By: Kindaka Jamal Sanders

TIME PASSES THE TUMBLEWEED

Time passes the tumbleweed
And lightning strikes the Noble Fir
That once loomed large in goat marsh
The noble part of what we were.

But entombed it is in the way that we were
The prototype of what is to be
Even the rollicking heights of precedent bow
To the sound advice of wounded knees.

In a glass bottle, a ship is constructed
It automatically fills with burgundy waves
Like when the ancestors jumped
And we became sculpted
By the spiders that nest inside our rage.

Time passes the tumbleweed
In the single eye of an our in limbo
A myriad twirls of infinite world
Chokeholds freed into an hour dismembered.

Time passes the tumbleweed
And the scarecrows gibe to pass the day
Patrolling around our barren fields
Afraid that we done contracted the drapes.

Time passes the tumbleweed
In a ghost town suite
A raven of rage
Stares out at a token authority
Lifts its beak and is blown away.

Time passes the tumbleweed
In a wooden barrel the hour is aged
And up above the opening
The cowards peep inside our cage.

Time passes the tumbleweed
In a junkyard keep of minds disassembled
The Gaffer inflates a mirage in a mirror
Then lunges and dies into his own image.

Time passes the tumbleweed
In the cactus resides
Our only escape
Yet it is only formaldehyde
That mummifies our proud mistakes.

Time passes the tumbleweed
The moment’s but
A wondering corpse
Stuck beneath the humbling tree
Trapped behind the dithering door.

Objects in the Mirror (The Flat Earth Theory)

To the extent that we see,
We see not the thing represented,
But the light it reflects.
We are, thus, blind
To the thing itself.
Which is terrifically misleading,
Because what we are seeing,
Are the colors that the object
Refuses to accept.
So we see what the thing is not,
Very much not what it is,
Yet we form our ideas
As well as our bases fears,
On the upside-down lens
That something, for some reason,
Has genetically grafted within.
And it appears to be reality.
Because we all have the same deficiency,
But that doesn’t mean,
We know the first thing about the mystery
That brought us all here.
It just means that our God is Social Proof,
And consensus is the ten commandments,
Around which we form our groups.
But it could just mean
That all of us are wrong,
Singing off cue
To a listening song,
Because we are watching each other’s movements,
Not listening to the beat.
So we keep
Diving off cliffs
Headfirst,
But keep landing on our feet.
And so we go through the same process:
Wrong, wrong, repeat.
And that’s the longest process,
Although, it’s correct, I guess.
But is it not more intelligent to just cheat
Than to perpetually guess and live in defeat?

If my hypothesis adheres,
Then everything is the very opposite
Of the way that it appears.
Eg.,
Death is life,
Black is white,
Light is darkness,
Wrong is right.
And the Earth
Is,
In fact,
Flat.

Or, to be exact,
Although it is a fact,
That the earth is round,
The fact that it is round
Does not prove
That facts
Are the truth.
They are simply factors
That need a manufacturer
To determine how they will conclude.

And if you don’t believe this is true,
You are discounting the fact that there maybe a deity
That makes all the rules.
And she can change her mind anytime.
And however she is so inclined,
Will become a fact, Jack.
But that doesn’t mean that it’s the truth.
It simply means that it is a rule,
Created by a being
Who can do
Whatever the fuck she wants to do.

The Paint that is the World

I came into this world humble
Thinking the thoughts of better men.
But back then
The planets were nothing more
Than the thought-forms of lesser beasts
And at their cores, the undiluted dreams of kings.
But then,
A mysterious laughter rumbled
Beneath the paint that is the world.
No one else seemed to feel its derisive rhythm,
reproduced by dark clouds, blue lightning, and cold thunder.
No one else seemed to see the deformity
Puffing up portions of the images.
No one else seemed to witness
The distortion of the visages
That converted the painting
Into a three dimensional rendering
Of the completely unexpected,
Of the rejected, of the ugliness of the unprotected,
Of the subjected,
Of the combined souls of those crushed into the distance.
Of the callused toes of those stomped into the earth,
Whose sole worth was reduced to seeds of unforgivness.
It is the hidden proof of their existence.
But can you here it not?
It was the laughter of predictable disaster.
Not of the jester,
But the one belonging to the nefarious heckler,
The purposeful meddler who has yet to be named.
But
I came in to this world humble
Thinking the thoughts of better men.
But back then
The planets were nothing more
Than the thought-forms of lesser beasts
And at their cores, the undiluted dreams of kings.
But then,
A mysterious laughter rumbled
Beneath the paint that is the world.
It was the repressed unchained
Only to become the very thing
It hates.
What if a thing repressed,
Believing it would become less
Morphs into the truth?
What if that which is refused or abused
Becomes you?
And that which you let through or simply peruse
Becomes not?
Who knows, but

I came in to this world humble
Thinking the thoughts of better men.
But back then
The planets were nothing more
Than the thought-forms of lesser beasts
And at their cores, the undiluted dreams of kings.
But then,
A mysterious laughter rumbled
Beneath the paint that is the world.
And what it can’t control it will destroy,
Even a love that’s pure
Because it is obsessed only with how much you can endure,
With whether or not you really are pure
Because it does not believe in such things
Because its analysis of itself is
The rubric by which it judges everything,
And it knows if it was you, it would never budge
Irrespective of what is right and wrong
Because to it it has been right all along,
And you are the opposite evidence it wants to destroy
Because you are the kind of mystery it never could enjoy
Because you are the truth.
And it is only a legend in its own mind,
God’s gift to the world
And it would do anything to believe this
Because not believing this would mean its a curse on this earth.
And to recognize this would eliminate all of its self-worth
And to it that is death, and it would give anything to be
Anything else.
But
I came in to this world humble
Thinking the thoughts of better men.
But back then
The planets were nothing more
Than the thought-forms of lesser beasts
And at their cores, the undiluted dreams of kings.
But then,
A mysterious laughter rumbled
Beneath the paint that is the world.
And my reflection in the mirror cracked
And now my soul hibernates
Until this pitiful winter is over
Because the heart that is pure
Was not meant for this world.
But in the end
The aardvark will become last
And the ice winds will eventually thaw
And I will regain my innocence.
Until then I’ll remain with doubt
With one leg in, and one leg out
This metropolis of limitations,
That are strictly self-imposed,
Hiding the proof of a religion
We were never meant to know.

The Invisible Chicken (The Courage That Waits to Hide)

It is the courage that waits to hide
Its raw hide is pride that protects
Vulnerable sensitivities inside
It is blue, they call it black
Because they are unable to perceive its true colors
In its densist state,
So it waits, pretending it is nothing
Until its too late
For the culprits to counteract
So of course we are proud to be black
But we really are blue,
Oh! That’s all the same to you?
But isn’t blue stubborn, discerning, powerful
And true?
And what we do is hide by waiting
By temporizing our greatness
Until the moment you can’t anticipate
The strength and size of our matrices.
This is our planet,
The rest of you are visitors .
We took you in, made you men,
Yet you tried to destroy our ancient images.
But you can never defeat us
Because we came willing to die
And you love life so much
You can’t even ponder the reasons why.
When you have already sampled death
Disapproval is a welcomed alternative.
We’ve thrown the steering wheel
Out of the window seal
To let you know we ain’t bullshitting.
We know the less substantive
The lighter the light is,
But that’s not to say the light isn’t the true
It just means that substance
Is more important to me than you.
It also means that substance
Is willing to self-destruct
Just to save you.
As it was in the beginning
And in this way you are true
That’s why the light is real,
Without being the truth.

LEFTOVERS
random expressions of intolerable graft.
the walruses chaff at the rancorous bit.
even the wicked, they seem to co-opt
the wayward notions of pleasure-less bliss.
But can there be birth without the knife?
And the motions it makes within the wound?
And is not the wound but a wonderful tomb?
Just as life is just a different death?
And when the gloom is fully consumed
Are we not just what is left?

###

Kindaka Jamal Sanders is a writer from Selma, Alabama.  His writing is visceral, vivid, deep, poignant, and sometimes even comedic.  His writing also reflects his hometown’s conflicting legacies and the multiple worlds he grew up in.  He grew up around doctors and lawyers, black radicals and nonviolent civil rights legends, politicians and anarchists, realists and college students from around the world, on the one hand, and on the other, criminals, drug dealers, sex workers, shooters, and hustlers whose most basic goal in life was mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual survival.  He sucked it all up.  His writing expresses the pain, suffering, and joy of the broadest swaths of American others and their counterparts around the world.  He has always been fascinated with the process of turning words into feelings and pictures and the inherent power of perspective to transform good into bad, bad into good, right into wrong, wrong into right, left into right, and up into down.  He has written dozens of poems, short stories, creative nonfiction pieces, and a screenplay.  He has produced records and written dozens of songs.  Additionally, he wrote, produced, and directed a play.   He has published several pieces this year, including Atlas, Move in IHRAF Publishes, Old Damn Gaines in Barren Magazine, Soul Under Siege in Literary Stories, and The Whitening in Wilderness House Literary Review.