Djembe
Posted by Melissa Pavri | Filed under Poetry, Print
Whenever I hear a djembe laugh with the pulse of a thousand fingers
I think of what it means to be free in a world that stares at every open mouth
Like a field on fire
Worried its blaze might burn sanity to the ground
I want to brush the sand of insecurity from my neck
Roll down the dune of my stomach
And tell the pit of my navel that I am alive
Throw myself into the busied river of the day and
Fish for nothing but a night in a place you don’t know exists
But you know you are on your way and
There is gravity there and it is more important than reason
In this beat I am nothing but release
A moment resting in the humid air
Just for the sake of breathing the life from shaking hips before it bursts
Today I am a dying drum and I want to be beaten
With the weight of an afternoon awash with tangerine sun
And heads cocked back in orgasm for no other reason than that they know how
I want to arch my back into a question mark and admit that I am not all knowing
And that the music knows this space better than I do
But I can try
I can open every crevice of me to shake the dust from my pages and
Laugh at the most jealous of instruments
Because they will never bend their bodies for joy
Like we do though many will die trying
Their lips are selfish old women
Never let their thighs do the talking
But we know better
We know the stories in our bones can only be heard
When our skins cry loose like rattlesnakes looking for more interesting lives
When our shadows shed their shame and jump over our heads
To catch us before we lose our legs
I want to know my shoulders will trust the sky more than the earth
Sway like artists toward the stars and promise nothing
But belief in flight in seconds in ecstasy
In the bareback truth that the most beautiful things crack on the outside
If only to let the rhythms of the world into their veins
Even if for only a dance a moment a breath
The truth is my chestnut body owes its heat to the earth
To the soils in my grandmothers eyes and
The plains of her back and all I want to do
Is run thoughtless through the strands of her onyx hair
To the poetry of the djembe she held for years like a last word before expiring
The slap slap racket of life struck on the hoop of her mouth
Was always enough to make her forget the dismal face of boredom
Let the reddened soles of my feet leave the ground
Long enough to learn the secrets of escape
