Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Ghost Voices Whispering from the Near Past
they call from the near past whispering seducing through ether, they call
fragmented, disembodied, their meaning climbing from silence, shapes emerge transparent,
seek a form to enter our bloody world, sluicing through space,
silhouettes looking like amoebas
they float into our vision blooming flowers,
voices whispering at the edge of our ears
Catching Shadows
it was a simple wish to touch an elusive enigma —
a mysterious shadow crawling behind me when a toddler, eye reached out my tiny fingers to stroke the wavy figure, undulating wildly across the concrete sidewalk, before it stamped its inky paradox on my flummoxed eyeballs,
eye remember trying to figure out the mystery the riddle imposed — words my mother sought to pull from her brain, or snatch from the air when she vexed over the daily crossword puzzles she was addicted to, before entering the looping cobwebbed mode of dementia — it was illusory,
alluring for a young boy like me to think through where did the miracle of breathing come from,
or the weather, or if the sun, moon & stars were round as marbles eye saw packed into circles drawn on dirt,
or concrete back when big boys shot steel shooters —
like lead entering bodies — into silhouetted rings,
looping cores, scattering them like roaches fleeing for cover when hot lights came on in empty kitchens, after white people sold their homes,
moved on after black folks bought into their leave it to beaver,
archie bunker neighborhoods back in the day
& marbles scattered quick when hit — like white folks did —
or time, or birds flushed out of trees after hunters' shots rang out sharp, cracking the chilled fall air, piercing as bullets whistling sick past ears, winter slicing clean came sharp as razor blades whipping around corners,
ripping through clothes, menacing as icicle daggers hanging over heads so cold, made us lose our senses
as eye grew older my eyeballs popped bigger than steel shooter marbles too, trying to catch the idea why eye had to grow up around so many people —
black & white — who hated me for no reason,
except difference — the way eye looked, talked, lived the rhythm of music — blues, jazz — played in my house,
or the joy eye heard hearing people singing gospel in black churches all day sundays, with hand-clapping syncopation jack-legged preachers brought down the house with shouting raised to the rooftops,
seducing, implanting into their holy-ghost sermons —
all of it infused a new hip dip into my fresh slick stride,
wicked, carrying uncertainty eye flew into a future echoing with slippery meaning embedded into shiny words politicians delivered — though they seemed elliptical,
elusive at the time of what the promised future would bring —
& as eye grew most people would become illusions like those wavy figures my fingers tried to touch when eye was a toddler, were so elusive,
easy to see, plain as day — they were paradoxes, seducing as they undulated wildly through my life, like those shadows —
mysterious riddles, constantly flummoxing my eyeballs
Soon to Be Ghost Voices Plunging through the Sky
what was she thinking, the beautiful young dutch scientist spiraling down through ukrainian space,
what were her last thoughts looking around,
smoke rising in plumes from an already scorched earth beneath her, where rockets had exploded leaving deep holes where homes used to be, now full of mangled bodies blown apart, like the plane she was flying in on her way home to australia from amsterdam,
where she planned to be an astronaut,
wanting to do something good for the world,
now she was flying to meet her maker,
like others who resembled small birds in the sky around her,
strapped in seats, secure as she was in hers, their wide-open mouths sucking holes for air — like hers — screaming, perhaps, silent,
maybe, in dread — like hers — already sealed, with a muteness embracing death, maybe not, though winds swirling around them were whirlpools in a tidal wave of air screaming louder as they plunged through space so high up in the light burning from the sun, perhaps scorched them in a sky so blue
& clear it resembled a rare diamond, though the shining metal shards of the plane — sharp as razors — falling like glowing comets — flaming guillotines — all around them sliced through birds before hitting the ground hard, exploding,
as their bodies did smashing into earth from such a great height,
when everything — bodies, metal, dreams, engines full of flames —
hit the earth, fire was suddenly everywhere, then billowing smoke rose in plumes, turned into dark curling clouds,
corkscrewing when the heartbreaking, terrified, anguished screams evaporated, then everything became an eerie, smoldering stillness in this scorched field, over where birds now flew, chirping,
as if nothing evil had happened here, though a once blue sky suddenly turned gray in this moment filled with acrid smoke,
eye think again now of the horror the passengers went through
& the young, beautiful dutch scientist, who wished to be an astronaut, seduced by seeing herself flying through space as she did in her dreams,
though not in the way she saw herself now soaring before this horrific end to her moonbeaming ambitions,
what were her last thoughts before her screams evaporated so quickly in the blink of an eye, in a sacred place she longed to be in, high up in her cherished sky
Ghost Waves
around the north shore of hilo, hawaii, ghost waves rise up scary from the bottom floor of the pacific,
shaped like finger-tongues they snatch people sitting unaware on cliffs, dreaming, kissing, living in the moment,
then drag them down screaming into foaming ghost waves,
drop their bodies into the raging deep blue water below,
some are never seen again, others are still there raging,
their voices raised up in prayer, threaded through ether,
breathing words, sentences, construct a memory of these lost faces survivors throw back & forth across dinner tables,
if the lost could speak of those waves now inside this poem,
how would they describe the terror suddenly upon them,
premonitions all of us think of but never expect to see
The Drug of Endless War
endless war a kind of seduction,
shots of cocaine shoot a rush when somebody falls with a bullet through the eye,
boring into the brain,
gives people a rush watching all the blood shoot out in jets —
after it hits vital arteries,
someone drops dead for gold,
this shit is endless,
a sick drug,
seducing bug-eyed junkies
Delusional: A Portrait
"il duce," benito mussolini's attitude is alive & kicking swells —
only larger — in the orange-face doofus in the white house,
who believes he is a snapping turtle — chelonian —
when he thrusts his bobble head sitting atop a wrinkled short neck as if it were a tongue protruding slowly out of a dragon's mouth,
the weird head slithers ugly from a baggy suit — shell —
housing his bulky, soft, flabby body,
his spirit oozes out venomous, flaccid, darkly petulant,
his demeanor holding reservoirs of toxic evil,
which is his total essence now sporting an expensive white shirt & tie,
suddenly he blinks when zipping open slits covering his blue lizard eyes, his bushy blond eyebrows curving up their waxed tips, reminds of twin saber-tooth sword blades dueling whoever presents themselves in front of him,
look closely now, see his fake toupee front hair resembling an upside down canoe floating downstream,
bobbing up & down, fluctuating with each change of wind somewhere on a polluted river where he is searching for a raging waterfall to plunge over,
quickly the scaly gross man blinks again as his lizard eyeballs adjust, he calculates distance from a blitzkrieg of blinding klieg lights popping in front of him like countless exploding gunshot flashes competing alongside cheers from idolizing supporters,
he is used to attention, craves it to feed his insatiable greedy ego, which is cracked & fragile though as the shell of a just-laid egg of a squawking female chicken,
he covets absolute power, lusts after trinkets gold as the wallpaper covering the lair he lives in,
now his small fish mouth puckers open as if he is about to speak tried & true slogans that will rise from somewhere deep,
submerged underwater in his frazzled brain,
but instead of uttering words he sucks in small gulps of air as his reptilian mind sorts through landfills of garbage he has stored away there reeking of pollution,
suddenly he is ready to spit out a stream of hateful invectives looped in a singsong trail of harebrained verbiage, unedited lies,
insults he throws into his audience like buckets full of red paint hurled against a wall,
the words blurt out in a streaming flow his converts love to listen to, so they raise their fists into the air,
pump them up & down screaming "lock them up, lock them up" —
whoever "them" is — over & over again as they reveal stumps of tobacco-stained teeth through parted wire-blistered lips reminding of crooked tombstones in neglected graveyards,
now they applaud wildly as he speaks,
his pinkie finger & thumb forming an O
(the signal for right-wing fascist hate groups,
though it also reminds of the open mouths of drowning men sucking for air as they sink underwater & drown),
now the doofus clown goes quiet again — which isn't often —
he is dreaming of morphing into a kleptocratic dictator,
thinking of all the greenbacks he can pocket he begins leering now like the joker darth sidious (or the dead congolese strongman mobutu sese seko, who was head of a dreaded police state,
worth 30 billion dollars when he croaked of aids),
no matter, his cult follows behind him drooling — bug-eyed zombies with 2-watt IQs on dimmer switches —
choking on gas-filled rhetoric full of fish bones spewed out
& just swallowed from this charlatan con man
it's a very weird scene, otherworldly,
because this windbag of a clown is king for these people devouring his empty rhetoric filling space with sound & fury sandwiched between echoes, he stands there now impervious, his lizard eyes searching the zombie crowd as if he is a harvester of souls — a vampire looking for human blood —
though his heartbeat fails to find rhythm, or recognize joy in music,
humor, or anything else for that matter besides gold & money,
this preening con man who reminds of a snapping turtle,
but who comes closest to being a "bombogenesis" weather system,
a "bomb cyclone" freezing disciples in place in this perilous moment,
wreaking havoc on everything he touches
Song of Some Bloodthirsty Men
time is a bald eagle, a killer soaring high in the blue,
music to men dodging bullets in speeding cars,
knew death, hoped it'd never come,
many people hear fools blow their own refrain of dues screamed through loud voices in crowded seedy bars,
time is a bald eagle, a killer soaring high in the blue,
history is chockfull of leaders, poets who write clues full of abuses snatched from the eyes of mad, drunken tsars —
who knew death yet hoped it'd never come,
bloodthirsty men sanction death beating kettle drums with bones praising killing wars —
time is a bald eagle, a killer soaring high in the blue,
tsar pinochet blew his gasket reading the news —
a mocking poem by neruda — of his idiocy stuck in tar,
who knew death, yet hoped it'd never come,
death waits for no one, comes with each rising sun,
found idi amin looking at severed heads in mason jars —
time is a bald eagle, a killer soaring high in the blue,
who knew death, yet hoped it'd never come
Memory: That Place Once Bright & Clear
those images once bright & clear when you saw them one day in trees,
shimmering green leaves washed down,
riding like small boats on cascading rivers of summer rain,
watched them turn orange-red, faded brown,
when heat burnished them,
before they dropped to the ground from skeletal branches as winter approached,
white shadows jumped out as certainty in what your eyes once told you they were —
are fading now into a cobwebbed place,
once very clear in your then sharp memory,
now they have become hints, outlines — silhouettes —
faceless ghosts in conversations, illusions,
former friends your memory chases, who run away swiftly,
as time does from you, as sometimes when you think you hear a former lover's voice, is as elusive as some dreams, shadows you thought in a clearing,
when the day was bright unfiltered light, then suddenly dimmed, is what your memory reminds you of now trying to recognize someone you thought you saw in a crowd now was a deception seducing you,
a delusion, a false impression, not someone whom you loved so madly once,
it has haunted you over the years, like an old photograph you imagined seeing once in a fading newspaper clipping,
it was only an impression of someone flicking by on a busy street, a face in a crowd dissolving into ether
Mercy
mercy for broken wing birds young or old, sitting alone pathetic on frozen ground,
looking, longing to fly up,
sing in green trees, warm blue skies,
mercy for homeless people,
scavenging like hungry dogs through garbage, sleeping on streets in cold, remorseless cities,
with no love in their future,
mercy for those killed in wars for rich old men at death's door,
their young wives wearing jewelry,
bemused looks on their faces,
waiting for money to drop,
mercy for cold assassins killing for religion, gold,
dogma, beliefs of others who walk around in shadows,
give orders to spineless men,
mercy for plants, animals,
fish in seas suffocating because of the greed of men,
their willful blindness to death piling up all around them,
mercy to sick predators hunting young children, women singled out for rape, murder,
who hate all without blue eyes,
people who don't think like them, mercy for those who refuse to believe art is healing,
whether poetry, music,
dance, visual images,
the bonds of sweet humanhood,
mercy for those who refuse to know beauty is soothing as love is pure energy,
beautiful beyond glory,
liberating hearts & souls,
when it — love — is alchemy,
a driving force fusing me
& you — our bodies as one another, heat rising hot,
aretha's echoing voice
is mercy, mercy, mercy
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Seduction"
by .
Copyright © 2019 Quincy Troupe.
Excerpted by permission of Northwestern University Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
