There is a place in my throat for when the coffee has turned cold for when the beans are reclaiming their shape and, like freed men, begin to search out their broken kin like fools think it will be in Heaven and that somehow there will be a mist of Grandma holding a pan of warm bread or a bowl of second slain beast stew
And my swallowing is stopped at the tongue and I make a bowl to cradle the lacking brew and I can see my Grandfather’s thin lips blowing over his saucer of poured out percolated early morning liquor that still wafts and wakes the most loved place of my entire known life until it calms into a mellow potion for my brother and I to fight over
I beg my tongue to river that swallow into my throat like I begged my Grandfather not to leave and go over the hill where he broke open the earth where other men died and were swallowed by the dirt where one man watched a Birmingham Steel girder slice his head apart where White men claimed splendor they did not put hands to
Begged him to stay at that morning table where we fell asleep scrapping at his leftover grits dry toast and runny eggs begged him to pick me to wear his scuffed and scraped hard hat that swallowed our tiny, boy heads and gave us echoes of his foot falls across wood floors and reverberations of the swooshing air thru the opening door and washed our blindedness with a screech of the screens hinges before being taken off and tossed into the station wagon
And I tilt back my head like I did as a boy and wait for the whiskered kiss of my Grandfather’s cooled breath to push the last of this morning’s brew into my remembered unaged soul
Jas Mardis is a 2014 inductee to The Texas Literary Hall of Fame and a leather and fabric artist
Your laughter filling me up from where my toes end to where thoughts begin Your early days stories Taking me into long forgotten tales of my own Memories and wonders and hopes and delights Slipping between us like forever is still an infant Like these old bones are not creaking Like all my teeth are still where they used to be
I am not in a hurry to be the old man that I was before
Before you smiled when hearing my laughter just a few feet away
Standing in the same aisle Standing in the same dusty pathway of knowledge
You: forgetting about the Orishas and JuJu women book Forgetting about the heat of the day and the market booths Forgetting about the drum circle men and women keeping their thunder Between their knees and wrap-skirts and welcoming rhythms
They are all around us
But we are alone
Just you and your smiling to yourself about the ways I am making you want thunder
In your breasts thru your belly between your thighs
Later after our third night
You will tell me of how you surrendered all of your old fears to my laughter
How you spent a journey of steps backward toward the savoring sound of it
How you pressed your palm to your belly exposed by your tied off shirt
How your fingers played along and said that my tongue would trace your navel
And spill cups of whispers into you with the same heavy baritone and bouncing joy
How you turned your face toward me and parted your lips intending to say your name
But instead you swallowed up the view of my walking and taking you in
Me: this is what the dreams of aloneness have taught me And I have watched you saunter beyond and back to me twice already You are in desire mode you came wanting knowledge of mysterious things and women Somewhere you have reasoned that another book is waiting for you I can see it in the way you come to the end of the shelves and take the corner toward home In watching you I want to know that manner of thirst that way of having the tongue surrendered That opening up and taking in of things anew
Later after our third night
I will let free every thought and want of you
From this first moment of you amongst these books of our people
You are already forever known to me for the way you want words around you
The way you steady yourself and touch each spine
in the same way that you will read the curve of me thru a wet towel on day seven
already everything that I knew before seeing you searching has been lost
and there is only come whatever will come whatever may
so… I ask for the title of the book that would send you on such a journey
and I listen when you turn your face up to me and say
that you are looking for book about forever
and it seems to be written on the sound of my laughter
.Copyright Jas Mardis 1999 Awarded the Voertman Poetry Award and published in Our Texas anthology , Center For Texas Studies @ University of North Texas Press, Denton, TX.
We could not walk away from the wet mouthed joy
of the palm-sized apple-pears
stolen at a speed of one hundred steps an hour
from the tree in Mr. Willie’s backyard
each bite to come
worth the bare-foot procession over spurned alley trash
and fallen branches petrified against the barren, rootless earth
each of our shirt-baskets
full to the wide-eyed brim with yellow-green and crimson delight
our mouths already full of last summer’s remembrance:
zest and tang and pith and running
we could not
not even when he stood watching
his ratty bathrobe tied into a knot
the same patterned knot that tied his Viet-damned soul
tied it so tightly that this battle for pears
was his only connection to the world still outside of him
tied and ragged
ragged and red and yellowed and bruised
as much like his wounds on the battleground
torn into strips and shreds and being pulled away from him
like the skin of his plump, backyard fruit
between our teeth
gathered between the supple lips of our youth
pulled and suckled away from the meat and the seed
each bite
each crimson and yellow-green oddest oval globe
taking our teeth like first and last
lovers
each fruit
licking back against our tongues
lapping back into the canyon of our bite
claiming that moment of fulfillment
cajoling our senses toward the next summer’s delight
creating the answers to the questions of pleasure
each of those fruits
come so graciously year after year to that tree
come so tauntingly aromatic on the first day winds
come so wickedly olive-to-sanguine
and finally to wasted, fallen, saffron fodder for the night creature’s to taste
We
We could not walk away from the wet mouthed joy
of the palm-sized apple-pears
dangling so much like desire
swaying in the lilting southern summer siroccos
like radio music from air-condition less cars
and the sweet, sweet flask of bay rum spilled onto the barber’s smock
and the yelping night hounds trapped, swollen in mid-hump out back of the fence
and
the from heaven falling
out of Mr. Willie’s apple-pear tree
having never landed and bounced against the earth
rather,
dangling
flying
circling and spinning and pendulant from a branch
my face turned crimson
my pants ripped into a knotted gash
and Mr. Willie
coming finally through the screen door
knife
in hand
I want to sing
not just that hand moving vocalizing from American Idol tryouts
but sing in a way that makes men wait to go pee
when the alarm has gone off and it’s me on the radio
and the morning is still cold on the other side of his woman
and she is barely making a sound
but her mouth is a smile
and her hips are exposed from beneath and around her gown
and I’m chiming something from The Originals
and I don’t even care that it’s four-part harmony
’cause damn he’s looking over across her curves and sweetness
and remembering a few nights ago that should have been last night, too
and she’s curling her shoulders into the full light of day breaking across into the room
and her leg straightens and the gown just gives up
and there is something rising in the air on the sun’s rays and in the mist of dust
and there are all kinds of “yes” in the way that she opens her eyes to him
and the covers and pillows fall into line
and there is nothing to be said with words
not even that line about “gonna be late for work”
because I’m on the radio
and what they HEAR when I sing: “DO YOU HEAR WHAT I HEAR”
is “I’ve been missing you since yesterday night”
and what they FEEL when I sing: “WHEN YOUR LIPS ARE KISSING MINE”
is, “Yeah”
and what they KNOW when I sing: “DO YOU HEAR THE BELLS, DARLING”
is, “All I need is five minutes to show you”
and what they DO when I sing: “DO YOU HEAR THE BELLS RINGING IN YOUR EARS, BABY”
is ask, “Can we turn that up a little bit, then?”
…”OH, I’LL NEVER HEAR THE BELLS….OH, I’LL NEVER HEAR THE BELLS…
NO, I’LL NEVER HER THE BELLS WITHOUT….YOU, BABY”
How sweet it must be to sing
Jas. Mardis (04/2015)
National Poetry Month 2015
**Click here to see The Originals sing their hit song properly
Jas. Mardis is a 2014 Inductee to The Texas Literary Hall of Fame, Multiple National Association of Black Journalist GRIOT Awards for Radio Commentary and a Pushcart Prize Winner for Poetry. He is Editor of KenteCloth: Southwest Voices of the African Diaspora (UNT Press). For booking information of poetry or The Family Story Project workshops–j.mardis@verizon.net or just send a reply from this page.
Go ahead
let the air move in and out of your body again just breathe
let your surprised breast rise and fall and rise
as we talk about what is familiar between us
breathe like
the last time you crossed the just cut grass of your Grandmother’s yard
where the air was sweet and new and Summer morning fresh
and remnants of those chopped blades clung to your greased legs
and dusted the patent-leather reflection of your shoes
and you kept on running because there was blooming honeysuckle
to pluck and strip and lay gently on your tongue
then pull back thru your pursed lips and enjoy in joy
it took all our breaths away to know that a wisp of honey hid there
like manna
opened anew each morning always, just right there
laid out across
simple post and wire fences that partitioned off the journey
for those blocks and corners that created neighbors and later hoods
every time I say it I crave
another sip of that backyard heaven weed
grown from vines that seemed to fall from an endless sky
yet reached up from miraculous patches of ground cover
even now we cannot run our minds into believable paths to their roots
where old bees too fat for flight must be relegated to stuffing
and slathering new vines with left-out and spilled-over nectar
what else could explain it
surely not just childhood
moments of wonder and growing and seeing mysteries so clearly
so wonderfully happy with just sunlight and cool winds on our face
sun soaked, nappy heads and pool water burned eyes and nostrils
surely no dog chased existence
or tree-climbing bare-foot-racing mind could make up
this terrible goodness grown wild and fetching and free
were there always wasps and yellow-jackets to chase you screaming
do you remember the sting of that surprised you
as you watered the garden in burping ripples from that tangled hose
did your Grandmother come running to hush your scream
do you remember
if you left the water running when you dropped the hose
did that sweet, Summer-warmed stream run all night
did it run
until it found a way into honeysuckle’s roots
.
.
.
.
Jas. Mardis (7/2015) * Happy Birthday, Terri. Thx for your support
Jas. Mardis is a 2014 Inductee to The Texas Literary Hall of Fame
Others will tell you
that: your yellow dress caught their eye
and so they smiled and winked and took their own picture
to be reminded of you later
they will tell you
that: once they left you standing there
caught up in the camera’s eye
they grew another head thinking of all the sweet things they didn’t say
they will tell you
that: every other lofty, wavering laughter since your’s on that day
when the camera flashed and your face shown bright in the shadows
reminds them of how much sweetness and joy remains in the world
they will tell you
that: strangers and friends have begun to ask
for their own copy of your picture to gaze upon during breaks in their day
to imagine the cool shade and warmth to want to be framed by the shadows of trees
they will tell you
that: they finally understand why others wander the earth
cameras in hand the new day’s sun bathing them all over
their eyes filling and flowing over with the hope of having such a moment with you
they will tell you
that: when I heard their story of the wonderful, watchful, witness of you
I did not weep or wail or moan I did not blink or wink or nod
I simply shook my head and whispered: “Yeah? Wait until she wears red”
Jas. Mardis
03/01/2016
New 2016 National Poetry Month poems
Jas Mardis is a 2014 inductee into The Texas Literary Hall of Fame and an award winning Poet, Radio Commentator and an Art Quilter.
Jas Mardis 