05-02-2010
Major Jackson
LEAVING SATURN
—SUN RA & HIS YEAR 2000 MYTH SCIENCE ARKESTRA AT GRENDEL’S LAIR CABARET, 1986
Skyrocketed—
My eyes dilate old
Copper pennies.
Effortlessly, I play
*
Manifesto of the One
Stringed Harp. Only
This time I’m washed
Ashore, ship-wrecked
*
In Birmingham.
My black porcelain
Fingers, my sole
Possession. So I
*
Hammer out
Equations for
A New Thing.
Ogommetelli,
*
Ovid & Homer
Behind me, I toss
Apple peelings in
The air & half-hear
*
Brush strokes, the up
Kick of autumn
Leaves, the Arkestra
Laying down for
*
New dimensions.
I could be at Berkeley
Teaching a course—
Fixin’s: How to Dress
*
Myth or Generations:
Spaceships in Harlem.
Instead, vibes from Chi-
Town, must be Fletcher’s
*
Big Band Music—oh,
My brother, the wind—
& know this life is
Only a circus. I’m
*
Brushed aside: a naif,
A charlatan, too avant
Garde. Satellite music for
A futuristic tent, says
*
One critic. Heartbreak
In outer space, says
Another,— lunar
Dust on the brain.
*
I head to NewYork.
NewYork loves
A spectacle: wet pain
Of cement, sweet
*
Scent of gulls swirling
Between skyscrapers
So tall, looks like war.
If what I’m told is true
*
Mars is dying, it’s after
The end of the world.
So, here I am,
In Philadelphia,
*
Death’s headquarters,
Here to save the cosmos,
Here to dance in a bed
Of living gravestones.
When I was younger, I became obsessed with Sun Ra. I collected his albums which were rare productions in themselves. From the album cover to the final product, all was independently produced. But more I was enthralled with Sun Ra’s understanding of the role of his music which was to save the earth. This notion of saving mankind, as well as his pun on Noah’s Ark and Orchestra, (he was full of witticisms, that added up to serious equations for our discovery) is utterly familiar to those of us who grew up in the church, but more it resonated with a spiritual and communal purpose I had begun to understand and attribute to artists of all genres and disciplines, least of all, my own writings at that time.
Major Jackson is the author of Razzle Dazzle: New and Selected Poems. He teach teaches at Vanderbilt University.
