Regie Gibson Poetry

How to Dig Nina

For Nina Simone
Some Advice to Al

First,
Abandon what you know about voice, brother-
What makes it and women beautiful…
And just put your hands into earth,
Close your eyes, and listen to alluvia, indigo root,
Coals bituminous narrative speaking the fossil wet womb.

Next,
Place an ear to your grandmothers back-
To where it bends at its most incurable angle.
Hear the holy conflagration of tambourines-
The orgied boot stomp holler-- the sermoned ring shout
of ripened hands.

Then,
Wait. Wait until language un-shackles a tongue flame
Above your head. When this happens (as it always will)-
Your mouth will germinate a naked song.

That night,
Go bury that song in your lover
Until her breasts opalesce with milk, until her belly
Becomes blossom and mother note.

Zeitgeist Zero
When The Voice
Began Singing Was

From Footsteps Dressed in Red:
The Ecto-Poetic Libretto of Jimi Hendrix

When the voice began singing was
When the fist opened was
When space failed between hammer and anvil was
When something lifted our hands to our faces was
When scales fell and we

Named them

Was a querulous light then aching our eyes was
Verb exacting the length of our ears was
Feet religioning their way through intestine
Toward some fearful

Damascus

Where messiahs were dancing on smoldering textbooks
Where oracles knew of the fire to come
Like embryo prophesy nascent and lumbering
It's way toward

Insurrection

But there was no word yet for insurrection no word
For a breathless "at last" no word which incanted
"Let killers be fearful as faith in a church built by slave
Owning men" our books wouldn't translate
A barren constitution or teach us the phonics of

Bulleted speech

No blue print would show how to build a new brick
To stitch a new tower from us to the voice
All we knew was we needed a tower
A stitching of brick back

Into the voice