Ripped Winters

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Warren Longmire

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ripped winters © 2006 by Warren Longmire All Rights Reserved First Edition, First Printing layout/cover photographs by seven7h tangent San Francisco, CA

For all yall. Dreadlocked burners on wet sidewalks holding out signs that say “Smile if you masturbate.” Gangly Asian punk rockers in blue construction shirts with 10 year old laughs tilt your head back, I’m gettin’ at ya. Ne’few slinging weed outside Secrets with a ‘fro like a black light light bulb and rest of the goons squad. Q in thin-rimmed glasses and a thick green hemp shirt twisting to music like light bending crisp across a spoon. Thick brown tweed messenger caps as natural as helmets on soldiers and long strokes on crew-cut chins in-between stanzas: Brandon, the layout is outstanding. Bowing knees and winding wrists in figure eights while meditating, to Skyler twisting ninjaque pivots off an ollie clean and true. And Ryan’s eyebrow resting light underneath my finger. A sheet of paper Omer peels off filo dough and hill with her oiled clipped shaved head soft on my hand and Lamont in a strong quiet voice. To the strum off nameless guitars, and tossed out bread gathered into buckets and sliding trumpets sifted through the air and the friends who used that air to breathe again. To the new fam and to this city. Because I never expected this shit in a million years.

Poems Muse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Daytrips and Daydreams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Lawless. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Where Words Fail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Current . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 In Remeberance of Me . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Hi-coo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 0 Night of the Living Hiphop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 2 Tree of Knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 4 a great day for up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 6 Indigo. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 7 Live at Natalie’s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 9 To Be . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 2

Muse I am the twitchy finger of a past prime piano man tapping out rhythms long since gone or giving birth to unseen rhapsodies housed only in the random back and forth pinky, ring and index shakes of a crazy man. I’m the “Rap City” watcher, meticulously monitoring meter in two week champion’s flow, metering models of sentence structure in outline form for later review, sitting there groping for formal definition of assonance used in the 3rd word in stanza 2. I’m the third string on a second rate gaiter, the bird shit on the shoulder of the homeless man strumming it, the misshaped paper clip held firm (for fear of mid-song bending) ‘tween callused thumb and finger tip. I was the burst of light down nerves that made him make that makeshift guitar pick that paved the way for corner side symphony, passing travelers brought home in sound from homeless man clutching me. You can find me between 4th & 5th & South street, go up stairs, go nowhere it’s my hair you run your fingers through when bamboo brush you’re buying, my flesh stressing against insistent hands when massing modeling clay when David, Thinker, figure of your own you think of trying. You saw me last when lying in your bed last night, thinking of your love. A stray line from song of joyous heart or long black jagged mark on pulpless paper. I tried to pull the pain or pleasure out, but you call it hopeless and I’m calling every bluff, every time you throw away your drawings from when you where five, I roll my eyes Pacasso, rolls in grave for work you’ve through away. For every dancer told to be a banker, every rapper told to quit the game, every time you practice practical thought, think acting writing, song, but how will I get paid? Did you know in every second,

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that every heartbeat yields a million worlds (watched sliding doors?) right now a thousand cliffs your poised on. For some a safe step down but steps repeating walls receding forward, too and from your offwhite, cubed shaped office life. Others fall in failure dive cus bottom falls from underneath for I’ve seen many hip breaks in baller hopes, I’ve seen the smartest boi in dope games loss, I’ve seen too many artists swallowed by the streets. But I am the nagging voice whispering in your ear tapping you on the shoulder, telling you that risks are due. Thus for a few here jumps much bolder over corporate chains placed for lifetimes and over expectations of a family, under of nations and your over gratings holding great down under asphalt and holding my arms folding right above you hand glider bars you use to fly. For I am your old toy piano, thumbs blue from banging day long jams for mother, and now I slide through when you wonder why you ever let the music go. I’m that page you turn in your course pack, when the fine arts section flashes, and the thought when you think, “Take that drawing class and turn the page back.” and the rage in those crappy poems you hid in the back of your notebook, and that line in your head that you think could start such a great book, and the spare scrawls side of your math notes of a passerby’s face, the curve of your finger, the top of your shoe. I whisper in your ear when you think to create and since soon it’s too late when will you let me through.

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Daytrips and Daydreams Once, stumbling light like tips of flame on matches

She said:

and I sat perfectly unmatched because to a child, ideas are still giant-sized lightbulbs so I say nothing

but Sarah didn’t.

b e c a u s e f o r n o w, I s e e n o t h i n g 9

And sometimes at night I dream that Sarah tows me through oceans of concrete to tall island mountains of light and I’m trying to match her strokes because once upon a time there was no age and all we needed was nothing.

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Lawless Wreak havoc. Spit paint at walls in warped palettes. On underbelly of San Fran tat clean ballads. Drip thin lines of fresh green to light paths with. Subvert alleys and twist streets so they run backwards. Marcus makes coffee, they joke how he always holds a marker. Ray-Ray’s young face painted stories high; They can’t ignore you. In violent red, Rawness sweeps his arm with brilliant softness. On a white wall, the small lower corner reads “so much space.” The richest toddler still scrawls wax on the walls in pre-school. A teacher pats him on the head and holds out two blue pills. Time’s said the time for writing has dropped faster then morals And typing drained a generation’s fingers of any grace. In organic spaces composed of only stone right angles Where public squares are walmarts and massive strip mall gaps, Choice canvas sprawl boundless ads for tide detergent We live in rooms that our landlords say we cannot paint And something has to give, Because when Blest bombs the Brooklyn bridge There is no collateral damage. Because cash is just another paper host for a government worker’s tag. Because French tourists snap pictures of RIPs to caribous lost in winter. Because Of when you hear rain on the street by your window and think of your girlfriend. Remember when the south street was still underground? And you gathered on stoops in the springtime And your cousins scratch hearts on the trees with chalk and played football in traffic People are just as organic as flowers And cities are ancient pestles, Grinding petals Into the finest And richest Of inks Our tribes have come back to us An overnight on ups So grab the nearest sharpie, Find a postal sticker And sign. 11

Where Words Fail dusk:

|a last gasp of sunlight|

a drunk’s tequila sunrise backing up and crashing on the sidewalk wet and vivid. • Dead grandmother’s pus-dotted dark skin stretched above two lovers snuggling closely. Isn’t it romantic? • The upstate crunch of rustic colored leaves beneath your feet. • The fear of night skinned hoodlums on the evening train. And all I get is 10 words,

2 pieces of punctuation

And those pronunciation guides

nobody knows the symbols for

God Damn It

And navahos sit on hills in wonder during a derivation from middle english “dox.” Vampires pour milk on cornflakes to the moon’s new dawn because twilight is a glass half full of blood, 100 ccs of carbonmonoxide, and a power capable of knocking out 4 Webster-sized men in less then 13 MINUTES!!!

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Current Cracked apple skins cast metallic glows on empty library tables

and somewhere a disk spins for you.

Growth rings of spare thoughts are carefully etched in square sterile packs like initials scratched in wet driveway.

Keep your hands in the dirt

feeling for tendrils of 4th degree friends-in-laws paired through shared ska bands and live diatribes

grow friend trees until they’re leafless leave tags online like hazard signs bridging broken links

because chance sightings ride in the currents,

lie bloated out on the beach waiting to be hauled through the town square and the same milk white sheet sits inches away from our fingers press a hole into soil and release.

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In Remembrance of Me There was a pearl white glint in the corner of my eye and I made the mistake of turning around. I had a slight limp and couldn’t lift my foot past the lip on the side of the street. I dipped my shoulder when I meant to jab. A Freudian slip when that cute straight guy joined me for a drink. Routine mission was a bit to well known. A nice car paired up with a black face. The trigger finger is faster then the eye The wrong time and/or the wrong place. 12:32 hurrying home on the winter solstice ‘neath a new moon on an odd street

Noontime at an open-air market near a man whose hand reached for his chest I was 3. Much too young when my father defended his home and ironically it was 3:15 when I thought of him and threw my last rock. I had 3 rocks in my left pocket and no food at home I had 3 shots left and thought “Shit, I’m just gonna to take them fools with me.” It was night when I took my last drink.

I fell backwards, and stared upwards ‘cus I was scared of heights A blight filled the land as the smoke slowly darkened the sky. The bombs tossed us and rolled like the thunder. 6 o’ clock PM when the One bus exploded. Bullish day at the market when that nigger took my moneyless wallet. Nigga with a gun must be all that he saw on that Monday, that last day at 8 in the fall. You know Cluster bombs leave nothing to gather. My collar was lifted awkwardly just barely hiding the hole. My friends didn’t think of me often. They had to hold back my mother from throwing herself in after me. They laughed it up over bread and imported beer. 14

I was number 631 in a list on a CNN ticker. They marched to Washington shouting my name. A soldier’s boot caught my hand as he stumbled over my resting place. My dormitory is now in the making. My monument is a mere mass grave. I was out of the news by the weekend and two weeks later ten more took my place.

So,

Close your nose when the dusky streets scatter. Raise your hand to your heart at the ballgame and finger my bones, drink my blood when your man finally leaves you. Eat my flesh at mid evening when you turn off the news. Laugh the loudest when they pull my finger. Grind my nails up in sage and camphor and sell it under the counter. Feel my skin when you reach for your wallet. Mouth my name when they tell you be quiet. Squeeze my hand when the pain becomes unbearable. Hold me up when they all have forgotten. Watch your step as you stroll down the avenue.

I am everywhere under your feet.

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Hi-coo [after a phone conversation with a sort of ex-girlfriend]

an insignificant scratch on the back of your navel keeps me here. [at the art museum]

Slipped from plastic sleeves I am iPod white cellphone EAR WAX MAKES ME STRONG! [BART ride to a slam with a hungry friend]

The burgers are okay. the pizza sucks. I’m going to get a beer. [blazing at home in my chair]

Heat kissed round of glass The lip is ghostly with white and I clear the air. [after lusting over a talented, big-breasted jazz drummer]

Sure stumbling off beat She serpentines the breakdown with giant steps [with mucus so thick I thought I will never smell shit again]

whiffle ball armpit string cheese cheap, eczema dry My nose implodes wet. [corporate meeting after my third transfer]

In silent rooms still special handshakes and code words whisper past my ears 16

[an interesting lunchtime discussion about The Sims]

We slip out of view actors exit round corners Evaporated. [the morning I first left for SF]

lying beside her drenched in sweat, morning light Why does her dad call now? [on “We Major” of Kayne’s latest]

horns blow high hats bespeckled watch shine march beat. Even Nas was shook. [on San Francisco]

an almost black tree releases sharp fire leaves twisting to the sky [on Philly]

crack vials the size of ball sneaker treads pop high pitched underneath my bike.

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Night of the Living Hip Hop Cus yo…fa real fa real

round my corner round corners don’t exist because at ultimately everything breaks down to straight lines and right angles

it’s all just blocks, yo. And if enough black spray hancocks rock the sunny side of a 25th Street bodega

then

how the fuck do you know they didn’t paint it black In the first place?

Yo,

Niggas been time travelin’

since flash masters mashed needle tips to plastic matched cadences, and broke genres break bound needles, Pin floors with threadbare scullies and spin the earth backwards— Dancers trance-like bounce half dazed, mad blazed off a stranger’s rolled ganja. MCs gasp like they swallowed all Scrabble tiles and hide breathes inside the DJ scratches steady teasing the slightly Eastern bassline He cuts the highs by 25% and turns turntable two and three quarters back

He never finished high school.

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In the Overground: Clear Channel rocks rochmonanoff Re-born When Jesus Walks! Geniuses spit about clashing liquid swords that make black star flashes. Fascists in Eastern Europe are protested to a beat grown in Brooklyn

Now tell me what is dead. Words be murderin’ foes like swing slapped loose cunts in New Orleans before art house quartets with nastiness, Jazz be just poor mixed asses grinding to drums smuggled in stomachs and split into eigths. Hollaback nigs wrapped neat sax trills since the 50s. Call Ghostface’s mouth Coltrane’s spit valve. When the sound of music was sampled the streets were watching.

A letter

To those who left lamenting the death of the art in the life outside their window: Write often.

Send postcards.

“The ghetto misses your bitch ass and your motherland is so fat,

It’s gravitational pull cannot be fought but for so long.” And to peeps curious, nervously peeking across the mental, physical, and digital divides

Fuck all that bullshit Go to Oakland humbly And listen close Through the cracks On the street Word is born.

Holla.

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Tree of Knowledge

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the dancers lithe spry slinky goes pop-in-the-shoulder a slice of wet fibula lip break like a whisper, exhale. twig shook flick of the jumpbone a gesture like the high pitched stutter of her laugh two fingers pressed into a slight tickle and a boat of air displaced by an arching toe. to octave a patch of blue light shinning off lycra. the sin curve stretch in her back. a snapshot of poured milk splashing off aspault is the line from the back of skull down her spine and her ankle when she releases an ant parts ways with a wet stem like the space between the floor and her shoe embrace invisible as quickly as first snow melts voiceless on a blushed cheek and folding torsos like thick egg whites whipped tight and she’s dragging her finger in a kitchen not unlike your own testing the consistence of soil black brownie dough, “No I think that this needs some more weed.”

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Indigo Invisibility comes in many colors when it comes right down to it is there any difference between the vast emptiness of space and a drawer full of identical black lace panties scanning the cross section between violet and blue if you stretch it the line dividing the 2 is nonexistent. Few ever see indigo and half the ones that do are either lying or high or both.

But,

on the tip of a snow swept west Himalayan mountain there sits a lonely green stem at its end a single peapod swinging easy in the breeze inside it 3 peas the deepest purple bleeding, blinding, violent almost black against the crisp white snow you’ve never seen something so beautiful But this is not a poem about flowers.

This is indigo:

A single west Philly high student in a crowd of identical brown faces, An unlit pixel on a broken screen, “No Josh, we can’t afford a new one.”

Indigo

a bruise on an exposed thigh and a week old low looming body hung in the town square as a warning swinging easy in the breeze. 23

I am indigo.

Intense and too loud for my own good a wine stain on your best white dress where’s the seltzer? Come dilute me laughing uncomfortably with full teeth at an Ivy League school “Where were you on 9/11?” “Weren’t you moved by the Passion of the Christ?” “They say never forget the Holocaust.”

And we are indigo

a small stone monument in Oklahoma in the late stages of disrepair. Josh says, “No, I’ve never heard of the trails of tears” “What was that like?”

Josh is indigo

on occasion he skips school to hang out on the corner he called his training but once he said he secretly wants to dance. I am a brilliant shade found in folds in a flower on a cold mountain. I am cheap black cherry soda chugged bursts wrapped in plastic and resold in a Midwest suburb for 10 cents a pop. Josh tells me Camron is his hero. He’s wearing an extra large purple shirt, and a scully. Josh rarely smiles but when he laughs he tilts his head back and howls, you’ve never heard something so beautiful and Josh doesn’t really dream of leaving Philly. Josh doesn’t think much of what’s to come and Josh has never heard of Emmett Till and ‘til he does this will not be a poem about flowers. 24

Live at Natalie’s I mean,

when you’re sitting alone in smoke filled room full of people it can be just about anything really.

I read that everyone has a jazz face as singular as assholes and rock formations, so you never can tell if Mr. Moth-Eaten Sweater and acid wash jeans spazing out in the corner is just coming down from a bad trip or just really digging that cord change “Was that a riff from Autumn Leaves, slowed to 4/3 and half an octave shift or was it that 3rd track from Kind of Blue— Oh, I’m all confused now. Let me Start over

So, You’re sitting alone in a smoke filled room full a people nodding your head slow and sipping a drink and you’re feeling it Pondering the meaning of life and feeling intellectual and then some woman leaps up beside you

slams

her open hand to the ash stained table

“Yea!!!”

She screams,

She’s like

“Yea!!!”

And you’re thinking damn almost spilled my drink What wrong with her?

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But you don’t say it.

Because just as fast as you could think The Yeas have already slid past cigarette exhales and Out 4 more peoples lips And ‘fore you know your feet hurt from the pounding of shoes the pounding of fists and it’s all just Baptist pews and binary code now and the air is so thick it coats your tongue dri b bl e s down your lips and drips wet on your navel

Yea! And you think, “Hey maybe I should meet this woman, I think” And you think that, because that was her jazz face

Everyone has one. Me personally? I could be sitting in a smoke filled room full of people And I’m alone Most times I’m some autistic boy of 3 Eyes shut tight and arms locked Rocking back and forth Half asleep looking Mouth open but breaths few, And when I do

Deep. You see The air does something to me at Natalie’s.

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A man beside me half stands on the balls of his feet, And suddenly sits.

flails his arms,

You see,

your jazz face Can change in an instant A twist of a bit of tendon on the sax players face Can make a grown man cry Or a chaste woman twitch slightly The crowd gasps tightly A collective sigh Weaves through the club like a classic Cadillac with Shaft in the front seat

The front man Dips his head

and the quartet takes a bow

“We thank you all” He smirks

He says,

“We call that number, Something in the air.”

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To Be Love is “Love” when love IS love cus that’s what love is, (when love is love.) Is is existence: When a thing exists. Think of things existing.

Note: Not “when” they existed or if they will exist cus they will exist, when they exist

Now. They in that last sentence is meant in the sense of all things that exist. imagine all things that exist: like All my friends surround me on the dance floor (ALL my friends.) Everyone my friend knows sits behind them. There’re inclined to sit behind their friends. because?

People get mad shy in the club. So, you get behind your friends. And if you’re cool, you get behind ALL your friends 28

and everyone your friends know because your friends know everyone. I, for instance, know everyone.

Now true,

I love my friends the more I know them And I know them more or less But more or less,

it’s all love, y’all Because I know them and that’s what love is. So imagine all my friends on the dance floor

all my friends.

All my

half-black niggas sipping Irish whiskey sangria in hoodies tatted with Mandarin characters, Mandarin orange moonshine was provided by crackers that speak Mandarin— Crackers topped with Velveeta cheese and truffle oil Curry flavored focaccia topped with olives of all kinds because my friends have a taste for

all kinds

and everyone has taste Everyone tastes everything because everyone is on the dance floor, Imagine a dance floor with everything.

Now,

I’m in the southwest corner flirting with a cute light native South African from Brooklyn She’s wearing blue jeans faded at the thighs and one of those tight Asian print apron-like dresses the girls round San Fran seem to be crazy for. We chat about comic books. “Sandman huh? Wow that’s real deep.”

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She said with southern drawl I didn’t even try to wrap my mind around. “I never imagined that comix book deal with what it means to dream,” we fucked until morning and it was good shit. A lot of people in club did that night But not everybody. Because Not every pickup line works, and every pickup line’s said By someone in the club And everybody’s on the dance floor So imagine every word is said on the dance floor, Every word. Every thought. Every synaptic snap that moves a dancing muscle is firing now.

Every one.

Everything, in one club on a dance floor that closes at 1. And in the morning, we all wake up (hung-over as shit, by the way) shrug our shoulders and we go to church and there on mathematically patterned mats Muslims tap their heads Eastward to the beat of a Baptist choir’s claps. Altar boys swing tins of ganja scented incense and everyone relaxes barefoot on the bare earth because the earth is on the dance floor and everyone gathers there. Everyone reflects on the vexing past and impending future

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And speak in tongues with stiff tongues when they come hard everyone prays On the dance floor everyone I know is a preacher and I can say that because I know everyone More or less And that’s what love is. is love.

God

or maybe Love is God. And maybe God exists where love does That love exists

so imagine

now.

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