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.
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
certainly
there is some other way of naming your attraction
some other ways
of counting out the names that I have given to your beauty
some simple method of calculating the hours spent remembering
all the joy
made possible simply and wonderfully by looking upon you
and knowing that
no other person or thing or moment on this old Earth
is ever going to bring me such a wonderful aching
until it returns comes back around knocks…enters…home
so,
tell me again how I first came to be in your eyes
dancing my old bones and flesh thru the sunset rivers of your stare
holding your browned, honey glazed look upon me
and being swallowed into your pupils as a precious light
just once more
say my name without opening your mouth
without parting your lips without any sounds at all
like you do on your pictures
taken from above your head from your camera’s phone
selfish selfies
with the whole world wanting to be part of such a moment
men and women themselves watching for their turn in your eyes
willing to settle for a moment of you thru a lens
wanting silent credit for capturing all of what you want just me to see
and moments later there you are
the distance miles of roads acres of grass and river waters
steps and tip-toed inches erased with a button’s push
and you
your eyes so brilliant and bright and beckoning me into that flash moment
your silliness your awakening into morning light your muscle work
spilling out from my phone
sighted suddenly like lonely sailors must have seen Mermaids
missing home watching dark water a noise
the glass eye raised to see whatever could it be
“Captain, my Captain…oh, my soul…”
.
.
Jas. Mardis (06/ 2015) (4nomi/)
Jas. Mardis is a 2014 inductee to The Texas Literary Hall of Fame and Editor of KenteCloth: Southwest Voices of the African Diaspora, UNT Press
between seeing you
between having a moment of your smiling
and the absence of you
between the early afternoon sun on your face
and the memory of wanting to keep you longer than one meal
between then and again
the same again of wanting and waiting
the same again of hoping and having
the same again of knowing and wanting to know more
between all the stops and starts of doubting
between every ounce and measure of experience
between each one of my days and nights of aloneness
and the heavier weight of choosing rightly who to kiss twice first
between every moment that chases me toward the again
I am awash and dumbstruck by the moment of THEN
I remember every step that I’ve taken in your presence
and every time that you turned toward me
every flash of recognition in your eyes
each of your tentative smiles each parting of your lips
the opening and closing of your mouth to greet me and to send me on my way
I had thought of you before from a collection of distances
thought of you married thought of you otherwise taken and claimed and loved
thought twice of you younger twice your dynamic in that youthfulness
I had checked and held my breath in your presence
checked for those awkward, low whistles that the body creates around breathing
checked on my taking in and letting out
checked out those risings and fallings of your small chest
checked on the way your stomach fills to a tightness then yields to the belted waist of your black dress when you chuckle
checked off all of the reasons to leave you in the distance
THEN
checked off all the reasons to close that distance
.
.
.
Jas. Mardis is a 2014 Inductee to The Texas Literary Hall of Fame. He is an awarded Poet and Fabric Artist living in Dallas,TX
Jas Mardis 