Way Out West

Way Out West

BY AMIRI BARAKA

As simple an act

as opening the eyes. Merely   

coming into things by degrees.

Morning: some tear is broken   

on the wooden stairs

of my lady's eyes. Profusions   

of green. The leaves. Their   

constant prehensions. Like old   

junkies on Sheridan Square, eyes   

cold and round. There is a song   

Nat Cole sings . . . This city   

& the intricate disorder   

of the seasons.

Unable to mention   

something as abstract as time.

Even so, (bowing low in thick   

smoke from cheap incense; all   

kinds questions filling the mouth,   

till you suffocate & fall dead   

to opulent carpet.) Even so,

shadows will creep over your flesh   

& hide your disorder, your lies.

There are unattractive wild ferns   

outside the window

where the cats hide. They yowl   

from there at nights. In heat   

& bleeding on my tulips.

Steel bells, like the evil

unwashed Sphinx, towing in the twilight.   

Childless old murderers, for centuries   

with musty eyes.

I am distressed. Thinking

of the seasons, how they pass,

how I pass, my very youth, the

ripe sweet of my life; drained off . . .

Like giant rhesus monkeys;   

picking their skulls,

with ingenious cruelty

sucking out the brains.

No use for beauty

collapsed, with moldy breath   

done in. Insidious weight   

of cankered dreams. Tiresias'   

weathered cock.

Walking into the sea, shells   

caught in the hair. Coarse   

waves tearing the tongue.

Closing the eyes. As   

simple an act. You float