27: Feather

There it was, just as I go - a feather.

Reckon he's another messiah, they laughed; heard 'em yell let's see!

Split back they threw dirt in.

So open to everything. Inside my soul

must have been glimpsed cause the white lady started crying.

Porcelain in tears; the pain of my side. My water, leaving.

The spirit filleted;

my color of a rainbow butterfly: deepest red, deepest blue,

deepest green, deepest yellow,

the shades between on black.

The sun and God made me so dark there was no more work to do.

I could not be burnt, just dried.

Sun enters dry cocoons. Far in the desert I can see from this vantage.

The thrush has such a sound; bird's wings move like God, those feathers.

The leaves, I held

so tight to where they beat me on a tree, tied me to

the thrush's call and left;

it took me some time

to return, to hear nails and spear! he say, too good for likes of me. Coloreds

just bleed and hang. The sun entered an open patch in my canopy,

dried me.

I would learn this great lesson; he would learn me to speak freely, to

smile at a white boy. The whip in the hand

he left

me there, a naked soul. Vessel stripped.

Robbers and thieves by my side, the murderer freed.

Now people want to say love comes in overwhelming currents

overpowering from below up through your body. Plays in your thighs, rises.

Pits you and tickles your guts, runs your spine to your head top and

tips little tears from the cliff of your face like Native's run the buffalo.

Not so. I say

comes the other way. There is no path for Love, or expectation;

He is in the fallen down. The debris. He is the fall of your mind;

you must come out of the float, down like a feather

into your soul.

Like a cat pitched to darkness, mind will scratch your heart on the way.

Come back up

faster than it lands.