Black and White in Colour

BLACK AND WHITE IN COLOUR

I found a package of whiteness in an old black bag. The bag, torn,
shredded and scarred was a present from my mother one Christmas.
Than, we were not dreaming of a white Christmas, we were only dreaming.
The zip of the bag is silvery-white, like Christmas and like my
mother's new millenium the zip is stuck, unable to close or open. The
bag, like her mouth, has had all it's white teeth removed and her words
remain lost in her own mouth, lost in blackness.

I look at the package of whiteness again. I look at it and see white
sand pure like sunlight. I am only looking at it from a distance, from
outside of myself. Looking at it from a distance, from outside of
myself. Looking at distant white sandy beaches as somewhere I would
like to be. Laid out and packaged with gentle, frothy waves bubbling
and cooling me under a hot white sun. Reading poetry, not my poetry,
from that old black bag. Out of emptiness and blackness into whiteness
and vastness. I look at the package again, get closer to it's
whiteness. Now it is the colour of bathroom talc or baby powder. I look
again at the package and in flashbacks of memories, like black and
white photographs, caught by the great flash light of camera, I
remember. I remember having white baby powder shaken on my black body.
I look at the blackness of the broken bag and as tears of white salt
well up in my eyes I remember my mother. It was my mother who bought me
that black bag when I could of bought six different colours of bag in
every shade of black and white. Sometimes you have to be like a child
to your mother to give her a reason for being. This can be as hard as
those black and white tombstones that await all of us.
I walk away from the white of the baby powder and the black of the now
empty bag and make myself coffee. Unsure of whether to make myself a
black coffee with two crystalline sugars or a white coffee with no
sugar, I make one of each. I sit down knowing I need a friend to talk
to there is no-one. I sip the black coffee; it's bitterness like my own
bitterness of so many years is masked by those white refined sugar
pills. I drink the white coffee and the milk is sour. As I taste the
sour, I taste the truth and than spit out the sour white cream to wash
it down the enamel sink. The taste is washed away with frothy white
water, down in ever decreasing circles to somewhere on the
outside.

I look again at the empty blackness of the bag and the whiteness of
that small package.
I get closer to the package of white powder. My eyes. nose and mouth
almost touch the small clear bag. Closer now to my own bitter tears I
now see those white crystals for what they are. There is nothing
magical in it's shifting appearance. I pick up the package and drop it
in the black bin. All that not so pure whiteness is carried out in a
black bin liner to be taken away somewhere safe and out of my
distance.

I look now at my old black workbag. The bag is still heavy like the
blackness around my eyes of so many sleepless nights. The zip is still
white and broken like my own teeth and I am unable to open or close my
own mouth like my dead mother. I look down again and outside all that
unspoke and unspeakable heaviness are pages of white paper with words
in black ink. I read the poem to myself, a heavy poem written by hand
on scrapped paper. Black broken ink meets torn white paper. I fill the
broken black bag up again with my poems, black print meeting white
paper bound- up as books. I walk out to the outside where pure white
show falls out of a black night sky. I am as white uncraked ice as I
walk the night and carrying the broken
black bag with words to carry my mother to rest in peace. I stop at the
gate, the cemetary gate, standing high above me and painted in heavy,
heavy ash black gloss. I look inside at the black marble tombstones
embossed with words of gold. I look at the white tombstones with carved
out words and now black and white make no difference. I look between
the empty gaps and while leaning on the gates and as I lean on the gate
it suddenly opens unlocking white and black. I carry the heavy, heavy
black bag and open the silver-white zip full of black ink and print on
white sheets of paper. I am invisible like my mother's words lost in
her own mouth.
I am at my dead mother's graveside and pull out the words to read out
the poems inspired by her skeletal hand and her own lost words.
I am still invisible as I make visible the black heavy ink and skins of
white paper with my lighter. I read out loud poem after poem while
looking down at the deep black earth where my mother's white skeleton
lies hidden.
There no white ghosts in this deep black night. I am still invisible,
as the words I chant become visible only by the hidden skeletons. For,
although they too, like my mother's skeleton are hidden, as I chant
over the empty black and white of the tombstones I find
that other mourners have left their footprints in the cold white snow.
We all wait for rain.
And so I chant:

DOWN TO REST

Walking around in shabby black
Black suit bagged up
And I am that man
And I am black.
My white, Black mother is dead
As I walk around naked.

I knock on my sister's door
My kin sister
My white sister
Not my black sister.

The night is black
The cold is night
As I find myself back in
Where white lights are left on
To twinkle at us.

Music plays on my radio
At the death procession
Death dances to white sunshine
Through my window
As mother, six years in her prison
Only white ambulance driven
Day trips without tripping
Now driven down, down, down to find herself at peace again?
Forever?

I chant my mouth now opening on a black vastness and my pearl white
teeth pronounce the verse as I stand still yet moving.

UNRUN RACE

It's a heavy, heavy hard kick
Carrying bones on my back
To go around and around in summertime
Seven times past dead stones, set in black
Can you kick it?

I carry this heavy, heavy hard black ink
Where tomblstones painted in black
Wait for white flowers in pouring sweat
To take the black and white chair
To lighten that heavy, heavy hardness
To be that marathon runner
Running away from death to face death
Crackin 'on and kickin' it
Running away from life to face life
To make a share
For cancer cure
And I don't need no cure
To walk with you
That last heavy, heavy step
To let the electric wheelchair pass us
In the long, long unrun race.

And so I chant through the vast night blackness. Standing like a white
frozen uncracked ice sculpture. The sky cracks and shiny white drops of
rain and sheets of block blue whiteness melts into nothingness. I
scatter the black ink and print on white skins of paper into the now
blue black night and the words become visible. They fly across the
vacant blackness and whiteness of tombstones. White ashes to ashes and
black dust to dust. As the snow whiteness melts into nothingness I can
now see bright flowers in an array of different colours blooming on a
green bed of grass. All those mourners dressed in black suits, white
shirts, black ties, black hats, white blouses and black skirts have
left a garden of colour. As I turn up my lighter full like a white
candle against the black night, I too melt. This white uncracked ice
sculpture melts and I become visible, like words made visible by a
garden planted for the dead. I read and become apparent like invisible
ink suddenly appears on the page.

WATER FOR FLOWERS

Walking on still earth and stones
The ground waters, the ground
And I find her dead flowers
As her cool blue flame
Blows out.
As water quenches earth
And dead flowers, become
Water for flowers
Water for an arrangement of flowers.

The lighter burns out and I leave the heaviness and black bag at her
resting place. I wonder if under six feet of heavy earth and under a
night of eternal stars does or will she ever shine in eternity, as a
white light. Who knows? Maybe only the Zen like carefully arranged
flowers.

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