Baudelaire's Niggas

He found me in a brothel singing a gospel about my opium habit and tried to train me as his domestic.  What a sad pack of roses, what a meaningless resistance to rhyme. I began to cook him fixes until he was hooked on evaluation, was I good or bad, white or black, god or got, in love or in my sin. I told him I wanted a record deal and he beat my jaw sealed, cured me of my habit. Now I  tan my bruises well, whisper squares into the afternoon sand and wait for them to disappear in the darting glance of some genteel pimp intelligent enough to pretend alienation until I abuse him like a scared mother having just realized I've been there before and can finally leave. This is me, performing freedom in a blank/dark room with taps on my shoes, now you listen, now you grab the gospel by the habit and let it guide you like this rigged innocence, all mine and jacked up as minor blues. For kicks, I record the sound of myself walking across that pitch dark stage in taps, to loop it, all my life, a cheerful light in the invisible, this is what the cure sounds like from here, this is the water hugging my tiny ankles like nerves that never thought they'd get outside to see the world and when they finally do, march on you like gossip and back away, like gossip. God got to be a rumor too, a murmur in blackface speaking savior's French to the damned until they couldn't help but fulfill their deepest fantasies, and change.