Photo credit: Diane Aldis

Beyond It's Disease 

It's easier to talk about romance than it is to explore the meaning of love

There are entire industries exploiting the chemistry between magnetized bodies 

drawn to each other and how the games are played 

But love is quite another matter

Simplicity is deceptive; walking in the rain, holding hands, touching lips,

rubbing noses and...

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photo credit: Intermedia Arts

Geneva and John Henry played songs like they learned them, by rote, for as long as they could but knots of unrequited living or unrequited love didn’t unraveling to satisfy their needs. Something more was required; a hook, a head or a melody wouldn’t carry them away anymore. They longed for passage to spaces beyond what they knew into somewhere other than here. Eve...

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photo credit Bill Cottman 

In Waiting For A Spaceship  J. Otis Powell‽ pens a deep acknowledgement to both the pain of language and its potential for liberation. In these elegant and absorbing poems, J. Otis‽ plays soloist to a backdrop of jazz rhythm, capable of moving from the elegiac to the celebratory in one shift of tone, expressing the haunted nature of American life: “Ghosts hitch rides ...

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Photo credit: Innocent Technologies 

A woman who says she loves me

Doesn’t use the interrobang at the

End of my name  

My journey toward manhood / personhood

Includes finding an appropriate name to fit into

Maybe she doesn’t appreciate

I had to become my name to be a man

Nothing short of a sea change

Could have made me possible

People have trouble with my name

I’m ...

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Body of Work

I see me vanishing into

A moonlit morning expecting

A normal day but for months

"Normal" has assumed a new identity

On every single date

I'm befuddled by love

That embraces me tighter than I know how to receive

I'm confused about my origins again

Wondering why I came here in the

First place and why I'm going  

Anywhere else.

Am I done this time,

...

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Anniversary

There is no clean slate

No blank sheets of paper

To write our lives on

We erase and rewrite existence like

Painters whitewash

And rescape canvas

With images telling new stories

Often by another painter

In some other time

With alterative visions

No story is complete

Life goes on telling

The same story differently

From other sides of truth

Ce...

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“The end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” TS Elliot

Sometimes when we’re together I don’t feel like a family of one. One of us starts a phrase for momentum, and the other will pick up pitch, tone and rhythm to meet somewhere in a chord. Themes in our rotation lead us to rendezvous’, sometimes in the house of Riely other times in hou...

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Esoteric

She stands bare footed 

On a marble bathroom floor

The temperature outside has not

Risen to the predicted low for today

These days she keeps mostly to herself

No one else will bear it with her

Cold solitary dawns

When she thinks of love

She’s confronted with the clumsiness 

Of language

Saying too much

And not enough

So she lives inside her libid...

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We wear our sagas like garments

Until they stain pages with stories longer

Than mere memory 

Deeper than day-to-day

Ghosts hitch rides on our bodies

Move inside soul 

Changing us 

Causing pain that moves 

But won’t disappear

You and I swim in ambiguity of fortune

Toward distant shores

Fully dressed and carrying the weight of

Everything that clings to us

These...

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With questions

Answers are already made

Improvised

We only know what we’ve written

What we’re writing is mystery

Our grasp holds only remnants

Of something

What we review is this:

We are

Racially human 

Culturally poets

Promulgating an aesthetic

Of opposition and reflection

On dark spaces

Brillent corners

Truth hides and we like detectives

Uncover di...

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Relativity

Sometimes when we’re together

I don’t feel like a family of one

One of us utters a reflective phrase and the other

Picks up pitch and tune and rhythm

To meet somewhere in a chord with memory

And philosophical empathy

Themes in our rotation lead to rendezvous’ of Soul

Sometimes in the house of Riley

Other times in houses without walls:

Houses not made b...

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Talking About You

“If you don’t know what you’re doing by now

You’ve wasted three generations of practice”

Said a poet to a doubter

Your name might have been Riley

There’re three generations of Riley(s) in your family

And it was your grandfather’s name

His daughters loved him; his son and grandson

Found the name too many layers of clothing to wear

A careless visitor...

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While Dew is on Roses

I over react to small things too petty to ponder 

I’m super sensitive about how people respond to me

I have an inflated idea of my importance

And I need that to get through nights and days

Full of reminders of how broke down this old wagon is

Walking gives me more time to think about it than I want

Most days; especially walking alone

There are so many ...

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Duck Back Solo

I’m developing a duck back

I can’t carry water weight anymore

I let it roll off back to

From whence it came

I can hardy bear my own wetness

Other people’s fluid makes me dizzy

You however inspired me to write again

You have such power with me

I love everything I know about you

And want everything I can’t have

I don’t like everything but that’s l...

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I Know My Place

I know my place too well

And I refuse to stay there

This place wasn’t made for me

It wasn’t made by me

It is a gilded cage

Designed to help me forget

Freedom

To help me deny truth

I’m quintessential artist

Channeling spirituality and culture

Like an appointed institution;

A craftsman coloring within lines

Just to learn where they are

B...

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I will get out of here alive

Though appearances seem otherwise

And Myth(s) sell damaged goods

Of little Gods with small minds

And nothing interesting to do

I imagine living in all the metaphysics

I didn’t have enough time for

Wrapped in gasms of fruition

Your love (for me) follows me there

Because there is a better place for it

There two

Than here

Here is w...

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My Neighbor Across the Road

The road between us is one less traveled, with grass growing between cracks in the asphalt and deep neglected water ruts. It is a road with an incline reaching higher and beyond to some place through darkness tunneling toward light. Whatever we believe is divine is at a fictitious cul-de-sac of a never-ending avenue in a space that is neither rural nor urban, suburba...

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Is Always Be

Imamu Amiri Baraka taught, “Is always be,” I’ve interpreted it many ways because I’ve had time to contemplate what it means and why it resonates. “The changing same,” sometimes depresses me but mostly there’s assurance that I’m not the first to face struggles for freedom and self-determination in worlds fenced off from each other with barbed wire. Change like the Mississippi River ...

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Photo credit: Jayanthi Kyle, painting by Emel Sherzad

Asphalt Sky (rewritten and edited Dec. 10th 2016)

The dominant color is black; white and yellow are infused in the middle and complicate the complexion of a sky hiding shadows. Space is still the place, but now it's covered with asphalt because it's been conquered as territory, as real estate, like some place that can be owned.

Another...

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About the Skein I’m In

“It all depends on the skin you’re living in.”

Sekou Sundiata

A Family of One

Sometimes when we’re together I don’t feel like a family of one. One of us starts a repetitive phrase for momentum, and the other will pick up pitch, tune and rhythm to meet the other somewhere in a chord. Themes in our rotations lead us to rendezvous’, sometimes in the house of Reily o...

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More Than Skin Deep

Dropping things

Losing things

Forgetting things

Like normal except

Now I have something else to acknowledge   

For failing and not being able to figure

Out how to set things right again

As if they were

Ever 

Right, I mean

Or if “spellcheck” knows what language

I think in

Live in

Write in

How does someone decide

To fight for someth...

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Heavy

All issues aren’t life and death

Though life and death are full of issues

Everything matters

We make priorities based on fear 

We lie to protect secrets because

We don’t know how to be us

Without secrets 

Compromises make cowards of us

Meanwhile that human race in a hand basket

Metaphor gets closer to hell everyday

We’re not running out of time

Time is run...

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In Praise of Fallen Stars

Who knows anymore when seeds

Were planted or how they got

Nurtured with such care for so long

Roots of kindred spirits reach deeply

Tangling underground thirsty 

Hungry 

Needy 

Before pushing buds through warm wet earth

To explode into blossoms that

Smile at sun

Flirt with light

Their beauty attracts suitors

Who infatuate over mature...

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Teeny Tiny Heart

by  J. Otis Powell

How it happened is at lease two different stories

Maybe more if rumor takes hold and multiplies

Narratives like the telephone game we played

In school and at conferences

Who was there to inhale the changing air

To witness what two people alone knew

However every soul that gets a testimony

Develops new narratives when they leak a tale

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Double Dark  

I

The ugliest thing I’ve seen was removed from my body

It was multi-layered different shades of brown and wet gray

It was a flesh-serving platter stacked high with dead tissue

I’m escaping skin again after eight years of recovering from

The last reincarnation of my ever-evolving soul and

Body has no choice but to come along and suffer in pain

Snakes do it in g...

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Inside we struggle for relief

And lose our minds trying

To accept this as our permanent

Address

We think we know how we

Arrived here with all our stuff

But sometimes we’re not sure which

Narrative is true

About how we crossed over

The threshold into a new home

We brought everything we love

With us and we are adapting

To a world we didn’t dream was possibl...

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"Wait to start the music

Draw pictures on the

Wall instead"

I requested

You made your images multidimensional and

Colorful like the worlds outside

Your mind

Sometimes we insist we know something and

Lock ourselves inside for security

Something that isolates us

Tricks us into cartoon land or worse 

Still we waited for a visitor the music and time...

Pack up your ...

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Splintered roots covered with rich black soil. Trees were unearthed and laid exposed to every passing eye. Ripped to shreds by lighting strikes. Trees egos and automobiles beat down by winds violent as fire. Traumatized beyond redemption and brought to a drastic epiphany. That is what summer storms are for. Just when we actually start to believe we have appropriated nature she reminds us who our m...

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photo credit: Bill Cottman Once You See Light by J. Otis Powell?! In response to Of What Use Is Poetry? by Amiri Baraka The question is meant to probe into how we carry weight through life, how we work through thickness talk through touching. I see what I see because of a prescription in my eyes. You see what you see separate and esoteric. Poetry is how eyes meet. Rhythm of hearts...

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photo credit: Bill Cottman So I have a riddle for you: Why is the sky blue? Now of course you can just keep reading and the answer will be given to you in a few lines or you can pause here and imagine an answer that allows you to contemplate an original possibility. One possible response is because the dominant color of the visible light spectrum is blue. At least that's a simple answer, th...

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I was born expecting revolution and every day it did not come I was disappointed. What I did not understand came to me in a revelation of sorts; we live in perpetual revolution. I was waiting for it ignoring its ever presence. Revolution like evolution is 365 degrees of subtle adjustments, shifting paradigms. - From Bottomless Sky - Ever ready for revolution never ready to be enslaved. Wh...

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Holy Ghost Dance

Ivory bones at the bottom of the Atlantic  

Ghosts dance to water music nobody composed

Dancing to holy tragedy

Captured

Shackled

Sold

Bought and shipped

Our bodies are home

Connected to stories evergreen

Our bodies are home

Immortals dancing 

dancing to faint memories of

 Ohm boom bah boom

Lost languages and historic

Legacies detached ...

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Aquanetta often escaped to privet realities wrapping herself in psychosis, delusions of inferiority, vanity or ego depending on her mood, the weather or carelessly thrown dice. She uses music as white noise in moments when she has control and memories of songs when she does not. Variations on what is known as jazz and its bastard children are about all she got. Sometimes it is all she wants or nee...

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Vernal Equinox

Spring is official

We're in the part that hangs us up

The thawing what's been forgotten

Under snirt and ice for months

Secrets left for safe keeping

Are announcing winter's dark season

Like confessionals 

Transition or how hard spring can be

Reminds us of brutal beauty

Of life and death

Never considered separately

A tandem like

The War and Peac...

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photo credit: e.g. bailey 

Songs and Stories and Poems

The Chronic Blues Band was in rare form

That night

 As they tended to be at The Blue Dawg 

When they had an open bar tab and

The room was filled with second hand Cannabis   

Smoke and electricity

Aquanetta had poems in her hand

And more on a music stand

Words flowed through her mind

Like a thawing river running

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Space Finding Time

She dreamed a story

Of an amorphous

Wetness in the dark

That became a creative source

Of energy lunging

Into existence

She dreamed memories

Of origins and the genesis

Of perpetual motion

From a mysterious notion

Perhaps it was a feeling

A thought

All of a sudden there was desire

An urge

Purpose

An aquatic muse

The ability to mov...

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photo credit: Bill Cottman

 Eleven

If I did not fall in love with beauty, wrote Amiri Baraka, I’d be cooler

Beauty took a vicious turn at a juncture of love and self-loathing

Media-made caricatures salt wounds of ancestors

Cannons that render us invisible still dominate history

If I had not fallen in love with autobiography I’d be cooler - stone cold

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Twenty-Seven

 She said nothing but bent her knees plié-like begging my eyes

Her closed-mouth-smile firm – reaching, gesturing come

I reluctantly melted, surrendering my will for the moment

Loving her invitation more than my stubborn resistance

All afternoon it was come and she’d disappear, come – disappear

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photo credit: Bill Cottman

When It Disappears

I love music when it’s searching

When the sounds aren't sure

When one note connects   

Like family and new resolutions

Form through extempore solos

I love music when it’s copulating

When it’s out there on edge

When the Cats

Playing it are out there

Defying boundaries

Reaching for blue-green-lavender

Sound shapes

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Photo credit: Kenn Thomas

Forgetting Home (or how can I forget you if you won't go away)  

Euphemisms white wash his-story

So truth disappears under vague denial

Southeast USA above Florida

Sharing a border with Pensacola

Where the past lives on 

In retrospective theme parks

The past is alive everywhere

Our world is full of museums

Memories gather into congregations

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photo credit the Givens Foundation

Imamu 

After reading Is Always Be readers have asked if I knew Amiri Baraka. I indeed was a friend and associate of Baraka. I was introduced to his writing in undergraduate school in the early nineteen-seventies at a historically black university known as Alabama A & M University, not only in the classroom but in street performances of his poetry on campus....

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photo credit George Roberts 

FY 2014 Grantees of the Minnesota State Arts Board Cultural Community Partnership Grant - Rain Taxi Review of Books, Minneapolis:

Rain Taxi and partner J. Otis Powell‽ will work together to publish a book of new literary work by Powell‽. A reading and discussion will be open to the public. Rain Taxi, a catalyst and cultivator of literary culture on the local as ...

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photo credit: Kari Musil 

Like whiskey aged

Mellowed

Slowed down

Old school

Remembered for it’s bite

Some flavors are acquired taste

Between dark history

And magic fairies 

Is a legacy of ghosts

Who will not be stilled

By death or passage into

Other dimensions

Weeds are designated

By those with shallo...

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photo credit: Andy Arsham 

House Of Harris

The alliteration of your existence has voice in wind

You are s-o-n and s-u-n of light

You are soul brother soul nephew and child of the solstice

Your heritage points toward more shine

More bright eyed wisdom

Shine on young Harris your passage has been paid

By your parents and their parent and all the parents on planet

Earth and ...

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photo credit: Sarah Greenfield 

Flavored Water

Almost every pot starts this way

Olive oil

Sweet and hot peppers

Purple onions

Garlic and little bits of ginger root

Another stone soup is under way

Stewing on low heat in oil

And just enough water to steam

(Cause you know they don’t mix well)

Until vegetables with chicken legs and thighs 

Hardly sizzle together

...

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photo credit: Bill Cottman

 Kulture is a Klub

For George Coleman

An old man named Change limped

Awkwardly

Clumsily up an avenue downtown

In his hand was a large unwieldy

Envelope labeled REVOLUTION

On his body hung a worn and frayed

Bluesed uniform embossed in

Stitches with the words

SPEEDY DELIVERY

He was expecting revolution

To come swiftly

But change co...

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photo credit: Bill Cottman 

I USED TO DANCE

I knew

I’d better learn to dance

I never knew how much was required

Or how long the music would last

I didn’t know how to catch

A segue before being trapped

On a dance floor or

Lost in drumbeats and bass lines

I used to dance… or

There was a dance

I used to do

There was a time

I used to dance the electric slide

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photo credit: Given Writers Retreat

 Amnesiacs

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Little Wing 1968

by Jimi Hendrix

Well she's walking through the clouds

With a circus mind that's running round

Butterflies and zebras

And moonbeams and fairy tales

That's all she ever thinks about

Riding with the wind.

When I'm sad, she comes to me

With a thousand smiles, she gives to me free

It's alright she says it's alright

Take anything you want from me,

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