The Man from Paradise Valley

He wrote a narrative to two renegades knowing he was the third. Left himself out as an act of dominion. Won that round/by the skin. Of his. Mixing metaphors is a black privilege and feels as triumphant as laughing at a Redd Foxx joke you've heard over a hundred times. He screams, Wash Yo Ass! Watch the master become your slave in the dark that's all that matters is who washed. A sacred laughter hobbles out of you for a change. Knowing what matters is a black privilege. Paradise Valley is a Black neighborhood. You're that third man. Adrenaline runs through you even in idle moments and you transmute it into jokes and hygiene. You've sworn off blue jeans as they are a sign of a casualness that is a lie. The cops are the only white people there, and the guys who own the record companies, and the teenagers who want to be black when they grow up, are on their way. None of them are wearing jeans in public. The point is, we're reclaiming paradise. Old men in white tank tops and starched trousers, thick leather belts with gold buckles, almond and sin colored skin sitting in plastic party chairs the shape and color of birth/daze(d) talking about a revolution on the horizon and looking up each lady's skirt by accident, cold lemonade between their lips, sun streaking across the scene like angry cattle, and a stereo scuttling Bessie Smith's love oh love oh careless love that statics into a news report about a protest just around the corner, another kid shot down in between home and company store by a cop who thought his beauty was a sign of aggression and impossible freedom, and these men, almond in bloom, stand up in unison and bow, the boy's spirit having crossed over into them and pumping young unlimited blood through their huddled veins, they turn the radio up in time for the song to resume.