BLACKNESS SO BLACK 

BY bILLYE  oKERA

I've been in Blackness so black

 Black don’t even know it be black -

Night so heavy on me

Daylight had to trip by quiet

Less it rip un-ripened woe from the vine

And leave in kind it own mourning.

Seems to me, if you could see just a little son-light

Just peer from under blankets of soulessness

And bless the coming of day

Then you could play the dozens with tragedy

And have your say with holocaust

Boss it back with your knack for word and song.

Don’t get me wrong

I’ve spoken to the leader of the band

And he be playing oldies but goodies

But blues be blowin’

From the think and broken reed of a sad alto sax.

What I lack is joy

Just enough to keep black at bay

And the braying hounds from sounding  the judgment horn.

Gabriel be set to play blue-black notes

 In rote repetition and staccato screams

Careen from the tem be drum

 The tum-de-tum-tum of feet in Ghanaian frenzy.

My black be blacker than the closing of the eye

  At the death-hour

Towering above me

Hovering over me

Walking with me

Toying with my joy-stick

Messin’ with my praise.

I have day upon day of no contact with God

And as way leads on to way

I’ve come to wear black rather nicely

While the icy gorge below

Bellowing over the falls is calling every hour...

  The great falls tripping over jagged rock

With the ridge of hell just under the foam

Of the wave.

Oh, Save me God.  

You who from the dark abyss

Kissed the deepest dark with Son and star

Who sparred with Leviathan and won.

Save me God.

You who declares what is and ain’t

As the saints be dancin’ down demons

Down in the sistah circle

Shirt-tails whirling in dervish drunkenness

Black thighs absent the sign of the lying lover.

My black be blue-black

Berry-black-brazen

Brash-bigger-better,

Bitter-broken-bodacious,

Brooding-bold,

Burgeoning-bigot-boastful,

Beggard of a burly-black

And beein’ neither cold or luke-warm

It be hotter than sun-stroke

Red-hot

 Hotter than holocaust.

My black be blacker than my fist

 To your cheek

A hissy-fit black

Where Jack Koerner and Little Miss Muffet

Sat and sprayed venom all over suffering.

Now I ain’t one to pray wash me whiter then snow

Cause snow be cold and hearts be frozen easy

And there’s the sleazy way soul tends to disappear

When even spectral light won’t penetrate

And there ain’t no hue to guide you over.

My black be blacker than midnight

Black so black

That I have a knack for walking

Shoulders bent and a covering for sacred eye

When just above my head and in the skies

 A rainbow.