Fifty years ago
Leroi Jones
Wrote a poem

born September 14, 1879

for Roberto Valenza

They keep telling me to write a poem for you.
No, my friend Ted keeps telling me.
Since he also knew you.
But knows I knew you a lot better.
I don’t wanna write a poem for you!
I want you here: alive, kicking, talking to me.
Instead you’re doing the bardos business.
Transmigration and all that jazz. Fuck.
Going somewhere groovy, are you?
With cosmic ‘li-baries’ and such.
What a pronunciation joy you were.
You winked at me to acknowledge that
when you read at the Ruigoord poetry festival.
As for going places, Ted went to the Treehouse
the other night to recite a couple of your poems.
Respect, baby, for the goddamn dearly departed.
But okay, I ‘forgive you’ for splitting the scene,
flying away to do your own eternal number.
You beautiful Buddhist bum, you.
Yeah, and Yuyu Ramdass Sharma,
the literary face of Kathmandu today,
has posted a memoriam on Facebook
for the prince of Kathmandu yesterday.

The night is cold and there is a line of fifty, then sixty people waiting with their things in baskets in the checkout line, it is a large market but only the one line is open on a Saturday night and the line has stopped moving because at the head of it a woman has disputed the total the checkout clerk has charged her for her grocery things, the amount of money in dispute is inconsequential but the dispute continues, the clerk calls on a phone for a supervisor but no supervisor arrives, the arguing goes on, the people in line are fidgeting but no one says a thing, the dispute continues, the clerk continues to argue with the woman and to make calls but help does not arrive, one then two then three security guards arrive then leave again, the line grows longer, the clerk is trying to control her agitation but now the people in the line are growing visibly restive, some are leaving the line, fuming, muttering to themselves, one man says Enough of this and leaves his cart full of groceries where it stands and walks off, mumbling to himself, saying just loud enough to be heard the name of a much more expensive gourmet market a few blocks away, I don't care what it costs he says

LOST AND FOUND

Don’t worry about making it real
it’s all imaginary

windy and warm
a summer of days approaches

my leg is killing me
my arm is killing me
my head is killing me
my back is killing me
my foot is killing me
my hand is killing me
my gut is killing me
my butt is killing me
my etcetera is killing me
it’s enough to think
that there is a vast
conspiracy to kill me

 

This very morning I
          lie in my bed
          not dreaming
not able to rise
the back of my hand
          flows like a large wave  on the ocean
under the covers
          grazes over a half hemisphere
          an hour out of Halifax
Isaac rises for coffee
          & we tread East
                                to await her
Lower East Side
is no Russian dascha
              no flimsy  beach shack
now I stand
     at the sun bleached rail
                             as the East River ebbs
in Brooklyn  and Queens