Duende: For Garcia Lorca and Miles Davis

 

 

 

it’s in the bottomless power, magic of duende

climbing stealthily from earth, wrapped inside

secrets, mystery infused in black magic

that enters bodies in forms of music, art,

poetry imbuing language with sovereignty,

in blood spooling back through violent centuries,

voices echoing ancient Africa, rise, thread

beauty, power through male and female

bodies encased in black, white, red yellow

skins entrancing eyeballs black, green, yellow,

blue, looking up to the sky in search for truth,

 

this from skins of blessed, sacred rituals, people

emerging from drums as heart beats in time

with language supple as a sweet woman’s body,

when memory is revived here now in rhythm,

when love sang through two bodies committed

to sing together when old voices found their way

into song when their tongues wrapped around

each other with rhythms stitched forgotten

by some when sound left their tongues and they

forgot how to speak the language beaten out

of them when they were whipped on slave ships,

 

but now we need them to remember the time

that brings back wonder of their feet pounding

the ground, too dance, the holy ghost lost when they

were stolen from their  bloody homelands, now

we need their souls underneath to rise up through

the past and enter their bodies once again with power,

creativity, to spool-back with talismans, hypnotic,

pull ancient voodoo up in buckets filled with holy water,

too evoke memories drinking from whodunit secrets

and awakened themselves through poetry of Garcia Lorca,

his Andalusian dues heard in Miles Davis’ clues

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vibrating anew in Sketches of Spain, andante blues,

rise-up now children and dance, dance with new power,

eye say rise up now people and dance, dance, dance