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breaking the land through

from A Prelude Of The Aftermath by Walt Kosty & Ralph Bendel

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Another Tulsa based, location specific poem. Archer, a street named after yet another City “Father”, running parallel with the train tracks that divide north and south, a street that collides head on with Greenwood and continue through the Arts (read Entertainment) District past Main Street and Bob Wills Avenue, a western swinging dance music that can still be heard floating up Main Street from Cain’s Ballroom It’s just barely an echo though as it lifts above the wailing spirits that were killed in 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.

The dead here aren’t buried, they’re not even dead yet.

lyrics

the poem:

at the you haul across from one oak
you can almost touch the skyline
of the magic city that was built
on the plankton of the Low O2 oceans
an ancient swamp land full of death
on the concrete side walk of now
a girl named sequoyah steps up
says as much to herself as to me
“Ain’t it a great view?. Well
you should see it at night
when the trains are passin’ through”

across the street and to the north
that’s where the ball field was dug
deep into the earth
but the excavation could not remove
the blood of bodies that soaked the soil
all the way down into the marrow of the patient earth
receiving the platelets the cells and the plasma
without comment

there’s a young girl
skip skip skipping past
the dead possum flattened out
the wandering man with the pants
hanging below his knees
all peering into a fractured lens
as the rising buildings filter
into the landscape of the familiar
where nothing goes to waste
the alleys evoke the speakeasies
the drunks vomit whole cans of premium brew
chichi pubs and yoga studios
and dave the can man who collects
the remains on sunday morning
fills his shopping carts and walks
in the middle of main street
with a smile beaming through

articulate your waning observations
but avoid the nonsense
of renaming streets and facile conversations
place your emptiness inside a glass jar
let it rest there on the window ledge
until the waiting sun carries it over
and carries it through carries it through

if it is trauma that breaks us finally
first the windows will crack
as the keening of restless birds
calling across the sod reawakens
a sense of dread
of automatic focus
without manual control
just slightly out of intention
completely out of options though

credits

from A Prelude Of The Aftermath, released May 14, 2022
The Poem was written and recited by Walt Kosty (ASCAP-Studio Magnolia) The Music is an adapted and edited version of a longer piece, "American Monody", both, written arranged and performed by Ralph Bendel (ASCAP-Studio Magnolia). It was created by the layering of accordion tracks, sprinkled with maraca and shaker, and a brief presence of "Venom" Keyboard synthesizer.

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Ralph Bendel / Studio Magnolia Tulsa, Oklahoma

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