Cocoa-butter-smelling beautiful black men and women.

Almond eyes glinting with whisky phat phunk and fumes.

The exact time that the lift doors had opened

Was the exact time that the music, mid-song, had stopped

All heads turned slowly to the intrusive source of light.

Hundreds of them. Hundreds and thousands and maybe a million.

The sweet still air was filled

With the black breath of my silent brothers and sisters,

Who did nothing more than blink and watch and register.

It was so silent that I could hear

A glorious curl of sweat abseil down his face

I could hear it fatally explode on the floor

And bounce back in the shape of a crown. Jeez!

His shaken forearm rose slowly with the lump in his throat

And his finger travelled through the thick air,

Towards the elevator lift panels.

Until finally he pressed the button for

Reception! Reception! Reception!

Colour Blind

Colour Blind

If you can see the sepia in the sun,

Shades of grey in fading streets,

The radiating bloodshot in a child’s eye,

The dark stains in her linen sheets.

If you can see oil separate on water,

The turquoise of leaves on trees,

The reddened flush of your lover’s cheeks,

The violet peace of calmed seas.

If you can see the bluest eye,

The purple in the petals of the rose,

The blue anger, the venom, of the volcano,

The creeping orange of the lava flows.

If you can see the red dust of the famished road,

The white airtight strike of Nike’s sign.

If you can see the skin tone of a Lucien Freud,

The colours of his frozen subject in mime.

If you can see the white mist of the oasis,

The red, white and blue that you defended.

If you can see it all through the blackest pupil,

The colours stretching, the rainbow suspended.

If you can see the breached blue of the evening,

And the caramel curls in the swirls of your tea,

Why do you say you are colour blind

When you see me?

Charlie’s Playing Blackjack

Charlie’s Playing Blackjack

(For David Murray)

It’s got to scream like a thousand shivers.

Shake down, break down, run like rivers of black fire-waves.

Rise demons and spirits from the Senegalese caves.

Rise Beloved and Seth! Rise the dead!

For this sound digs, digs down-down where the deep down

Is down with the deep down till it reaches the beaches of Goree.

Until it stabs-stabs as it grab-grabs the minute minute. Hold fast.

It flows through passages, right, like a flock of carrion crows,

And stings and blows and stings and blows,

Makes sadness sing high and swing low.

SWEET CHARIOTS OF FIRE!

Quotes wrapped in rolled notes, stick into the spokesmen’s eyes.

The hoaxmen of the mainstream deep scream.

Deep, Davis, deep. So deep, Davis, I can’t sleep for the

Sweeping sounds of your underground. This landscape