Connie Johnson

All That’s Revealed

Your cocked hat 

And your lopsided grin 

The bliss you promise

Your deliverance 

We’re a long way from home 

We are currency, truth untold

We are the grits and the grease in the 

Skillet; we are the gin and the sin

And the sizzled relief

At the end of the day

Amidst the trembling 

Lights, you swallow all the 

Tears that baptized you;

And as the haints bay

At your windows so emphatically,

You come away triumphant

Transformed

We search for home; we’ll know 

What to do when we get there  

A smoky haze, an enclave of

Of lilies and dianthus

You live by the words that describe us;

They’re just R&B: Regrets & bygones

Pen the lines from your vault and I’ll sing them 

Like a soul provocateur prepared to reveal all:

 

I know a lot about secrets 

Oh and I definitely know what is true 

One day you’re going to tell somebody 

Who I am and what I am to you  

Telephone 

I answer the phone.

I make telemarketers reconsider

Their career choice.

I put one foot in front 

Of the other. I make 

Grown men cry. 

Nothing seems to defeat 

Me. Though I know the proverbial shoe 

Will drop one day.   

In the meantime I stay barefoot: 

(can’t be too careful 

Who prophesized this world in which I reside?  

Not me. 

I wanted something different for myself.

Like your voice on the other end of the telephone. 

& all the time in the world in which to answer.

On the Day That You Forgot Me 

your two-step became suddenly 

elevated into jump blues / membrane 

and lifeblood became part of your 

discontented rituals   

I became your vest-style frottoir

you became the processed hair 

of Clifton Chenier 

I learned what it meant to be 

open-handed but eternally empty 

I learned all the words 

to The Blue Angel Club 

I left the soul of myself in Louisiana

I left the dregs of myself in the Sazerac 

you still sip