Nina Simone Was a Force of Nature
Maybe that’s why everything she did
canceled out
the divine feminine
her call remained on silent
fans handed her
nature to pay her after shows
as if it showered her
in love, summer rain some-
thing she never experienced at home growing up, the mark of a true artist is they never intended
to be famous and then they get labeled crazy for loving
what they do, some do end
up, but she will never
not be crazy
talented in my charcoal eyes
bouquets and
cricket
claps
that sprinkled
incremented nourishment. Yes, seeds & overcrowding weeds her hands slaved in soil, black
on the surface and even further
down
the road her parents paved
for a family tree of burned bark, brown
wading through the saffron
dandelion fields, eating
sour fruits
of their labor, sickening
howls for money to hold
a love she never was around
growing
up to keep her
apartment from crumbling,
this is the ugly part offstage
where an audience partitions
artist from Art is the starving,
the daily news
feed, sees a person as purely an image
Venus fly trap she was predestined to
nurture the feminine thirst, undeniable
will to feed to quench, indeed,
she had the mother
load, pockets full of
blaring blackness glaring back at her
tar-coated trust almost so dark
becomes invisible paper
bag over face, cover like Claudia
Rankine’s black hoodie
figure against a stark
white background, back again
mistaken for a creature
no choice, Mississippi
Goddam, kick cans in
a crumbling city until it’s
rebuilt with revolution, footfalls
eery echoes the immaterial
that sustains
trashed pothole
streets, riddled with plastic
people, washed-out, watch out
she will point trigger fingers if you stand
in the way of her
first love, Bach
weathered concrete, vermon was the man
-made ever two-way in giving, supporting
the soles? She asked no
one in particular.
No cents at her feet, not even a dirty penny. We could waste time
by listing the basic living swept cunningly from her soles, those rich roots
command
to be secure, an Earth Song 2.0
instead of their strength ravaged
all she wanted was love from the ground
up.
by Maria