& SYLLABLES GROW WINGS THERE, by Quincy Troupe

a blackboard in my mind holds words eye dream--

& blessed are the words that fly like birds into

poetry--

& syllables attach wings to breath & fly away there

through music, my language springing round from

where

a bright polished sound, burnished as a new copper

penny

shines in the air like the quick, jabbing glint of

a trumpet

lick flicking images through voices there pulsating

like strobe lights

the partying dark understands, as heartbeats

pumping rhythms hip-

hopping through footsteps, tick-tocking like clocks

with stopgap

measures of caesuras breaking breath, like california

earth-

quakes trying to shake enjambed fault lines of

minimalls

freeways & houses off their backs, rocks being

pushed up there

by edges of colliding plates, rivers sliding down

through yawning

cracks, pooling underneath speech, where worlds

collide & sound cuts

deep fissures into language underneath the earth,

the mystery of it all

seeded within the voodoo magic of that secret place,

at the center

of boiling sound & is where poetry springs from

now

with its heat of eruption, carrying volcanic lava

flows of word

sound cadences, a sluiced-up flowing into the poem’s

mysterious tongue, like magic, or fingers of fire

dancing,

gaseous stick figures curling off the sun’s back

& is where music comes up from, too, to improvise

like choirs of birds in springtime, when the wind’s

breath

turns warm & their voices riff off sweet songs,

a cappella

From “Avalanche,” by Quincy Troupe (Coffee House Press: $19.95; 128 pp.). Copyright 1996 Reprinted by permission.

* QUINCY TROUPE will participate in panels on black male writers (Saturday, April 20, at 4 p.m.) and poetry (Sunday, April 21 at 4 p.m.) at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. He will also read his poetry Sunday at 3 p.m.