5.
The Microphone is not a Gun
The fact that a man picks up a microphone – that’s it, you see? That’s what makes him a rapper. It’s not a gun, it’s only a microphone.
Eminem. Interview with Zadie Smith. “The Zen of Eminem,” for Vibe Magazine.
I agree.
It’s not appropriate to think that the microphone could be a gun – it’s not. It’s only a microphone.
Not like the blues weeping, dripping all sassy like, sexy like, painful like, relieved like, sad again, like no word ever spoken – it’s nothing. It’s only a microphone.
And microphones are dead.
No.
Microphones are not dead.
No
Microphones are dead.
No.
Microphones are not dead.
No.
A microphone will switch on a voice whose cross-hairs marks everyone in the room; more, everyone within earshot.
A microphone will illuminate the dogs, the cockroaches, the foreigners, illegal aliens, refugees, the bastards arriving here by ship, here to take our women, our men, talk our children out into the streets, into hazy drug addicted lives; here to convince us that it never happened, it never did, nobody touched their them, nobody, nobody sodomized our kids, not even in God’s name.
The microphone is not dead.
It’s dead.
It’s not dead.
(The microphone is dead without a voice)
The microphone is all your life reduced to nothing
You’re dead when the message comes through to say that you are, or soon will be anyway. The voice behind the microphone says — kill the bastards! Gas them! Hack them! Shoot them! Get rid of every single one of them.
It’s not a gun, Eminem says. It’s not a gun.
The microphone for sure is not the poet who proclaims the death orders.
It’s certainly not a pile of tusks in Mombasa waiting to catch a fire and scream nothing.
Don’t you know that elephant tusks have no voices?
Microphones are not flowers, not love songs, not God on the podium, not Christ, or Mohammed, wailing in the desert
God is love! God is love! God is Love!
There is only one God
There is only one God
There is only one God
And God is love in the priest’s hands, in the killer’s trigger finger, your mother’s hands, mine – all God’s love – tell us!
Tell us, God’s man, tell us!
This microphone is not a gun. It’s a microphone. It’s not God carrying on, spewing love from the mountain-top.
It’s only a microphone.
It’s not a gun aiming to shatter your innards, desecrate that temple of love that you carry about, as your thoughts disintegrate into dust motes that float only in the light.
But have no doubt. The microphone is not a gun, but it can and will kill you.
The one that will save you only needs to whisper the truth that you already carry in your veins —
You’re alright as you are.
You’re lovely as you come.
You’re beautiful even as you look away, even as you sigh, holding you head in your hands, thinking that you can’t take much more than this.
You’re here
You exist
I see you
You belong with me, with us.
I love you
I need no gun, no microphone for that.
4.
Blue Grey for Jodie Martinson
We, who are peddlers of stories, only focus on the blue grey
It’s the blue grey you insist on, isn’t it?
Once there was a woman who lived and died, as we all do
But she had a story
We, peddlers of stories, trade in the dark
Un-mucking details
Clearing shadows
Sweeping the dusty edges of stories that might have been fun, or even funny
Once there was a woman with a story
And now there isn’t
It’s the blue grey in the shadows beneath the boats
At the marina on False Creek
Nobody looks there and nobody cares
Small waves, small waves
We peddle stories, what more is there?
Once there was a woman
What happened to her made us take second glance
Once, a woman with a story mattered because she had a story
We peddle these things as if they were nothing
One story, the next and the one after that
We get fixed
We get our fix
We fix
Once, there was a woman who lived and now doesn’t
She mattered because she had a story that piqued our interest
Once, there was a woman, six times, sixty six or six hundred
But none had a narrative like hers
Once, there was a woman whose narrative claimed her
Molded her, like clay, into someone
Someone who mattered when her story engulfed the headlines
Her details were important
Having been dusted off from the corners and shadows where no one looks
It’s your insistence on the blue grey, isn’t it?
Grey December skies, whitish, sometimes black, belie soft waves under the boats
At False Creek, where red-roofed houses upon houses overlook the water
Witnesses at everyone turn but none are interested
Except you and I, peddlers of stories
Who get our fix, fix and are fixed
3.
I wish it were night
Because what I need to tell you needs night
It needs drawn curtains, Bob melody, warm blankets, sleeping children dreaming, sucking at their mouths and your dark skin
What I need to tell you
Needs night
Your hands cupping my shoulder, the heat in your eyes
This night
Tonight
This night I need to talk to you
This night needs me, needs you, needs black
No streetlights – black
No moon – black
No black thoughts of black people here there every place
That black is black is black is black is me is you
What I need to say needs you black night
black skirt on stained carpet
black stockings
black boots, bra, bangles in a gold heap jangling the day away now quiet
What I need to say needs night with thunder that tremors
rain in sheets
lightening that brightens the sky for a second — a truth that you are more than the sum of all the parts that make me feel good
:you are black soul
What I need to say needs no TV
no shadowing bombs in Beirut
boasting suicides bombs
bragging shots
competitions of displaced people inside outside
borders citizen refugees unwanted migrants vagrants
on the west side of a blue green planet with echoes of canned laughter
No fingers to my lips, love.
What I need to tell you
What I need to tell you
What I need to tell you
2.
I’m holding your foot in my hand
Your right foot or left
Socked, and you’re not even Jesus
But
God, I need saving
I peel off your sock
or I put it back on
(I can’t remember now)
Your foot, socked in my hand
& you’re still not Jesus
I need saving
I need saving, my lord
My lord, I need saving
Your foot in my lap
I cradle it close
Slow enough to diffuse into my mind
In this moment
I am safe
1.
How was it that in my mind I was walking through the field
Gathering armfuls of flowers
While you lay dying?
How is it that flowers don’t exist
that the most beautiful spot on the beach
is where you stood, hands in pocket, glum and scowling?
Race and stop, not much matters anyway
Stones and sand are evolutionary relatives
You and I are stars
Orion has become a coward, hiding behind the sun
And none of this happened
None of it happened.
Juliane Okot Bitek 