Kamau Daáood

The Art of Science Friction

They buried the last book today
In a typewriter cemetery 
Now you just sit 
And they wirelessly download 
directly to your head

they have mastered the technique of branding
Invisible tattoos on the brain 
that talk

there are so many voices in your head
you don’t know which one is yours
they get real loud in silence

you sleep with the TV on
and never stop download

the kids are in what use to be
the living room
playing predator drone
it’s a war game 
that is part of the switch 
to home schooling

don’t look now but there is 
Invisible ink running out your children’s ears

you are in reality TV 
and ain’t getting paid
but you act the part
because you cannot stop

and actually you are paying them

buy sexual 
is person that climaxed
on shopping spree at wal mart 

micro soft is a description of your sex life
since you become computer literate

there is a bill in congress
to stop circumcisions in hospital
they want to castrate and stamp barcodes

there is a huge sale 
at the genetic modified food Market
on plastic apple and digital meat

They are interrogating 300 poets 
At an internment camp at guantanomo bay
They were seeking the pure image
As the government has done away
free verse and poetic license

they kick in the door 
and lead a woman away in handcuffs
who had a 5000 jazz records

they capture a cadre of revolutionaries
that called themself a family
away from the city by the ocean
in the sun
eating banded organic food 
listen to John Coltrane
and talking to trees
they did not arrest them
they killed them
in their possession
was the last book

the word think 
has been stricken from all languages
kids don’t need to learned to read
they download directly to your head

they buried the last book today

Kind of Blue

I search for the bright edge of blu
That which is skyward and open
Soaring lightness

Blue spectrum expanse of emotion
Heavy azul which is a weight
A deep and tragic story we carry coloring 
The world, the rasp in our song

The jazz one, the blue singer, the bent hued gypsy note
Lifted in the air like a bruised saxophone crying for its lover
The warm blanket of bleu wrapped around memory
That pigment we know so well

I seek the bright edge of the spectrum
Lightness fades into the infinite 
Spirit blew through the nostrils
Pushed from the accordion of my chest
With the brightness of understanding
The peace that come from knowing
Not the blue of shadows

Why is a drop of water clear and the ocean blue
The deeper the closer to night, 
Why is the ocean salty
Why are our tears the same
What chakra what planet
What sutra what sura
What voice what verse
What is royal what is ritual
What is indigo

Moving blue like dolphins
Sewing their seam between sea  
and the playground of birds
and
my daughter once told me that the cloud 
looked like mash potatoes in blue gravy
it is that kind of day that I wish to carry

like a flat note sharpen to a razors edge
cut through a prison cell with guitar strings
soak in whiskey and blue lovers 
sweating after midnight pray 

Poet Kamau Daáood is the author of The Language of Saxophones: Selected Poems of Kamau Daáood (City Lights Publishers, 2005), and Notes D’un Griot De Los Angeles (Le Castor Astral publisher, 2012), a bi-lingual translation, published during his artist-in-residency at L’Universite Michel de Montaigne in Bordeaux, France.

He is a native of Los Angeles, where he co-founded with drummer Billy Higgins, The World Stage Performance Gallery, a non-profit arts institution. His early development began as a young member of the Watts Writers Workshop and the Pan African People’s Arkestra under the direction of pianist Horace Tapscott in the late 1960’s.

Daáood recorded the critically acclaimed CD Leimert Park (M.A.M.A. Records, 1997).  He has been the subject and featured poet in several documentaries, including Life is a Saxophone produced by S. Pearl Sharp (1984); the PBS documentary Race is the Place (Paradigm Productions, 2005); and, Leimert Park: The Story of a Village in South Central L.A. by Jeannette Lindsay (DVD, 2008). More recently, he appears in And When I Die I Won”t Stay Dead, a film about Bob Kaufman by filmmaker Billy Woodbury (2016).