i put a spell on you • (halloween suite)

MY FATHER IS A RETIRED MAGICIAN

(for ifa, p.t., & bisa)

my father is a retired magician
which accounts for my irregular behavior
everythin comes
outta magic hats
or bottles wit no bottoms
& parakeets
are as easy to get as a
couple a rabbits
or 3 fifty cent pieces/ 1958

my daddy retired from
magic & took
up another trade cuz
this friend of mine
from the 3rd grade
asked to be made white
on the spot

what cd any self-respectin colored american magician
do wit such a outlandish request/ cept
put all them razzamatazz hocus pocus zippity-do-dah
thingamajigs away cuz
colored chirren believin in magic
waz becomin politically
dangerous for the race
& waznt nobody gonna be made white
on the spot just
from a clap of my daddy's hands

& the reason i'm so peculiar's
cuz i been studyin up on my daddy's technique
& everythin i do is magic these days
& it's very colored
very now you see it/ now you
dont mess wit me
i come from a family of retired
sorcerers/ active houngans
& pennyante fortune tellers
wit 41 million spirits critturs & celestial bodies
on our side

i'll listen to yr problems
help wit yr career yr lover
yr wanderin spouse
make yr grandma's stay in heaven
more gratifyin
ease yr mother thru menopause &
show yr son
how to clean his room

YES YES YES 3 wishes
is all you get
scarlet ribbons for yr hair
benwa balls via hong kong
a miniature of machu picchu

all things are possible
but aint no colored magician in her right mind
gonna make you white
i mean
this is blk magic
you lookin at
& i'm fixin you up good/
fixin you up good n colored
& you gonna be colored all yr life
& you gonna love it/ bein colored/ all yr life/ colored & love it
love it/ bein colored/

Spell #7 from Upnorth-Outwest Geechee
Jibara Quik Magic Trance
Manual for Technologically Stressed
Third World People

Ntozake Shange

c copyright ntozake shange 2009

My friend from Asia has powers and magic, he plucks a blue leaf from the young blue-gum
And gazing upon it,
gathering and quieting
The God in his mind, creates an ocean more real than the ocean, the salt, the actual
Appalling presence,
the power of the waters.
He believes that nothing is real except as we make it.

I humbler have found in my blood
Bred west of Caucasus a harder mysticism.

Multitude stands in my mind
but I think that
the ocean in the bone vault is only
The bone vault's ocean:
out there is the ocean's;
The water is the water,
the cliff is the rock,
come shocks and flashes of reality.
The mind Passes, the eye closes,
the spirit is a passage;
The beauty of things was born before eyes and sufficient to itself;
the heart-breaking beauty
Will remain when there is no heart to break for it.

Robinson Jeffers