Quincy Troupe

People Are What

for John Lewis (1940 – 2020) who warned America

people are what they think they are, dream
they are, whatever is rooted there inside 
their heads they are, what is there,
nobody knows, not even the person most times
carrying their pumpkin head around 

on sloping, or square shoulders, their heads there 
perhaps filled with air, swollen balloons,
oval shaped football noggins
sprouting from long, or short,
tree stump necks, their block heads emitting menace,
power of pro football line backers, sadists
trying to hurt or kill someone every time
they dig their cleats into grass,
then launch their trained hard bodies
that become steel battering ram instruments
imitating snorting gorillas with fearsome intentions,
their fierce gazes fixed as in the evil purple eye
in the center of a category 5 hurricane
blowing down everything they touch, converting
mangled stop signs into decapitating discuses

& who would trust giving power to any dumb fuck
flashing thumbs down signs to anyone
who voted against Trump, who are sword carrying,
numb skull exclamation marks planting KKK crosses,
dangling nooses around broken neck bodies drooping,
sagging from strong oak trees in hidden places
marking various landscapes around good ole boy networks
in rural America, secret spaces announcing damaged
states of mind live around there, carry derangements – 
various, or singular – displaying dystopian imaginations
as to what can solve a 400-year-old-problem that is
tangled as a discorded twisted hangman’s rope,

lying there in grass in a swarm of hissing rattlesnakes,

who knows what state of mind these roots grow from,
the Shadow certainly doesn’t know, nor does Batman,
Robin, or Superman, comic White American heroes all,
who can’t fix this stinking doodoo mess we’re in
even if it were scripted into fake movies,

and no spraying tons of perfume into the air can
knock out this putrid smell either, quiet as it’s kept,

now, today, those of us with half a brain
have to get down to brass tacks, step up with something
beyond all this mumbling, incoherent bullshit
we have been feeding ourselves ever since Europeans
created concepts of a white God, Jesus, the Bible,
as some truth serums they thought would fix everything,

well, it hasn’t, and won’t, and this frustrating poem
probing, searching for answers won’t fix things either,
because all these stumbling, rehearsed lines
con men come up with are questions leading to other 
questions, and so on, ad infinitum
where the mind thinks it knows, on the other side
of question marks, maybe, perhaps, are images – 
stupid or otherwise – we absorb each and every day – 
some beautiful, provocative, spellbinding, frangible – 
metaphors sometimes embrace a true America – 
this fragile place we find ourselves living in, until
we all go down to feed those insatiable, wiggling worms,

my choice though is to corkscrew myself – like opening
a great bottle of wine – into a smoke tail full of cinders,

my incinerated flesh then will twist itself up into space,
into wind of a gray, black or blue sky, then poof
disappear like one last act climbing towards the sun,
like the last exhalation of John Lewis, or Pablo Neruda,
co-mingling with currents – breath – of a flowing cyclone

Watching Seagulls Hunt for Fish in Sines, Portugal:

for David Murray

chattering seagulls perched high 
on gabled rooftops in Sines, Portugal, 
their keen cold eyes searching 
churning blue sparkling sea waves below 
brimming with fish, then they squawk, 
extend wide razor blade shaped wings 
before diving like released Peregrine Falcons, 
before slicing down through a clear blue sky
stretching due west from my view – 

then they become screaming silhouettes,
searching for food, their tiny heads
revolving on necks – perusing devices – 
scanning foaming waves with laser beam eyes,
zeroing in on delectable fish before
transforming themselves into assassins,
avenging angels when their radar gaze
spots supper in the frothing salt water
boiling with schools of fish, then

they dive straight down, snatch up dinner
from waves frothing with plenty for these
avenging geiger counter hook beaked angels 
cutting through wind currents,
slicing through shimmering scales of fish
like killers do every night anywhere in America
on Saturday nights during killing frenzies

then eye watch the seagulls shoot straight up
like missiles shot from canons through clouds
the fish wiggling desperately in their hooked mouths
look like worms on fishing hooks all over the world,

then the sea gulls become silhouettes again 
shot like black arrows shot towards the sun

Quincy Troupe is the author of 20 books, including 10 volumes of poetry and three children’s books. His awards include the Paterson Award for Sustained Literary Achievement, the 2003 Milt Kessler Poetry Award, The 2005 Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award presented by Poets & Writers, three American Book Awards, the 2014 Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Award and a 2014 Lifetime Achievement Award from Furious Flowers. His writings have been translated into over 30 languages and, in 2002 he was named the first official Poet Laureate of the State of California. Troupe’s latest books of poems are; Seduction; a book length poem titled, Ghost Voices, published in 2018; Errancities (2012) and Transcircularities: New and Selected Poems (2002). Mr. Troupe is co-author with Miles Davis of Miles: the Autobiography; Earl the Pearl with Earl Monroe; and the author of Miles and me, a memoir of his friendship with Miles Davis, published in 2018 by Seven Stories Press. Forthcoming are a large book of poems, Duende, Poems, 1966 – Now, scheduled for publication in March 2021 and a memoir, The Accordion Years, scheduled to be published in Fall 2021, also by Seven Stories Press. Troupe is Professor Emeritus from the University of California, San Diego, edits Black Renaissance Noire at New York University and lives in Harlem, New York with his wife, Margaret.