The Voices Project
Follow us
  • POETRY LIBRARY
  • ABOUT
  • SUBMIT
  • RESOURCES

Castle Cantor Song~ By Dennis Reed

8/8/2018

3 Comments

 
The eternal song is making noise
like Homer with a humming jones
 
in Harlem.
It is a low sound
 
not everyone can hear it
an internal rhythm
 
lyrical beat
Jewish cantor song
 
listened to in the morning
reveals as it opens
 
a flower
that has known destruction
 
a music
that has vision
 
stacked bodies
piled as high as the sun
 
holocaust
middle passage
 
they are the same.
arguing over the
 
number of millions
is asinine
 
we were all in the water
we were all treated like
 
property
in the cantor’s voice
 
 
everything is recorded
rise and the fall
 
of the singer’s words.
we find pain there
 
memory of
tarnished bodies
 
there is the funeral dirge
showing our
 
ability to exist beyond
the European’s threat
 
to tear us apart
limb by anxious limb
 
holocaust and the middle passage
blood soaked brothers
 
in the vat of historical time
singed
 
by the shotgun of history
scorched and changed
 
witnessing and smelling genocide
centuries deep
 
‘’they died standing up,’’
  my guide from the ivory coast said
 
he looked at me as if I should know
I could hear waves
 
making noises
smashing skulls
 
I moved in and out
of historical time
 
like a man losing consciousness
at the wheel,
 
I did not know where I was going
my feet found
 
uneven stones
slave castle to slave castle
 
each time my shoulders
pointed downward
 
where my people
are buried
 
beneath pages and
pages of historical lies
 
I had no insides
when we went
 
to the fifth slave castle
I had given myself up
 
to the smell of death
it covered me,
 
Elminia, the Cape Coast
Castle.
 
My brain was mush
with confusion
 
my intelligence gone
rationales in pieces--
 
people behaving
like animals.
 
It is hard to explain this
to children or even adults
 
I now know the
meaning of crestfallen
 
I trudge the paths
more small rooms,
 
I wanted to see each one
I felt emotions coming
 
torrents shaking and breaking
at the same time.
 
My anger had blown off my head
there was no brain
 
only feeling as raw as
the intestines of killed deer
 
displayed for all to see
in the middle of the road
 
I felt like I was dying too,
hearing the incessant beat
 
of crest top white punishing,
blessing the shore
 
no religious saying
verse could prepare me
 
the next castle
of personal doom
 
historical knives
to throw myself on and learn from
 
But I was a black speck
on the face
 
of a never changing universe
dropped into the bowels
 
of a story I wanted to
turn away from,
 
a story I had to know.
My bent over body
 
compelled to see more,
recording with my eyes
 
and soul what I would
one day write about.
 
how do you write horror?
my stomach was giving way
 
my legs felt
like columns torn from
 
foundations
chest opens
 
there are
remnants of bodies
 
full of torn up flowers
humans like clumps of dirt
 
I was determined
to make it through the
 
last slave castle
my feelings
 
were miniscule compared
to the rocks near the ocean
 
rooms with
paint peeling like skin, flowers
 
of asphyxiation, no light
our shoulders
 
wilting like dark petals,
their dirty fingers
 
treating us
like livestock
 
in a land where
our faces
 
come from
the
 
earth.


Author Bio:
Dennis Reed is a native New Yorker and former member of the infamous poetry group BUD JONES. He was a member of the John Oliver Killens Writing workshop in the nineteen sixties and his early influences include the poet Mervyn Taylor and the artist and poet Fatisha. His work has appeared in Essence, Style, CLA, Black Scholar, Linden Ave. Lit Magazine and many other newspapers and journals. Mr. Reed has taught writing courses at VCU, William and Mary and Morehouse College.
3 Comments
Sheldon Fleming
8/8/2018 01:52:32 pm

I have followed Dennis’s work for over 30 years and his work always taken me to a place I need to go. I look forward to the next read.

Reply
Dennis Reed link
8/15/2018 05:00:13 pm

Thank you Sheldon

Reply
Dennis Reed link
8/15/2018 05:00:58 pm

Thank you Sheldon.

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Poet Search

    by last name

    Archives

    January 2023
    June 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    November 2012

    RSS Feed

Contact The Voices Project: editors@thevoicesproject.org