Song of the Andoumboulou: 258

All hands were on deck as we docked

in the nerve church, metaphoric boat

of soul metamorphic, boat-shaped back

the oud whose belly we rode in, ety-

mologic boat of soul catastrophic, church

whose nave we were in. Church cast-

ing color cast a stain on the world. It bore

the

bright light we’d been thru, gone round

and come thru again, metamorphic boat

of soul metaphoric, of what no one would

say ...

Whatever it was was what soul was, of

which only the asker wanted to know.

All hands were on deck even so. All had

gone

well were it only body nerve church meant,

well were it only soul it meant, well were

it not a thread of the two, other than either, a

thread

and a third, off to itself. All had gone well

that way, would’ve gone well were it the way,

way that it wasn’t, would that it were ... We

lay

held in the oud whose belly was black, all

hands on deck as we docked, bent neck and

bent knee de rigueur in the nerve church, co-

nundrum the head it hit. Meat and bone apart

from

meat and bone was the nerve church, soul

unbeknown to itself it also was, a certain some-

thing not something notwithstanding, asked

bout no matter no answer would accrue. All

hands were on deck proclaiming soul, soul not

something to be said to be had, soul that was

boat and that sat in the boat it was, borne

beknown to itself. All hands were on deck not

proclaiming soul. The less we boasted the

bet-

ter we rode the boat that soul was, the boat that

sold

us thought to be that

boat

•

Some were said to have limbo’d below deck,

the lute’s dark insides a madrigal of sorts, its

back less back than belly. Some were said to

have

bent back while surrounded by singers, bent

back so far their heads were on the floor. The

backs of their heads were on the floor, it was

said,

brushed it, the back of the head a belly di-

gesting damage, no way its way a way ... Some

were said, once on deck, to have jumped, a

shark’s teeth or breathlessness the way, no way,

was

theirs, jumped, some said, or were thrown. We

knew all this coming into the nerve church, its

nave encyclopedic, no outrage not written down,

histo-

ry a parable of nerve, who

had it

________________

Huff sat at the wheel of the bus calling it a

boat. We were leaving Low Forest again,

a sea of green he called it, all aboard as he

now

called the bus a train. Eleanoir’s blue truck

it might’ve been, might well have been,

might as well have been, so metamorphic the

dock

whence we embarked ... It was nothing if

not Eleanoir’s dream, the ship we were in, lute

of the light-lady of night, Eleanoir’s loot, we

sur-

mised. Not since primordial beak met pri-

mordial seed had it so accrued, no mile not

haunted, no matter what move we made. Our

bus

put-putted a-

long

•

A canopy of leaves overhead as we made

our way, the sea of green Huff insisted we

call it, the bus our boat and all of it the nerve

church,

nothing not inflected by the blood-guzzling

lute whose intestines history was. Wagadu

lay within sight even so, it or the Eleven Light

City, Eleanoir sitting behind the driver’s seat,

whis-

pering things in Huff’s ear ... Eleanoir and

Huff we’d have never thought but there it was,

Huff under Eleanoir’s influence, Eleanoir

un-

der his. A boat their bed would be, we

heard him whisper back, his and her wish as

much ours as theirs, that history give way

romance, what lit the nerve church. Our bus

bumped along, vestiges of memory afoot, de-

bris the boat of soul grew laden with, the lute

our

boat also was claiming blood ... The school

of oud instructed us, taught with drawn strings,

taut cartilage and sinew also known as nerve

church, our tutorial wherein, we saw, would no

time

soon recess. Eleanoir’s face, which had float-

ed many a boat, now floated Huff’s it came clear

for us to see, nerve church, whose nave we

docked in, nuptial perhaps, our notional romance

call-

ing history moot, such the way we got by ...

Such the way we got by proved everyday by soul

music, Brother B said. Peaches and Herb had

come

on the box. A metaphoric love boat the meta-

morphic boat of soul turned into now. We were

on our way who knew where, bus, boat, train or

truck,

on our way wherever, soon

come

•

We felt the press of consequence inside the

nerve church, the lute’s underbelly the oud,

the madrig’s underbelly the panther, the deck’s

un-

derbelly the hold, metamorphic soul’s under-

belly foreboding. We were far from Low For-

est now, far from Lone Coast, on a train from

Bar-

celona to Lyon. Eleanoir slept lying across the

seat across from Itamar and me, her head on

Huff’s lap. Her small feet peeped out beautifully

from

under the blanket she lay wrapped up in ... The

train was a boat or it would take us to a boat,

unclear which, the boat of soul that lay docked in the

nerve church, all hands on deck awaiting us, if not,

ac-

cording to some, none other than us. It was night,

nothing visible outside our windows. The commis-

erative dead gauged our quotient of soul, no one able

to say what it was though we rode it, the riding alone

was

clear ... The train ran away with us, took us away,

soul riding us it seemed, warm and humid with the

breath and the breathing of bodies, a blind winding

a boat finding its way thru the night. There was

no way to know it but by its effects, Itamar was say-

ing, an array of aromas we took to pertain thereto

per-

vading our

car

________________

Voices fell from the sky, never not

inflected by the dead on the sea floor,

the dead under leaf, needle and cone in

Low

Forest, the dead and how they came

to be that way everywhere ... They spoke

of this as the bus rattled on, the boat

cut

thru water, the truck struggled going

up a mountain, the train cried arkestral,

soul bumped again and again against

what

would not

have it

Source: Poetry (November 2019)