Poetry Analysis

``` The Colour of James Brown’s Scream

for Steve McCarthy and Todd Bracey

I have known you by many names but today you are Larry Levan, your hand on the platter in the smoky room of a Garage regular’s memory. You are keeping ‘When Doves Cry’ in time, as you swing your hips, and sweat drips from your hair the colour of James Brown’s scream. King of King Street, we are still moving to the same sound, though some of us don’t know it is your grave we dance on, cutting shapes machismo lost to the beat – every road man is a sweetboy if the DJ plays ‘Heartbroken’ at just the right time for these jaded feet. Teach us to shape–shift, Legba, you must know I’d know your customary shuffle, that phantom limp, anywhere; that I see your hand in the abandon of a couple, middle of the floor, sliding quick and slick as a skin–fade by the hand of a Puerto Rican clipper–man who wields a cutthroat like a paintbrush. Let us become like them, an ode to night, ordering beer in a corporeal language from a barman who replies by sweeping his arms in an arc, Willi Ninja style, to fix a drink our lips will yearn for, a taste we’ve been trying to recreate ever since. ```