How to be Drawn to Trouble by Terrance Hayes

How to be Drawn to Trouble

The people I live with are troubled by the way I have been playing

“Please, Please, Please” by James Brown and the Famous Flames

All evening, but they won’t say. I’ve got a lot of my mother’s music

In me. James Brown is no longer a headwind of hot grease

And squealing for ladies with leopard-skinned intentions,

Stoned on horns and money. Once I only knew his feel-good music.

While my mother watched convicts dream, I was in my bedroom

Pretending to be his echo. I still love the way he says Please

Ten times straight, bending the one syllable until it sounds

Like three. Trouble is one of the ways we discover the complexities

Of the soul. Once, my mother bit the wrist of a traffic cop

But was not locked away because like him, she was an officer

Of the state. She was a guard at the prison in which James Brown

Was briefly imprisoned. There had been broken man-made laws,

A car chase melee, a roadblock of troopers in sunblock.

I, for one, don’t trust the police because they go around looking

To eradicate trouble. T-R-oh-you-better-believe

In trouble. Trouble is how we learn what the soul is.

James Brown, that brother could spice up any sentence he uttered

Or was given. His accent made it sound like he was pleading

Whether he was speaking or singing. A woman can make a man

Sing. After another of my mother’s disappearances, my father left her

Bags on the porch. My father believes a man should never dance

In public. Under no circumstances should a grown man have hair

Long enough to braid. If I was a black girl, I’d always be mad.

I might weep too and break. But think about the good things.

My mother and I love James Brown in a cape and sweat

Like glitter that glows like little bits of gold. In the photo she took

With him, he holds her wrist oddly, probably unintentionally

Covering her scar. There’s the trouble of being misunderstood

And the trouble of being soul brother number one sold brother

Godfather dynamite. Add to that the trouble of shouting

“I got to get out!” “I got to get down!” “I got to get on up the road!”

For many years there was a dancing competition between

My mother and father though rarely did they actually dance.

They did not scuffle like drums or cymbals, but like something

Sluggish and close to earth. You know how things work

When they don’t work? I want to think about the good things.

The day after the Godfather of Soul finished signing just that

All over everything in the prison, all my mother wanted to talk

About were his shoes. For some reason, he had six or seven pairs

Of Italian leather beneath his bunk suggesting where he’d been,

Even if for the moment, he wasn’t going anywhere.

Think about how little your feet would touch the ground

If you were on your knees pleading two or three times a day.

There are theories about freedom, and there is a song that says

None of us are free. My mother had gone out Saturday night,

And came home Sunday an hour or so before church.

She punched clean through the porch window

When we wouldn’t let her in. I can still hear all the love buried

Under all the noise she made. But sometimes I hear it wrong.

It’s not James Brown making trouble, it’s trouble he’s drawn to:

Baby, you done me wrong. Took my love, and now you’re gone.

It’s trouble he’s asking to stay. My father might have said Please

When my mother was beating the door and then calling to me

From the window. I might have heard her say Please just before

Or just after the glass and then the skin along her wrist broke.

Pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease, that’s how James Brown says it.

Please, please, please, please, please, Honey, please don’t go.