the door

it’s all I can do to go
back and forth to work
there I can wonder how God makes poor children
without fathers and why he allows them
to believe that once in 2018 when Daddy gets
out of prison life will really be different
and believe that Santa Claus and Jesus
are white men that go about the ghetto bringing
peace and happiness to the Meek

I knew a boy once
a thin hungry child
that checked out cook books
from the grade school library
and during reading time
gazes at glossy colored
pictures of specialty
cooked foods, braised meats
in thickened sauces
with baby potatoes

the properties of Grace
unrequited mercy
a weathered lonely flower
surrounded by flames
pristine and unconsumed
burning for the weak
soaked in a necklace of gasoline
apathetic tears and
baptized in the angry fear
of a lynch mob
pity party

it begins with a shaking
in an eternal loop
the words come out
but make little meaning
something must mean something
something must matter
what are the properties of Love
silent hope
stoic faith
self-less Love
agape Love that penetrates
Television goes around the world
and has empathy even for those
who don’t speak English or know
who Jesus is

the 5th floor
where the doors are locked
and electronic buzzers
shuffle white coats
and shiny badges
during visiting hours
the piano
out of tune
and in ill-repair
on sabbatical tour
or just a 48 hour
observation
once the threats have been made
once all the furniture, and potted plants
are thrown out the window
and come crashing down
once SPD, and MHP
are summoned
and the blithering fool
glassy eyed
catatonic
tightly secured in white belts
with shiny metal clips
and ushered away
from the closed minded sanity
of actors playing parts
on the stage of complicity
the theater of life
the curtain of sin
a blinded vision
without Love
with people
who really don’t care
or know who you are
then you’ll know
just why we only leave
the house
when it’s absolutely necessary
why we do things
that other people call crazy
why we live only to die
before the living gets too hard

Disconnected

I called my mother’s phone number even though
she died last year. If she would have answered I
don’t know what I’d have said. At night
I often think of her as the vibrations inside the walls
of my room make disappearing sounds like invisible earwigs
behind the refrigerator

She came from a generation of first. A generation that
overcame Jim Crow and laughed in the white faces of
their oppressors as they showed us that we were
just as good or better. The first negro (as they were called in those days)
to graduate from the University of Washington’s School of Nursing,
the first negro Head Nurse at Harborview Hospital,
the first negro to live at her luxury retirement apartment,
and it was not easy to be the first
and yet they did it, she did it, with grace, with
compassion and with Love, even for her oppressors

It’s the number I called from the principals office, the bus station,
from Tai Tung, the crack house, and the King County jail,
a number, 767.4792 , Disconnected.
disconnected from that voice of assurance,
disconnected from that powerful force of Love
disconnected from that Will to be the first
disconnected from that home
known larger than life
where Big things happened
known only as a child

and now, since the Love has all poured out
elapsed and sifted to the bottom of
the hour glass of life
for the first time in my life
I feel completely alone.

Untitled Poem # 58

the memory
of my penis
knows lonely Women
dismissive transexuals
& popular whores
even the manicured toes of that
buxom Nubian soprano I sat next to
in the church choir, where even then
we imagined folding her soft breast
beneath the careful lace of her $200 bra
beneath precision eyeliner & thickened lashes

her toes
painted, polished, presented at once
this Woman as in dreams immortal
in Holiness, in supplicant gestures
embraced in the bourgeois
detailed ellipsis of perdition
kissing the ass of God
ordained my faceless lips
forging my tongue in fire
gathered in the upper room
of her nakedness, aghast
and yet unbeknownst of my erection

this angel of heavens
this last vagina in
obsequious compliance
experience this finger fuck examination
searching coochie moisture
moving in wetness
waiting folded flesh
pussypoint
touchdown

new images

a neighbors flower…

Mojo Blackman

Juju Black man
I know you got an
angry phallus
swingin in your
favorite boxers

avenge your Mother
& your Father 2
He’s got a lot of nerve
for takin you down
with no lubrication

the usual suspects
the Holy Father
baptized by homophobia
& the Boy Scouts best

superiority nation
likes to get it
in the station
eternal rapture
bout this simulation

Casey Jones
he was a
mad hatter
bent over
smiling face
only anal matters

I sleep alone
holdin the pillow
to the light
I sleep alone
.38 gripped tight

I’m in Love
with the nu-Nubian
Queen who longs
to serve her
New Master in waiting

boys grown up
to be killers
army ordered
switch to automatik

know it like
because you oughta
Solomon’s great,
great, great, great,
Great grand
Daughter

Mojo Black man
twist it with your left hand
pimp it wit ya right toe
tell ya Moma shake it low
tell ya baby squeeze it hard
singin to the LAwd LAwd LAwd

Dogs

White People
& their Dogs
stalking the innocent
sifting terror on
sidewalk monopoly
smiling aggression
barked molestation
breathing Dog air
from friendly faces
buttocks tight bi
cycle gore tex
pants bend to gather
between the leaves
the steaming mass
of nutrient assisted
soiled discharge

chains on Dogs
fluorescent
cross-platform trainers
townhouse millionaire
dollar inner city sanctum
the home you call place
with niggers right next door
5 minutes from the pastel painted
cabinet doors of your basement pantry
right next door to your wifes
white pussy

only fear
not love
can free the dogs
to crease the blood
of civil rights negroes
in skinny ties
on black and white TV

keep smiling
while your Dog
shits on the flower bed
and you
reversed plastic
bag in hand
feeling the warmth of
excrement this husbandry
in substitution of human relations

rubied collars
this puglistic fantasy
running in packs, unleashed
& now little
boys afraid to bike ride your alley
way, your smiling face
the snarling shards
of muscled yellow breathing
dripping, howling
panting, self-induced
innocence
you are guilty

of living inner city
in place but not in heart
in spirit but not in soul
in life but not in humanity
kiss the Dog face
lip to tongue lovers
inhale the moist
yellowing breath
while keeping the smile
just between you
and your dream
Dog

a church in the storm…..

solo piano August 12 2012

solo piano August 12 2012 by rodger pegues E…!

Thursday, August 9, EJE @ the Seamonster

the Epiphany jam experience, is a Jam band in perpetual collaboration mode. Fused with the spoken word, conscious rap and universal love it is an experience beyond performance. Hear the band this Thursday, Friday, Auggust 9 at the Seamonster Lounge located in Wallingford at 2202 N 45th ST next to I Do Bridal, Rain Sushi and Taco Time and across the street from the Guild 45th movie theatr. All artist are invited to attend this celebration of art, music and being.

rodger pegues

the peguesproject/the Epiphany Jam Experience, the brain child, of jazz pianist Rodger Pegues, is a musical herald for the New Utopia, World Peace and Social Justice. Rodger Pegues, a native of Seattle, Washington, started singing solos in church at the age of 9. Inspired by the gifted music minister of Mt Zion Baptist Church, Phyllis Byrdwell, he began to study piano. In his teens he received both classical and jazz piano instruction at the Cornish School of Allied Arts. At Garfield High School, under the directorship of Clarence Acox he was awarded a superior performance award at the Reno International Jazz festival in 1978.

The music of John Coltrane, McCoy Tyner, Herbie Hancock and Keith Jarrett were among his earliest influences as he searched for his voice among the musical panoply of jazz genres and stylings.

In the late 1980’s Rodger moved to Los Angles, CA there as the musical director of the City Stage theater he began to explore experimental forms of jazz and performance art, fusing jazz with poetry, drama and visual arts.

In the early 1990’s his creative expression came of age during his tenure at the Jazz Club in Hong Kong. There he played with the great Jon Hendricks, Billy Bang, Dakota Stanton, and the legendary Jimmy Witherspoon. After working and touring in Asia for the next 3 years Rodger returned to Seattle Washington and became a regular pianist/vocalist with the Darren Motamedy Jam Session of the Century.

Around 1995 Rodger formed the Rodger Pegues Trio, touring throughout the Pacific Northwest featuring his signature vocals , graceful, bold and eclectic piano stylings, and repertoire of original compositions that embody a synergy of passion for the innovative against a tribute to the traditional.

Presently, as brainchild of the nu-jazz mixed media collaboration, the Epiphany Jam Experience, Rodger is performing his original compositions, featuring an inexhaustible list of instrumental soloist at premier eclectic venues throughout the Pacific Northwest.
For bookings email: rodgerpegues@gmail.com