Nawlins Comforts Richard Pryor

By Frank X. Walker


Umphh, umphhh umph!
Just look atcha boy, struttin’ on stage
like you owns it. Flashin’ dem big pretty teeph
‘n new red shoes, pretending t’ smile like ya mean it.

I knows why ya heah.
New Ola know yo pain, feel yo skin still crawlin’,
smell alla poison ya eva swallod screamin’
outcha pores, bathin’ you like a 100 proof halo.

Ya might be seven months soba
‘n five months sweet rock free, but dis here
New Ola baby, ‘n I knows da dark side a da truth.
I hear you pinin’ undaneath all ‘at laughter.

But you took shame n’ lose n’ da dirt up unda da dirt
brushed it off n’ hung it round yo colla like a tie
made folks pay t’ see it, beg t’ touch it
den dared em t’do da same.

You is coyote/hoppin’ john/brer’ rabbit/trickster/Elegba.
You is hoodoo’s son thru and thru. Like a po’ boy sandwich
drippin’ wit hot sauce you is on dis earth
t’soak up all our pain, t’fagive even my wicked brood.

Who else could make a free hearted whore an’ a rot gut guzzlin’
free basin’ bastard laugh but dey own reflection?
Who else but chu Rich? T’ dem dat’s po, black n’ugly
mostly on da insides, boy, you is Jesus f’tru.




Nawlins Comforts Richard Pryor, Copyright © Frank X Walker, used with permission of the author.


photo

Multidisciplinary artist Frank X Walker is a native of Danville, KY, a graduate the University of Kentucky and Spalding University. A Cave Canem Fellow and a recipient of the 2005 Lannan Literary Poetry Fellowship, he has made presentations at over 300 national conferences, universities and prisons.
A founding member of the Affrilachian Poets, he has authored four poetry collections: Black Box; Buffalo Dance: the Journey of York, winner of the 35th Annual Lillian Smith Book Award; Affrilachia and the forthcoming When Winter Come.

He has appeared in PBS’s GED Connection Series: Writing: Getting Ideas on Paper, and in Living the Story: The Civil Rights Movement in Kentucky. He contributed to Writing Our Stories: An Anti-Violence Creative Writing Program Curriculum Guide developed by the Alabama Writer’s Forum and the Alabama Department of Youth Services. He co-produced the award-winning documentary, Coal Black Voices and produced a documentary exploring the effects of 9.11 on the arts community, KY2NYC: Art/life & 9.11. His visual art is in the private collections of Spike Lee and Bill and Camille Cosby.

A former Vice President of the Kentucky Center for the Arts and the Executive Director of Kentucky’s Governor’s School for the Arts.

Walker serves as Lecturer and Writer in Resident at Northern Kentucky University and as the editor/publisher of the PLUCK!: Journal of Affrilachian Art & Culture.


Copyright © 1997-2006 by Cave Canem Foundation, Inc.

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