Monday, December 1, 2014

Three Essays on a Theory of Bill Cosby

You've done everything you said you wouldn't, everything you said you despise 


Hide the beasts where I can find them   And fatherlessness   is no excuse    and          doctors make the best killers        observe  like an essay and    confess like   a poem  or       Antigone       because we  needed another paranoid nigga   to prove             pimps ain't shit     and another heroine chic to lure him into    it              

It's just that   what's not to love about the   way   righteousness buckles    as self-deception and the  tender  wet     mumbling   machines     of          smack  my bitch up    comes on the radio  right after Bach and Miles         fell to the knees of his still bloody wife  and begged her to stay   while she dialed  for help

Everyone is afraid   of being rejected   but everyone is more afraid   of being black     and abandoned by yourself, your own self  sold  to  Robert Johnson as        Heathen    Jackal   Hero    circus  code   fear of the telegram   fear of the telegram that reads   : yes    slowly,     act like you know me             jazz aficionado  pervert   early riser       my  cheeks   hurt    from smiling   at your   jokes     and   these   tears      are mostly     descending  the isle   of another   hungry   lie  

--

I had it all figured out, how in a country where the black man feels like he has no power, landless, oppressed in every direction, what better way to alleviate the strain of it than by oppressing women. And  then I thought, like Sterling Brown said, the strong men keep coming on. And I thought, love and respect are signs of that strength, no strong  man   would buckle   under   the pressure of his righteousness   let his mind slip  into the scarce  place   and a tight noose around     the eyes of idols   reads   loyal  in cursive   in   roots       And then I realized     could all evil  be some trite  form of helplessness   probably  not        but a hero    could  be evil and heroic   at the same  time     probably  not      but a   woman   can  be quiet   for almost a whole lifetime   but speak once      and crush your world  

---

I had this dream  that   me and O  were in a pick up truck after a dinner in Malibu  and I decided  to give him road  head on the way home.  But while I was distracted     he turned the car  on   in reverse   and drove  us   of a cliff   on purpose.  A paradise of innuendoes as we sloped  into  wings.  It's not that we survived it's that there  is  no victim     and     there is no one   to blame  for what we've overcome