
dawn the
gatherer's shadow backstrokes across water, an instrument tuned for
gods
and monsters in the murky kingdom below. Blossoms lean into his
fast
hands, as if snapping themselves in half, giving in to some law.
Slow, rhetorical light cuts between night and day, like nude
bathers em-
bracing. The boat nudges deeper, with the ease of silverfish. I
know by his
fluid movements, there isn't the shadow of a bomber on the water
any-
more, gliding like a dream of death. Mystery grows out of the decay
of
dead things--each blossom a kiss from the unknown.
When I stand on the steps of Hanoi's West Lake Guest House, feeling
that
I am watched as I gaze at the boatman, it's hard to act like we're
the only
two left in the world. He balances on his boat of Ra, turning left
and right,
reaching through and beyond, as if the day is a woman he can pull
into his
arms.
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I love how it swells
into a temple where it is
held prisoner, where the god
of blame resides. I love
slopes & peaks, the secret
paths that make me selfish.
I love my crooked feet
shaped by vanity & work
shoes made to outlast
belief. The hardness
coupling milk it can't
fashion. I love the lips,
salt & honeycomb on the tongue.
The hair holding off rain
& snow. The white moons
on my fingernails. I love
how everything begs
blood into song & prayer
inside an egg. A ghost
hums through my bones
like Pan's midnight flute
shaping internal laws
beside a troubled river.
I love this body
made to weather the storm
in the brain, raised
out of the deep smell
of fish & water hyacinth,
out of rapture & the first
regret. I love my big hands.
I love it clear down to the soft
quick motor of each breath,
the liver's ten kinds of desire
& the kidney's lust for sugar.
This skin, this sac of dung
& joy, this spleen floating
like a compass needle inside
nighttime, always divining
West Africa's dusty horizon.
I love the birthmark
posed like a fighting cock
on my right shoulder blade.
I love this body, this
solo & ragtime jubilee
behind the left nipple,
because I know I was born
to wear out at least
one hundred angels.
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The hills my brothers & I created
never balanced, & it took years
To discover how the world worked.
We could look at a tree of blackbirds
& tell you how many were there,
But with the scrap dealer
Our math was always off.
Weeks of lifting & grunting
Never added up to much,
But we couldn't stop
Believing in iron.
Abandoned trucks & cars
Were held to the ground
By thick, nostalgic fingers of vines
Strong as a dozen sharecroppers.
We'd return with our wheelbarrow
Groaning under a new load,
Yet tiger lilies lived better
In their languid, August domain.
Among paper & Coke bottles
Foundry smoke erased sunsets,
& we couldn't believe iron
Left men bent so close to the earth
As if the ore under their breath
Weighed down the gray sky.
Sometimes I dreamt how our hills
Washed into a sea of metal,
How it all became an anchor
For a warship or bomber
Out over trees with blooms
Too red to look at.
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Blue Light Lounge Sutra for the Performance Poets at Harold Park Hotel
the need gotta be
so deep words can't
answer simple questions
all night long notes
stumble off the tongue
& color the air indigo
so deep fragments of gut
& flesh cling to the song
you gotta get into it
so deep salt crystalizes on eyelashes
the need gotta be
so deep you can vomit up ghosts
& not feel broken
till you are no more
than a half ounce of gold
in painful brightness
you gotta get into it
blow that saxophone
so deep all the sex & dope in this world
can't erase your need
to howl against the sky
the need gotta be
so deep you can't
just wiggle your hips
& rise up out of it
chaos in the cosmos
modern man in the pepperpot
you gotta get hooked
into every hungry groove
so deep the bomb locked
in rust opens like a fist
into it into it so deep
rhythm is pre-memory
the need gotta be basic
animal need to see
& know the terror
we are made of honey
cause if you wanna dance
this boogie be ready
to let the devil use your head
for a drum
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We tied branches to our helmets.
We painted our faces & rifles
with mud from a riverbank,
blades of grass hung from the pockets
of our tiger suits. We wove
ourselves into the terrain,
content to be a hummingbird's target.
We hugged bamboo & leaned
against a breeze off the river,
slow-dragging with ghosts
from Saigon to Bangkok,
with women left in doorways
reaching in from America.
We aimed at dark-hearted songbirds.
In our way station of shadows
rock apes tried to blow our cover
throwing stones at the sunset. Chameleons
crawled our spines, changing from day
to night: green to gold,
gold to black. But we waited
till the moon touched metal,
till something almost broke
inside us. VC struggled
with the hillside, like black silk
wrestling iron through grass.
We weren't there. The river ran
through our bones. Small animals took refuge
against our bodies; we held our breath,
ready to spring the L-shaped
ambush, as a world revolved
under each man's eyelid.
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The victorious army marches into the city,
& not far behind tarries a throng of women
Who slept with the enemy on the edge
Of battlemnets. The stunned morning
Opens into a dust cloud of hooves
& drums. Some new priests cradle
Stone tablets, & others are poised
With raised mallets in a forest of defeated
Statuaray. Of course, behind them
Linger the turncoats & pious
Merchants of lime. What's Greek
Is forged into Roman; what's Roman
Is hammered into a ceremony of birds
Headed east. Whatever is marble
Burns in the lime kilns because
Someone dreams of a domed bathhouse.
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On Fridays he'd open a can of Jax
After coming home from the mill,
& ask me to write a letter to my mother
Who sent postcards of desert flowers
Taller than men. He would beg,
Promising to never beat her
Again. Somehow I was happy
She had gone, & sometimes wanted
To slip in a reminder, how Mary Lou
Williams' "Polka Dots & Moonbeams"
Never made the swelling go down.
His carpenter's apron always bulged
With old nails, a claw hammer
Looped at his side & extension cords
Coiled around his feet.
Words rolled from under the pressure
Of my ballpoint: Love,
Baby, Honey, Please.
We sat in the quiet brutality
Of voltage meters & pipe threaders,
Lost between sentences . . .
The gleam of a five-pound wedge
On the concrete floor
Pulled a sunset
Through the doorway of his toolshed.
I wondered if she laughed
& held them over a gas burner.
My father could only sign
His name, but he'd look at blueprints
& say how many bricks
Formed each wall. This man,
Who stole roses & hyacinth
For his yard, would stand there
With eyes closed & fists balled,
Laboring over a simple word, almost
Redeemed by what he tried to say.
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Gazelle, I killed you
for your skin's exquisite
touch, for how easy it is
to be nailed to a board
weathered raw as white
butcher paper. Last night
I heard my daughter praying
for the meat here at my feet.
You know it wasn't anger
that made me stop my heart
till the hammer fell. Weeks
ago, I broke you as a woman
once shattered me into a song
beneath her weight, before
you slouched into that
grassy hush. But now
I'm tightening lashes,
shaping hide as if around
a ribcage, stretched
like five bowstrings.
Ghosts cannot slip back
inside the body's drum.
You've been seasoned
by wind, dusk & sunlight.
Pressure can make everything
whole again, brass nails
tacked into the ebony wood
your face has been carved
five times. I have to drive
trouble from the valley.
Trouble in the hills.
Trouble on the river
too. There's no kola nut,
palm wine, fish, salt,
or calabash. Kadoom.
Kadoom.
Kadoom. Ka-
doooom.
Kadoom. Now
I have beaten a song back into you,
rise & walk away like a panther.
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Brother of the blowfly
And godhead, you work magic
Over battlefields,
In slabs of bad pork
And flophouses. Yes, you
Go to the root of all things.
You are sound & mathematical.
Jesus, Christ, you're merciless
With the truth. Ontological & lustrous,
You cast spells on beggars & kings
Behind the stone door of Caesar's tomb
Or split trench in a field of ragweed.
No decree or creed can outlaw you
As you take every living thing apart. Little
Master of earth, no one gets to heaven
Without going through you first.
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Usually at the helipad
I see them stumble-dance
across the hot asphalt
with crokersacks over their heads,
moving toward the interrogation huts,
thin-framed as box kites
of sticks & black silk
anticipating a hard wind
that'll tug & snatch them
out into space. I think
some must be laughing
under their dust-colored hoods,
knowing rockets are aimed
at Chu Lai--that the water's
evaporating & soon the nail
will make contact with metal.
How can anyone anywhere love
these half-broken figures
bent under the sky's brightness?
The weight they carry
is the soil we tread night & day.
Who can cry for them?
I've heard the old ones
are the hardest to break.
An arm twist, a combat boot
against the skull, a .45
jabbed into the mouth, nothing
works. When they start talking
with ancestors faint as camphor
smoke in pagodas, you know
you'll have to kill them
to get an answer.
Sunlight throws
scythes against the afternoon.
Everything's a heat mirage; a river
tugs at their slow feet.
I stand alone & amazed,
with a pill-happy door gunner
signaling for me to board the Cobra.
I remember how one day
I almost bowed to such figures
walking toward me, under
a corporal's ironclad stare.
I can't say why.
From a half-mile away
trees huddle together,
& the prisoners look like
marionettes hooked to strings of light
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In the hickory scent
Among slabs of pork
Glistening with salt,
I played Indian
In a headdress of redbird feathers
& brass buttons
Off my mother's winter coat.
Smoke wove
A thread of fire through meat, into December
& January. The dead weight
Of the place hung around me,
Strung up with sweetgrass.
The hog had been sectioned,
A map scored into skin;
Opened like love,
From snout to tail,
The goodness
No longer true to each bone.
I was a wizard
In that hazy world,
& knew I could cut
Slivers of meat till my heart
Grew more human & flawed.
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Music divides the evening.
I close my eyes & can see
men drawing lines in the dust.
America pushes through the membrane
of mist & smoke, & I'm a small boy
again in Bogalusa. White Only
signs & Hank Snow. But tonight
I walk into a place where bar girls
fade like tropical birds. When
I order a beer, the mama-san
behind the counter acts as if she
can't understand, while her eyes
skirt each white face, as Hank Williams
calls from the psychedelic jukebox.
We have played Judas where
only machine-gun fire brings us
together. Down the street
black GIs hold to their turf also.
An off-limits sign pulls me
deeper into alleys, as I look
for a softness behind these voices
wounded by their beauty & war.
Back in the bush at Dak To
& Khe Sanh, we fought
the brothers of these women
we now run to hold in our arms.
There's more than a nation
inside us, as black & white
soldiers touch the same lovers
minutes apart, tasting
each other's breath,
without knowing these rooms
run into each other like tunnels
leading to the underworld.
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I am five,
Wading out into deep
Sunny grass,
Unmindful of snakes
& yellowjackets, out
To the yellow flowers
Quivering in sluggish
heat.
Don't mess with me
'Cause I have my Lone
Ranger
Six-shooter. I can
hurt
You
with questions
Like silver bullets.
The tall flowers in my
dreams are
Big
as the First State Bank,
& they eat all the
people
Except the ones I
love.
They have women's names,
With mouths like where
Babies come from. I a
five.
I'll dance for you
If you close your
eyes. No
Peeping through your
fingers.
I
don't supposed to be
This close to the
tracks.
One afternoon I saw
What a train did to a cow.
Sometimes I stand so
close
I can see the eyes
Of
men hiding in boxcars.
Sometimes they wave
& holler for me to
get back. I laugh
When trains make the dogs
Howl. Their ears hurt.
I also know bees
Can't live without flowers.
I wonder why Daddy
Calls Mama honey.
All
the bees in the world
Live in little white
houses
Except the ones in
these flowers.
All
sticky & sweet inside.
I wonder what death
tastes like.
Sometimes I toss the
butterflies
Back into the air.
I wish I knew why
The music in my head
Makes me scared.
But I know things
I don't supposed to
know.
I
could start walking
& never stop.
These yellow flowers
Go
on forever.
Almost to Detroit.
Almost to the sea.
My
mama says I'm a mistake.
That I made her a bad
girl.
My playhouse is
underneath
Our
house, & I hear people
Telling each other
secrets.
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The old woman made mint
Candy for the children
Who'd bolt through her front door,
Silhouettes of the great blue
Heron. She sold ten-dollar potions
From a half-lit
kitchen. Chinese boxes
Furnished with fliers & sinkers. Sassafras
& lizard tongues. They'd walk out
Of the woods or drive in from cities,
Clutching lovesick dollar bills
At a side door that opened beside
A chinaberry tree. Did their eyes
Doubt under Orion as voices
Of the dead spoke? They carried
Photos, locks of hair, nail clippings,
& the first three words of a wish
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I sit beside two women, kitty-corner
to the stage, as Elvin's sticks blur
the club into a blue fantasia.
I thought my body had forgotten the Deep
South, how I'd cross the street
if a woman like these two walked
towards me, as if a cat traversed
my path beneath the evening star.
Which one is wearing jasmine?
If my grandmothers saw me now
they'd say, Boy, the devil never sleeps.
My mind is lost among November
cotton flowers, a soft rain on my face
as Richard Davis plucks the fat notes
of chance on his upright
leaning into the future.
The blonde, the brunette--
which one is scented with jasmine?
I can hear Duke in the right hand
& Basic in the left
as the young piano player
nudges us into the past.
The trumpet's almost kissed
by enough pain. Give him a few more years,
a few more ghosts to embrace--Clifford's
shadow on the edge of the stage.
The sign says, No Talking.
Elvin's guardian angel lingers
at the top of the stairs,
counting each drop of sweat
paid in tribute. The blonde
has her eyes closed, & the brunette
is looking at me. Our bodies
sway to each riff, the jasmine
rising from a valley somewhere
in Egypt, a white moon
opening countless false mouths
of laughter. The midnight
gatherers are boys & girls
with the headlights of trucks
aimed at their backs, because
their small hands refuse to wound
the knowing scent hidden in each bloom.
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The seven o'clock whistle
Made the morning air fulvous
With a metallic syncopation,
A key to a door in the sky---opening
& closing flesh.The melody
Men & women built lives around,
Sonorous as the queen bee's fat
Hum drawing workers from flowers,
Back to the colonized heart.
A titanous puff of steam rose
From the dragon trapped below
Iron, bricks, & wood.
The whole black machine
Shuddered: blue jays & redbirds
Wove light through leaves
& something dead under the foundation
Brought worms to life.
Men capped their thermoses,
Switched off Loretta Lynn,
& slid from trucks & cars.
The rip saws throttled
& swung out over logs
On conveyer belts.
Daddy lifted the tongs
To his right shoulder . . . a winch
Uncoiled the steel cable
From its oily scrotum;
He waved to the winchman
& iron teeth bit into the pine.
Yellow forklifts darted
With lumber to boxcars
Marked for distant cities.
At noon, Daddy would walk
Across the field of goldenrod
& mustard weeds, the pollen
Bright & sullen on his overalls.
He'd eat on our screened-in
Back porch---red beans & rice
With hamhocks & cornbread.
Lemonade & peach Jello.
The one o'clock bleat
Burned sweat & salt into afternoon
& the wheels within wheels
Unlocked again, pulling rough boards
Into the plane's pneumatic grip.
Wild geese moved like a wedge
Between sky & sagebrush,
As Daddy pulled the cable
To the edge of the millpond
& sleepwalked cypress logs.
The day turned on its axle
& pyramids of russet sawdust
Formed under corrugated
Blowpipes fifty feet high.
The five o'clock whistle
Bellowed like a bull, controlling
Clocks on kitchen walls;
Women dabbed loud perfume
Behind their ears & set tables
Covered with flowered oilcloth.
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