keller music poetry, aka, def jam…

“An Officer and His Gentleman”

Lying back with my lover, I am cooled by the rotations of a five-pointed star.
I stare at the wooden blades as they turn in a hurried circle.
Lights protrude from the bottom like the searching beams of a Navy Seals’ rescue.

It makes me feel balanced.
It makes me feel fresh.
It makes me feel like the warmth is back.
Covered in sheets, but the artificial wind still needed.

A single string hangs from its center.
The ripcord of a parachute I am too scared to touch.
I am fearful of its saving wonder, and fearful it might not work.
Its final, dangling embellishment, an emerald, catching the dim light from the street.

Is it too much?
It makes me feel frigid.
It makes me feel old.
The shadows of ghosts speed across the walls.

I am afraid of waking the undead.
I creep to grasp the final metal straw.
I pull the string, but am denied my request.
The engine turning faster than before.

I try again.
My wish is granted.
The helicopter, now grounded, winds down to its idle state.
And now there is silence.

There is no more manufactured wind.
It makes me feel normal.
It makes me feel fine.

I return to the sheets.
My lover is still blank, and happily lost in a world that is not his own.
The raised window at my left whistles a soft medley.

“Grains”

Her wedding day had been conceived shortly after she was.
The dress? Timeless.
The flowers? Ageless.
The people? Speechless.
These, the quotas waiting to be met.
These, the markers of assured disappointment.

The groom was dressed for a banquet even his imagination could not attend.
He was homely with the hands of man three times his age.
His love for Ms. Pattye was as deep as a twelve year old’s wrinkle.
Arrangement, it seemed, was like an empty plate, covered with finest of silver lids.

The day had arrived, but not like the beginning of spring when flowers bloom in full.
Rather, it was like autumn, when you notice the first leaf leave its rooted branch.
She stood at the altar, a sacrifice to the gods of complacency.
Her blood boiled and rushed through her like a rampant river, unyielding and terrible.

She ran from the altar.
She ran from her family.
She ran from the passion that she could not grasp.
She ran towards the golden fields that came alive with the wind.

The train too long to keep up with her pace began to buckle beneath her strides.
An unexpected hole awaited her tracks.
Falling to the earth, she buried herself beneath the dirt and the wheat.
Rising, she shred the garment of old and new, borrowed and blue.

The sun scorched the field, a heat lamp at a buffet.
Pattye limped through the tall grass, her hair blending with the dried grains.
She bent down to tighten the tourniquet tied around her bloodied knee.
Perhaps passion is overrated.

“Mamaw Was a Gypsy”

Momma says Mamaw was a Gypsy.
To me she looked like a dummy, hard and ready for the speculation of the masses.
They weren’t too big.
They weren’t too gaudy.
They were just flowers.  Scattered across her final home like a floral map of her life.

There were the big vines, which stretched and curled all over her cover.
They were encompassing and strong, rooted in the memories of her summers away.
Summers, like the one’s Mamaw lived, were seasons for which time stood still.
Summers that made even God take a moment to notice.

San Francisco, 1963.
Mamaw was a lion tamer for a traveling circus, a painted chorus of unending excitement.
The King’s branding still rested on her frail neck.
Her costly return for the respect she would gain.
Pride was not just the trait she tried to travel lightly with.

New Orleans, 1975.
Mamaw worked in the back alley shops, the places where magic was scared to run.
The burn marks on her fingers still remained after all this time.
The hoodoo backfire of a love spell gone wrong.

Chicago, 1987.
The young man she acquired after Papaw’s passing had an affinity for candles.
The shards of glass in her palms still buried from an escape plan gone wrong.
Running from an abusive man proved more treacherous than she thought.

New York, 1999.
New Year’s rang in with the terrifying sounds of a world about to crumble.
She wore the watch that kept its time, regardless of the fears of man.
“Don’t lose the time you don’t have,” she would tell us.

Meridian, 2011.
Treatments stopped working, in spite of the fight she put forth.
Her face was just as calm as when they had found her.
She was barely wrapped in a worn blanket that had seen its better days.

In the drawer next to her bed, she placed items.
In the casket she would rest, they placed her items.
A lion’s tooth.
A voodoo doll.
A sliver of glass.
And a still watch.

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