Hey you, Dawn met me alive. In America. But there was a death at dawn. 108 and Olney Mill. Somewhere down the road from the house, a black car houses a fatality. ML, headed to work, calls from the streets, there’s been a fatality, she says, the cops, ambulances and fire trucks are everywhere, turn on the tv She’s trying to get to work in downtown DC, she’s going to be late, the police made her go North, away from DC, thank God for GPS, she’ll get there eventually, she says. She is nervous, she hates to be late to work. I hate to be early to work. They say opposites attract... I peer out the window, dawn is drenched in ink, and the neighborhood is a river of cars forded into our neighborhood by the cops, the river, with headlamps, snakes past and past looking for release. The phone rings, it is Ominira, she wants her mommy, the voice is hushed, she sounds disappointed to hear my voice, she doesn’t want to talk to her daddy, her mommy is not there, mommy is usually there. Mommy had to go to work, I say. Are you sure? Mommy never goes to work on Mondays, there’s been an accident, daddy! Turn on the tv, you never watch tv, it is a black car, it looks like mommy’s… her voice trails off into panic mode. Mommy is alright, trust me, she just spoke to me, I assure her. She doesnt sound convinced. She’s going to call mommy. Heading out to work, my neighborhood is a smirking parking lot in the right direction, cars quietly waiting, tapping their fingers on mute dashboards, trapped in Norman Rockwell’s world, every car, Andy Warhol’s lit tomato can. This is not good. I am going to be late. I head to work in the wrong direction, away from death, that which is coming. Outside the wrong end of our neighborhood; police cars force me off the path I really want to take, their eyes boring into me, daring me to do something stupid. This is America, someone in a black car is dead, all of America must stop to rubberneck the rituals that attend the dying by the living. I call the office, she says, take your time coming in, the place is quiet. Anikeleja, my truck (well, Ominiras when she is here from college), trusty, mute companion, purrs her indifference as we sail the wrong way to the salt mines that fund our kids’ chicken nuggets. My mind is playing mind tricks, silly tricks. I keep thinking of Wole Soyinka and his poems, Telephone conversation and Death in the Dawn and his fascination with the road, for real, and as metaphor. Have you read those poems? You should read them. Pure genius. And lunacy. Soyinka. There is no line between lunacy and genius. Soyinka is a lunatic genius. This life. Someone is dead. You wake up, put on your clothes, you go to work, you never get there. You are dead and a child mistakes your broken car and life for her mother’s and sighs with relief that it is you, not her mother that got plucked from the holding pen. It is what it is, we did not ask to be born, we are here. Life goes on. God is a prankster. Amebo, my iPhone reaches for the boombox, and Chief Osita Osadebe croons, Kedu America. Welcome to America. Goodnight, you. Gobe ma rana ni ;-)
Posted on: Mon, 29 Sep 2014 21:56:37 +0000
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