(Verse 1: jessica Care moore)
The roses are dipped in graffiti
The bananas are Josephine's
Gil Scott Heron showed up to our Detroit
Tribute as an Ancestral bird.
Sankoka Pigeon
&
I was kissed by rock & roll
Right in the mouth
I've been singing this music
Since Motown pigtails wailing
In the mirror concertos coupled with
hair brush in the shower microphones
gave the holy ghost to little brown girls
segregating their hearts from their bodies
too early.
To damn young to know all them love songs
Since reading Janis Joplin's autobiography
and thinking Lorraine Hansberry was the
most beautiful lady with black eyes
on the cover of a paperback book.
I knew this music was mine
The electricity of guitars; sensitive teeth biting
My not quite grown up lips
Waiting for this sound to
One day kiss me back.
And it did.
In the middle of a crowded
Airport in the city of wind
Before the refrain
Had a chance to find itself
In the middle of a Hendrix howl
Before reminding you...
I am clear about how I entered
This planet, so how I exit the
weekend. the moon.
tour bus. mother ship. stage.
Don't matter baby.
I was born with stardust poems
And magic bones that walked
Inside the stories of the children
Of Bahia while drinking tears
I've swallowed whole in a torrential
Apartheid rain in the heart of Soweto.
Tears.
I am fearless in this skin.
I have felt the pain of hundreds of
little girls inside a fanatic hug & shake and cry in
my arms in the name of poems
they claim saved their lives.
I know that fame is a lie
As you wrapped around my tired
single mom full time artist body from
Chicago to Minneapolis and back.
Was the beautiful, quiet reality
of this moment.
Maybe I just needed to sleep
>>
>> inside this music. wheels against
>>
>> concrete. rollin.
>>
>>
>>
>> stillness while moving.
>>
>>
>>
>> the palm of your hand
>>
>> holding onto a fantastic wood wallet
>>
>> I forget to ignore the obvious.
>>
>>
>>
>> you somebody to?
>>
>> he asks.
>>
>>
>>
>> well, aren't we all?
>> Talking bout golf and childhood teachers
>>
>> And you telling me what I
>>
>> Already know
>>
>> bout me.
>> That I love like a southern woman
>> & in my head I am thinking of
>>
>> recipes to feed you in an imaginary
>>
>> kitchen.
&g
>> this is what women do
to figure out if they love a song.
they play it loud while cooking.
>
>> Can't count the thousands of
>>
>> Times I've said goodbye to
>>
>> Music. Turned off the radio
>>
>> Out of boredom with meaningless lyrics.
>>
>>
>>
>> Sometimes the song stays in your head
>>
>> for several days in a row.
>>
>> Even if you don't like it.
>> If it's real good, it never truly leaves
>>
>> your body.
>
>> some women die with an
>>
>> 8 bar blues buried inside
>>
>> their womb.
&g
>> This summer her music is alive.
>>
>> breathing through the untold truth of
>>
>> Betty Davis.
>>
>>
>>
>> Alive as Coltrane's inspirational
>>
>> and unfindable Naima
this ain't the first time some giving music
kissed a giving poet in the mouth.
They always had compatible mouths.
this ain't the first time she's played
a record this authentic.
and she's been rolling to this soft needle
black orpheus soundtrack laying softly
against the round black
ever since.