Escape of the Bluesman's Song

Within the frame a sepia scene a dusty porch a rickety chair the fabric of your dusky face creased with ceaseless sunbaked woes your old pair of getaway feet gives a different walk of life to an old pair of thrown-away shoes two sizes too big and as full of holes as the harmonica you hold – you remember.. your backbone the plow driven through gadfly soil swarmed with eyes and stingers and mouthparts sucking marrow paleface morality two-faced in your person-dignity pillage losing wishbone-breakage in body-breaking tillage for a crop you have no share in.. except for expanding crops of pain implanted by plowers a harrowed pulse flows through chambers both metal and mortal embouchure’s grip with cracked lips vibrate raspy reeds to bleed smudgy-notes-smooched lament the air-split whip sizzle-snaps of the leather snake a shoulders to buttocks sharp-fanged strafe cotton gin justice for overseer’s chafe wicked braille welts read of tactual factual brutality; the wrench of your wretched chattel-life you remember.. the humid cling of cold-sweat fretting furrows of bondage-resistant brows it pours briny from tiny tormenting pores beads bee-sting your bull’s-eye pupils held hostage in a wide-eyed white canvas of angst glazing your skin the shade of a chestnut’s roasted coat in December – the swelter of escape in the shelter of swamps your manful heart flexed - a daring passenger on the move; railroad underground but over ground and undercover a night-sky-water-dipper sipper on a quest to quench freedom’s thirst with an ethereal map choired across cotton fields’ roiled yoke and tobacco fields’ toiled choke and hymned in the cramp of black quarters smoky whiffs and chuffing riffs churn slick yet sick with sulks they slide the track blues mood slurs vibrato’s bravado blurs plantation friction railway diction distant tidewater pain pushes into your mind’s marsh; transition-zone from slave man to free man and like the Chesapeake both a womb and a tomb you remember her song of sorrow.. your west African grandmother her spirit one with the ancient salt and sand of the Windward shore and her heart as heavy as the hull’s belly-gorge of flesh and blood cargo; wishing for the seawater in her veins to drown her – her ghost croons to your inner-child still upon her knee the rise of kinfolk spirituals saturate to weep harmonica’s southern drawl quavers with primal plaintive pleas of breathing possessions kidnapped from a land of gold and tusks - her people your people! stacked like ebony planks in seasick holds to build inhumane wealth; bought beaten sold beaten traded beaten slave babies born in the Old South beaten by the shackles of ramshackle shacks! harp’s intimate groan; worried worn wearied notes cupped in your hands ripped by the pick of cotton cradled to a mouth with lips of a fullness your hungry slave boy’s belly never knew you don’t want to remember but you do.. memories collect like nesting sparrows beneath eaves your bluesman’s soul overflows as you breathe a wavy whine in slow solo anguished airstream’s inhale flare of iron-horse exhale .. a train whistle’s approach from auction block past; auctioneer’s leer as the gavel slams down! a screaking child peeled off a shrieking mother’s skirts like the skin stripped off a dead rabbit – streams of her screams run a gully in your gut ever deeper mournful melody laid out and laid down stewed in the still of your lifeblood the mash of sad and mad moves in and out of your heart-grooves with a whiskey’s burn then settles like a wraith of wrath and faith in the dried wheel-ruts outside your door f r e e to wander beyond the old age of your stoop laden with a dazed load of a million misery moans and the haunt of iron chains as heavy as the branding irons’ hot Susan Ashley October 7, 2021 ~ First Place~ Premiere Contest: Your Personal Favorite, NO. 2 Sponsor: L Milton Hankins Poet’s note: this poem was inspired by the instrumentation of “Sweet Black Angel”; Rolling Stones; 1972 album Exile on Main Street; written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. It is my humble attempt to pay homage to the vanquished in their victory of escape from slavery through the Underground Railroad and to raise awareness to the inhumane injustices and agonies inflicted upon the enslaved innocents. This is the first of a pair of poems to explore this theme. The other “Antebellum Blues” will be posted at a later date. Image: Railway path; photo by Bagi Borbala *embouchure: the way a player applies the mouth to the mouthpiece of a harmonica *passenger: an escaped slave traveling through the Underground Railroad *harp: informal name for harmonica