When I Speak of Blues Be Clear
By Tyehimba Jess (’97,’99,’01)

i locate myself in the north american continent,
where creek and sioux and seminole cemented their blood with mine,
where rape ran crosswise with rosary prayers,
where I stood outweighed, outgunned, outside
and .66 a human being on the legal scale,
while hung full weight of man, woman or child from poplar and oak.

when i speak of blues
i speak sunshine and rain from one mouth.
i am a two headed doctor spitting bullet and gospel verse,
     coffin and cakewalk,
     stagolee and ma rainey,
     jazz in the juke of the jailhouse jump.

when i speak of blues
i identify the root,
the parallel holler to gospel
that cuts straight through to hoodoo.
the hotline to all secrets behind each moan and groan
of the seventh son of the seventh son on the seven day creep.

i flew in on the breath of slave boats
and settled in john de conquer roots.
i took a drum when my tongue was strung and strangled
and struck out a beat to call it language.

i tread quilted blood and birth stories
from backwater black hands.
i survived subsisting on guitar string and harmonica breath.
i survived bible and bullwhip,
parchman penitentiaries and tuskegee tests.

i make love on the border line between life and death sentence

take the boo in my boogie
and make it funk the night air
with ribtipchitlin smoke and watermelon rind.
walk in the shoes of ancient djali memory
to taste middle passage in my skin

and sing:

if i am blues, i am water and i am sky
if i am blues, i am water and i am sky
this blood will run forever, these blues will never die

Copyright © Tyehimba Jess. All rights reserved. Used with permission of the author.

Tyehimba Jess is a Detroit sprung, Chitown flung teacher and poet who has been published in Soul Fires: Young Black Men on Love and Violence, Obsidian III: Literature in the African Diaspora, Power Lines: Ten Years of Poetry from Chicago's Guild Complex, and Slam: The Art of Performance Poetry. He was a Duncan YMCA Writer's Voice Fellow for the year 2000, and is a member of the Illinois Arts Council Artist Roster. Jess was awarded an Illinois Arts Council Artist Fellowship in Poetry for 2000 – 2001; In 2001, he received First Prize in the Chicago Sun Times Poetry Award. Jess won the 2001 Gwendolyn Brooks Open Mic Poetry Awards and is a 2001-2 Ragdale Fellow.

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

HOME | CONTACT | TOP | NEXT POEM