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

Down to the Gulf of Mexico

By the time she reached the microphone

What came out of her

Was nowhere else but in the air

Between her and 

The people out there

Spirits in the house!

She belted wondering from whence it came

Spirits in the house!

She shouted again and again

Until ghosts in the music

Took over and said every word

They heard

She was connected through songs

And stories and poems 

By ancestors who would not be stilled by death

Ghoooosts she howled like a wolf at a Strawberry Moon 

The music swirled around Netta like water in a vortex

Piano drums bass flute and saxophone

Made space for her and she walked on top

Like a Jesus lizard across a pond  

They made meaning by filling the space with sincerity

And the prayer warrior poet stood there

In the middle of a vortex

Pushing poetry

Unconscious but present

Lost inside

Finding forgotten lyrics

At a moment’s notice our heroin

Had let loose

And surrendered to a duende flood

Which held her captive body before dropping

Her like a rag doll