Rain smeared the Paramount’s marquee—
FAKE-GOLD HAEMORRHAGE Sly & The Family Stone
like a sacrificial cloak.
We found you later:
coiled behind dying amps,
Honey eyes tuned to strangled -blue cries
POST-CRASH SPARK.
Remember the suit?
Rhinestones screaming, white as God’s teeth,
split at the seams with gospel lines
Everybody is a star?
Holy shrapnel in the rain
The Bach of Funk in cracked crocodile shoes
Grinding dirty rhythms red balling the Blues
Studio jackals whispered about your veins
PURE VOLTAGE cut with cipher-smoke.
You fed the mic amphetamine psalms,
made the clavinet spit VIOLET SPARKS,
turned basslines into RIOT-STAMPS
on the belly of the BEAST.
Dance to the music?
You meant:
BURN THE FUCKING PLANTATION DOWN.
Post colonial funk
Freedom’s static burning through the wire
Turning master’s tools
To FUNKY napalm FIYAH
They paid you in PHANTOM CHEQUES
& champagne fizz fizz fizzing with ghost-lies.
You drank it laughing,
blew the FEEDBACK KISS
SHATTERED their crystal COFFINS.
Summers died and Christmas lied
We spied you drifting thru pawnshop alleys
Golden crown swapped for a DOLLAR STORE HALO,
humming Thank You (Falettinme)
like a lullaby for the damned –
nothin’… nothin’… nothin’
Debt-collectors circled—
JACKALS WITH DOLLAR-SIGN EYES—
but you’d sold your soul
to the GROOVE’S ETERNAL COIL.
They say you died.
DEATH MISFIRED.
BAD Tuesday: SLAP-BASS TORNADO
SHAMAN in Sun specs Preaching Love ANARCHY -POETIC EVANGELIST
BUCKLED CONCRETE—
streetlights STROBING GOD-SEIZURE GOLD,
Tarmac SPASAM
like a GHOST RESURRECTING ITS NERVE.
EVERYDAY PEOPLE NOW WE BELIEVE
STEALING COMMUNION:
THUNDERBIRD BLOOD IN A STOLEN PAPER CUP,
raised to silence AVANT feedback,
to the ghost in the machine gun
to the FUNK THAT EATS FLESH.
You left us the BLUEPRINT IN THE BLOOD NOISE:
Want the rainbow?
STAND
IN THE ACID RAIN
FIST
IN THE BREAKER BOX.
STILL DANCIN’ THRU FIRE.
STILL HIGH HIGH HIGH ON THE WIRE.
STILL PUSHIN’ PUSHIN’ WHEN THE WHEELS COME OFF.
For Sly Stone Preacher of the Dirty Riff the Groove goes on …
.
Saira Viola
.