A man made of scrap muscle & the steam
engine’s imagination, white feathers
flapping in each lobe for the skull’s migration,
should the need arise. Sometimes drugged
& duffled (by white men) in a cockpit
bound for the next adventure. And liable
to crush a fool’s face like newsprint; headlines
of Hollywood blood and wincing. Half Step ’N Fetchit,
half John Henry. What were we, the skinny B-boys,
to learn from him? How to hulk through Chicago
in a hedgerow afro, an ox-grunt kicking dust
behind the teeth; those eighteen glammering
gold chains around the throat of pity,
that fat hollow medallion like the sun on a leash—

SHAFT & THE ENCHANTED SHOE FACTORY or ARSPOETICA: THE EPIC QUEST FOR LANGUAGE

SHAFT & THE ENCHANTED SHOE FACTORY or ARSPOETICA: THE EPIC QUEST FOR LANGUAGE

Shoeboxes line the walls like books.
Shaft sits alone untying his boots.

He’s Jesse-Owened across Harlem in these shoes,
He’s tossed them like a pair of guns
By the beds of countless women,
He’s kicked down the doors of villains.

But now they are scarred as a pair of old boxing gloves
The leather too thin to protect his strut through Broadway slush.

Suddenly, a long man in a blue satin robe appears,
His fingers thin as calligraphy pens.
He’s the factory wizard,
Distant cousin some mythic shoemaker god,
Provider of footwear
For every hero in the land:
Blue suede for Elvis,
Snakeskin spur-spinning boots for John Wayne,
Red boots for Superman.

Shaft says, Man I’m about to walk from Chicago to Mississippi
Kicking the ass of every redneck & Republican that moves,

I’m about to slow drag with a woman finer than Nefertiti,
And soon as she starts to love me, I’m gonna leave her with the blues…

The rest of the shit I’m planning is none of your business,
I’m here looking for new shoes.

The wizard grins a cascade of teeth,
& pulls a pair of tap-dance shoes out of his cuff.
But how can you sneak into a bad guy’s hideout
In loud-ass Sammy-Davis-Jr. kicks?
Is what Shaft’s thinking. The wizard reads his mind.

He unveils a pair of steel-toe boots.
Shaft’s father was a construction worker.
At the end of his life, he had ten exquisite toes,
But the work curled his spine.
Shaft says nothing but the wizard can read his mind.

He pulls out Bo Jacksons, then Air Jordans,
Then clogs, moccasins, house slippers, ballerina shoes.
Shaft says, Ahh Man, fuck this shit, I’m about to go.

The wizard raises his arms to cast a spell
Called Hocus Pocus Jim Crow.
Shaft frowns & says Man you go to Hell.
& Jim-Kellys him through a wall of wing tips with his five big toes.

Shaft returns his feet to his old boots
And his soles and ankles thank him.
The dazed wizard groans beneath a yellow halo of canaries.
Theme music blasts as Shaft walks out into a ticker tape of snow.

SQUAWK

SQUAWK