Ars Poetica: A Meditation
⸻after Henry Dumas’ Outer Space Blues
I. Wilderness
with wings i wobble down a cobble road
i left a bottle of brown rum at the crossroads
my limp is getting fuller by the moon
i wonder who plotted
this path, this map
i make my life
i am swift as the spaceships
behind my eyelids
beauty finds me dappled in ecstasy
i found by the magnolia outside
maybe these were killing fields
but today my heart is here,
and there’s no one i desire to destroy
let us live a together that jumps fences
i have had many
agendas i left them at the crossroads too
i am only one in this great wide ocean
of language wielding wonder in verse
holy
hollow
i am a stanza of beauty
nothing can counter but me
we are stanzas glory be
to god
if i’m strange when i get there
i’ll have my wings
outer space blues
clearing my mind
outer space hues might blow
all our minds
what if freedom crawls from deep within
oh, cry and cry, ocean
sky let down the rain
i will savor in the mess of mud
draw all my fears near
shake the dust
after i’m ashes
i’ll be an ancestor running free
the sky i choose to see
only growing wider
gather fire coal,
pit me in that hole
i can take the heat
alchemize my soul
it is myself I desire to meet
II. Returning
there are words
crawling around to be picked up
words i choose
i give myself permission i will not
apologize for the blue
butterfly dancing
in my hydrangeas memories
there are many things seen
i dream space of no time i
before—of dark sounds beat
evil eye down my back
here is happy
as a crow perched
upon my crown for lunch
at winyah bay i do not require you
and i love big as all that water
big as all that water
holding stories
i ripple out love i
breathe like the live oak i
stand rooted i
speak to you plain
there is much
i have to say
i love myself now
i love myself
this here being which means
i can feel you
III. Out There
tone-deaf tercets
are still gonging bells
syllables of narcissism
run capitalism
run politicians
run U.S.A.’s god
tourmalinated quartz
double terminated points
is me standing here
as a recordkeeper
telling you these are loops
we are living in
there is no time
i’m hands up don’t shoot
sixteen years old & the cop
has e¹ finger on the trigger
in anywhere is everywhere
took 20 years for that fear
to leave my wonderful body
look here is my heart
pumping full of the brightest blue
i am bloody as when I arrived
i soak my pen in its dye
i shift rhythms
invoke reparations
i don’t ask permission
i stand in my power
fear fear fear fear look look there
is your heart
IV. Reclamation
when i needed you to see me
i did not write anything
i meant to say
what i mean to say is the writing
is best when I don’t know
where i’m going
where I’m going might be
Black as my granddaddy’s face
topsoil beneath crimson clover
i was shiny and i was for sale
now all i want is growing
a garden lush inside of me
we all grow
when one does
we all know suffering
because
we are alive
when i realized i was
alive
decay and fear left my front porch
haint blue
began to speak alongside mugwort
gone to seed i listened to
cinnamon sticks boiling
on my stove
i put my head over steam of
basil
said hello being we are alive kiss the day
when i entered my third decade of bag lady
i was alone inside, remembering little me
little me who loved stars
feared the night
counting evergreens as i passed by
i think about how much love it took
to survive
V. Risk
a part of me believed
when i forgot to charm you
you wouldn’t stay
it’s been proven i the fool
over and over
melting into different parts
of the same face
same empty eyes
trying to get my lesson how grandma said
now i know running
for my life cannot be running from myself
rain flooding my home
all around is water
for me to wade
watching trouble
decay
trail off
into a rusted storm drain
i pray
thank you every time i remember
____________________
1. In Gullah-Geechee culture, e/em are gender-neutral pronouns.
Marlanda Dekine’s forthcoming collection, Thresh & Hold (Hub City Press, 2022), won the New Southern Voices Poetry Prize, selected by Gabrielle Calvocoressi. Their poem, “Ars Poetica,” is the text for a muso-poetic community performance with the award-winning composer/performer collective, counter)induction. Dekine is a Tin House Scholar, a Palm Beach Poetry Festival Langston Hughes Fellow, and a Fellow at The Watering Hole. Their work is obsessed with ancestry, memory, and the process of staying within one’s own body, leaving spells and incantations for others to follow for themselves. They live in South Carolina with their wise dog, Malachi