104

Jack Hirschman

The black rice arcane

1.

I watched a woman pass by me, profile-glimpsed I thought was you; pink slippershoes, coffee-colored legs in a purple skirt and maroon sweater, with a hairnet but of pink satin flowerettes, like in a Detroit garden, shoulder-stooped as if the air itself was burdening on down, and then, at the corner light, that face of jutjawed beauty, feisty, proud, black rice, the staple of the human race. It was more than a decade since I’d heard your voice, only to hear someone’d told me yours decided to become… you know how it goes, the song of the sound of a woman standing still in my skull, then spreading throughout my soul enduring decibels, as she crosses one more gutter, on the green.

2.

Go back to “the human race”, the last words, after all, of the most sung song, The Internationale, the song I fight for the meaning of, a meaning I’d die for, no matter the backlashes, contemporary drivel, deviations

and double-crosses. Objective to whether it’s sung correctly, or whether or not Maketa I still

call you, did or did not applaud or smile at my given, or your obvious, or your subtle. You’re voice like what’s gotta, and needs a lotta

because of everything to this point, and so I fight on for it, and for you till nothing’s not out of the hoosegow, into the pure now, like you’re now, like you are You.

3.

The French took you for an African, for your cheekbones, those bright eyes and intelligently aristocratic way you move the wrists of your words when you speak. Whether they’re polite or not there’s no question of your nation.The wild abandon of your disenchantment, the desperation under the smile you often put out. When you looked at me I became a breast, standing upright like a student of your mouth. And that burnished flesh looking at me, O, Diablesse, you cadavered me. I thought: my hair’s naked, and it is. And I’m what she wants, ever so desolately as a mirror decomposing

into a drop of the sweet blood we are together, And we’re this blazing etcetera on a string of air, and this is a clear nudity right to the heart of us, that wears nothing but a diaphane of kisses on your dark wheat skin that leads me out to minutely see the particulars I need most of all to hang my eyes on, and space so close, all’s open-armed and my lips come down the rib-steps of your body and each of us builds a mutual spermal geyser with breathing prana, oxide, ether, sure, pure in a word-sky, your light body a feather in this smith’s arms, under falls pouring down, hair over limbs intertwining, jubilee hallelujas in a room where we came to be this kindness of a memory of love.

Path

Go to your broken heart. If you think you don’t have one, get one. To get one, be sincere, learn sincerity of intent by letting life enter because you’re helpless, really, to do otherwise. Even as you try escaping let it take you and tear you open like a letter sent, like a sentence inside you’ve waited for all your life,

though you’ve committed nothing. Let it send you up. Let it break you, heart. Broken-heartedness is the beginning of all real reception. The ear of humility hears beyond the gates. See the gates opening. Feel your hands going akimbo on your hips, your mouth opening like a womb giving birth to your voice for the first time. Go singing, whirling into the glory of being ecstatically simple. Write the poem.

Jack Hirschman is a Emeritus Poet Laureate of the City of San Francisco, and founding member of the Revolutionary Poets Brigade of San Francisco and the World Poetry Movement of Medellin, Colombia.