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Wild Geese (Featuring Anand Subramanian and Teju Cole)

from The Beautiful, Rowdy Prisoners by Chee Malabar

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lyrics

Verse
Chee Malabar:
There's no one left to love and only five leaves left/few more seasons will cycle he reasons will the seeds survive his last breath?/These orange trees, avocados and pomegranates he planted in memory/of his childhood/all else he forgot--can't trace the shape his life took/but summers in wildwood and winters chosen' wild geese/ plays on his mind’s screen, until he hears a child scream/tears stream down his face thats shaped like an old world map/with broken capillaries and veins that run like trade routes/that shipped slaves and turned the earth flat/ slats of light filter through venetian blinds/sign for his morning stroll, the sun his only sense of time/passes grime coated frames holding photos with no names/ on yellowed walls like a static sunset/with bucket hat and cane he walks the orange tree lined streets/and calls for his last loves left, Wild Geese.

Chorus
Anand Subramanian
I swore I heard you through the night/
Familiar demons infiltrate my mind/
Await arrival of your flight/
The same old patterns float inside this blinding light

Verse
Chee Malabar:
There's so much love to give, yet no one left to love/few days until Christmas she wishes for her kin to visit before her death/sons and daughters busy growin' clans from the same seeds that’s planted in her vein imprinted hands/hands that slapped them senseless/ made meals and made do when their daddy left home in a Caddy with his mistress/thick skinned through chill winds, she kept the coop together/ drinking through winter nights, hiding fright/while daddy flying south flocking with exotic birds with different feathers/a few letters came, she sent him pictures of their kids/same ones that blamed her drinking for breaking up the crib/barely time to nurture so they harbored some resentment/she never played the martyr, just labored to keep them nested/less said the better now this season of her life/when all the rhymes and reasons only cast a meager light/and she might miss the wild geese come home in eager flight.

Chorus
Anand Subramanian:
I swore I heard you through the night/
Familiar demons infiltrate my mind/
Await arrival of your flight/
The same old patterns float inside this blinding light

Teju Cole:
Often, as I searched the sky, all I saw was rain, or the faint contrail of an airplane bisecting the window, and I doubted in some part of myself whether these birds, with their dark wings and throats, their pale bodies and tireless little hearts, really did exist. So amazed was I by them that I couldn’t trust my memory when they weren’t there.

credits

from The Beautiful, Rowdy Prisoners, released June 25, 2013

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Chee Malabar Brooklyn, New York

Chee Malabar is a New York based rapper & writer.

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