Zillion Tambourines

The Language of Saxophones: Selected Poems

By Kamau Daáood

City Lights Books (San Francisco, 2005)

Zillion Tambourines

a zillion tambourines
splashing against
the green wall of silence
we nurse our wounds
in the pure waters of dolphins
cleanse our back
of the sores of the city

creditors with hi-tech daggers
tell us who dressed these plantations
in skirts of steel and asphalt
where we must pry pearls from life with a crowbar
trying to balance light between shoulders
in the midst of dung stacked in rectangles
where the head can become
a cesspool of wrecked slave ships

we have come to sit in the blue chair
fish in pure stream of consciousness
watch the hummingbirds
folding the day with their wings
watch pastel sunsets whisper
as leaping swordfish bull's-eye the open sky

fifty drummers in a circle of flowers
weaving in and out of brown rhythm
helping to remake us
a mind in trance
nodding in revelations of fireflies
fire in the pillow bosom
of Fannie Lou Hamer
we rest our head in a cloud
trying to retain
the iron spear
of Robeson's
baritone

Source: Kamau Daáood. The Language of Saxophones: Selected Poems . San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2005. (pp. 1-4)

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Kamau Daoud performs Live with The Pan Afrikan People's Arkestra

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posted 24 September 2005