A black man is walking fast in a black leather coat, a black turtleneck, his black afro underneath a black Irish cap; the black street slowly enclosing him so he walks faster. He hears a cougar growl and sees it sitting next to an algae green garbage can. Its claws shine in the moonlight.
There are jungle drums in the night encased in burgeoning synthesizer chords. A bar door opens and he sees a great golden light, like someone finally got around to burning all the junk in the city. The light drops like a sheet and the bar is black. James can only see in the dim bar lights an old black man, his hair going gray, wearing a faded purple polo shirt. He is sipping from a clear glass filled with ice. He tosses his head back and opens his mouth to chew on an ice cube.
Just then, pink clouds, purple clouds mixed with gray nimbuses float from the stage. The door shuts and James walks away. The darkness has life breathed into it. Black mottled sandpapery spots appear all around him.
On 42nd, he sees the proverbial saxophonist at his cement stoop above faded red brick. 11 o’clock, far away from himself and the foot traffic below him. James closes his eyes and imagines a piano accompaniment. White piano keys, pale black hands playing them, no light in the house except on the hands. He imagines the saxophonist’s plaintive song: a man crying in the desert, no voices, no animals, SAND. The man, dressed in a tattered cotton long sleeve and gray wool breaches, falls to his knees and then on his face. He could care less if the sand just blew over him and buried him. He hears something calling him, a horn. A cavalry in blue uniforms on brown sandy camels comes his way. His ear in the sand, he hears the trample of the camel’s hoofs on the sand. Of a sudden, he realizes he is not in the desert at all but a coliseum and his beating is the main attraction. Cheers come up when he rises. He looks into the stands and sees an old black man selling peanuts, striking a conversation with a lovely young mulatto girl.
James snaps out of his vision and sees the saxophonist going inside. "Someone’s taken too much acid," James says to himself, losing control, very, very afraid.
In his sleep, he sees a dove flying across the ocean. Sunlight slants through a cover of clouds. The dove must get there, its twig is drying, its eyes are wet. The clouds go away, a halcyon sea. A black man is running through black streets, paper sacks and newspapers are chasing him, the wind nips his heels. He’s getting stabbed from the side by knives he can’t see. The knives stop, then a poke with the butt of a cane, and he begins running again. It’s very dark, there is no pavement to see just feel feet running.
He is downtown, he is in D.C. climbing white stairs in front of the Capitol. A thousand soldiers marching behind him, high leg kicks to a drumbeat. They’re trying to catch up to James, their boots stomp. A horn, then another, confusion. The soldiers stop and spread a path 6 feet wide. Swords peak as James runs under them. Someone’s shouting at him, standing above him. He is striking the air with his fists, spitting words, trying to bring James back.
Of a sudden, they’re fading out, a halcyon sleep; he’s running again, can’t stop his feet.
He runs into a red carpeted church and a preacher in a white robe stands twenty feet above the congregation in a white pine pews, lacquered. "The preacher looks like a bald actor I know- he played Malcolm X’s tutor, tells him what to do." The congregation takes notice to James, starts crowding him, talking to him. Like a colony of ants onto an apple core. The world is confusion- if he could only hear what the preacher says.
Dancing with a woman on a dark disco floor, they’re the only ones, the floor lights up in black and white diagonals. Fun, still the voices; he feels the heavy stares.
Sex, pelvic in and out, a white bed quilt and green flannel sheets. The only bed in the tiny moonlit room. The only piece of furniture. An even, slow strutting in maroon bellbottoms, to the refrigerator door. He imagines exuding a smooth confidence through navy blue suits on the sidewalk. He’d look up and see the dove, an elegant consciousness, flying above the sidewalk between dark gray skyscrapers into blue sky and white clouds.
He opens his eyes to his black hands climbing a ladder, wearing paint-spattered pants and a light blue button down. He peers into a window, white shades open wide for all interested. He senses a voyeur, watching the man and woman through a fourth floor hotel window. They’re as black as chocolate and having fun, squirting oils and rubbing them into each other’s backs and pudgy triceps.
Another second and the marching beat, ubiquitous drum line- confidence walking. He remembers being on a rainy Paris street, looking in on a jazz band in black suits and white shirts playing on stage in a little basement bar. There’s a guitar he’s hearing, not on stage. It’s in the background, behind him, it won’t go away.
"Will someone listen to me?" reads the headline, as drops another two quarters into the newsman’s hand. Cars slowly pass. Buses like giant old shoeboxes hold dry cracked faces wearing top hats and trench coats. The faces look through gray scratched windows and steam.
A cougar sits on top of a street sign, Madison and 45th. It looks over streams of people walking. The people don’t see it. Only James hears the rhythm of the beast’s breathing. He walks on and notices his hat ripped off, his jacket torn to shreds 3 miles back, eyes wide open, white with anticipation.
"Keep walking, keep walking. Oh the things you will see."
The shoeboxes hum slowly past, rounding each corner slowly. Not a normal ending to the a.m. Three crashes, three buses and two cars, the horn still calling him. A shot strips the sky like a laser across the ocean. On top of the tallest building, Christ, the cross in black, the whole world black, a revelation, nailed above his forehead.
Twisting in the bed, James claws from underneath covers, in between life and the mind’s reality. Something pattering on his head, in his brain. Calling him by no human name.
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