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The Colour of James Brown’s Scream
``` 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. ```
A Proud Blemish The year I finish wearing size eights,
learn to walk in a man's shoes
contradicting my small frame I walk across the Arndale estate: 2step is a sickness in the air, spreading to every good cassette player, after-hours wine bar, joy rider’s car. Most weekends I try to trick a woman used to the lies of men, sneak home an hour before she walks in the hallway, to practice my lines: I was home … I just … didn’t hear the phone, the beep wait for tests. They don’t know what’s wrong of the answering machine, her saying my name until it’s a prayer, voice two parts anger, one despair, that her days are torn between work shifts and her only son. By the time I wear size nines, understand Caesarean when she answers my question: did it hurt? Shows me the dark line hidden under her work shirt, a proud mark on her skin with ridges from weight loss. She knows it’s not stress. We sit, lumps in our throats, she says, next day she’s back to underground tunnels, thousands riding the same rough waves. Soon she’s too weak to walk or wash herself. The bones of her skull give life to a face that once amazed grown men into mumbling stupors. On a grey ward, two months into size elevens, she speaks in my mother tongue, begs me to trace the steps of its music, but the clash of two languages keeps me from the truth I won’t hear. She’s dying but I won’t say she’s dead, can’t let mum become a body, a stone, an empty hospital bed.