'Climate/Stream'

Note: The following poems were originally published in Climate/Stream, a joint publication with Ken Bluford, by Middle Earth Books in 1972. Two of these poems, “godfather” and “for Judy Alms,” also appeared in Alcheringa. — David Grundy

Click here to view scans of the original text.

Tom Weatherly – Climate / Ken Bluford – Stream
Philadelphia: Middle Earth Books, 1972

Printed in an edition of 100 copies by the Middle Earth Bookshop, numbered and signed by the authors.


CONTENTS

14. for M.G. Stephens and LeRoi Jones: “… but not for me.”
25. for Judy Alms
18. for bishop college: fastus taedium
24. for Jennifer Wylie
19. for joel oppenheimer: godfather

           14.      for M. G. Stephens and LeRoi Jones
“… but not for me.”

?music way out west but not for me
humpn bogart lay of th african queen
flesh mime & recreate?

LET THE WATERS SWARM FORTH
A TRIBUTE OF LIVING SOULS

Spoke
up in the middle of air
TONGUES. ears tuned
jersey cowboy country.

(lil foot Eunice viridis
½ twist counter clock
posterity breaks off & surfaces
low tides coral reef)

we go east wif th moon of journeys
love it or leave it our own soul
flesh & bloods alone.

(o palolo blows its load
surface, dipped out made 
thick soup flavor spinach)

young popeye mike workn our premises
his flat
colleens & dun blondes tinkle tinkle old smegma 
by ear. moon
tide high. swan
sing is rape not music nor murder.

looks like moving; tide idling.

25.
                                  for Judy Alms 




oO.oOOo

18.        for Bishop College

fastus taedium

new faculty 
indoctrination bit
dull
cuts deep, th circulation
off in th ass, through
patience.

new faculty
intimidation bit
dull
cuts deep, th circulation
off in th ass, through
patience.

th first music recorded for a photograph.


24. 
                      for Jennifer Wylie

HIGH MOON

19. for joel oppenheimer

godfather

not ’cause you’re negro bello
will you protect my son
my soulflesh split in these states
not ’cause you splat atoms
as your namesake
but for splittn sounds of gestures
our feet hands face tongues & brains
make as we burn out our soulflesh.

thomas elias weatherly, III
so they will know & remember
what they put his fathers through
& who’s puttin’ it on them. your son
in god, if you believe, if not
tradition will make do. our son
teoma in one of your languages
or tom in another, but his & mine
tomcat claws & fangs bared to
jump in th chest of all
th way-out west
we deal wif as well
as this generation of life will.
some of us will go down on big
mama earth loving us to pieces
in th heat of her thighs.

now your politics may be wrong
this decade you lose by th skin
of its color. but this is
older than th skin of our politics.
it is there when logos went down
in th line before ethos
& manos split off into these
states.
                              LUFU MOJO LUFU.
nigella damascena grows
is th sign our covenant
in th black hot thighs of big mama

’til they cool.