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The Answer Is

by Hakim Be

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about

This ekphrastic poem was inspired by ¡Revíva!’s “The Answer” video world premiere.

lyrics

Deep down inside us
where our hearts splay like an open book,

with a flutter that’s long since flew the coup,
spread eagle.

you can still hear the murmur of a motor
filling this mesa with something

something that once sounded like a hum.
and from time to time still does.

There sits a windmill
just to the left of the mother aquifer
that used to flood the arroyos that spider through our bodies

like a web

Punching love through these old pipes
in the middle of a drought

Drowning out the noise
so we no longer have to put our bears ear to the earth
to hear the beat

To hear the leaves trickle, tumble and trip
down Albuquerque’s aqueducts through the fall.

To feel the ins and exhales of Spring,
the muffle of headphones every winter.
That remind us of Summer seashells we never seen
swapped long ago for prehistoric fossils
at the bottom of oceans we’ll never sea

Sounds like the substance of things hoped for on repeat.

The same soundtrack that swaddles babies to sleep,
sometimes we even call it chamber music.

It’s the sound of living
and breathing.
Of believing
and sinking
or seeking…

The answer, my friend, is right here
somewhere between your nostrils and your navel.
The gravitational pull of two hearts throwing themselves
through the head-on collision of our pressed chests

every time we hug.

When we become each others’ favorite drug
based on the scientific fact
That the collective cardiac rhythm
of a room full of people
seated arm and arm
facing one direction, just like this,

will synchronize…

when tuned to a live theater production,
turned towards a musical, a concert
or even a performance poem.

Deep, deep down
where the most brave of us filet ourselves
like I do
every time she buries the nozzle of her nose
into the center of my chest
me begging her “don’t leave”
or “don’t shoot”

like a desert eagle.

Cause we’re all just winging it
in a pile up of broken armistices and one armed hugs.
Half hearted promises collapsed in our lungs
Caged birds unmic’d
and unplugged.

A whole library of unwritten songs
half sung.

In desperate need of a duet.
A band would be nice.
Perhaps even a second line
or a choir.

To help dig us out
from underneath this pyramid of sheet music.
A man-made mountain
at the foot of this turbine
That could wind up replacing
all the tornados

inside us.

credits

released February 21, 2019
Hakim Bellamy

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Hakim Be Albuquerque, New Mexico

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