Keeping track of empires

 

http://afrosonics.tumblr.com/post/152329239139/you-made-me-funny-you-made-me-swallow-and

 

Revivalist's Dance

Payback be cackling   blackbryd in the morning  nibbling on glass and radiation   accident  or not the clouds    look like soldiers'    footprints       at it again   or not   you've  angered    the natural  chaos   with a fuzzy chorus  of mowers    Moorish  or not    Othello  tore it up     he grabbed that pussy he didn't   mind   the bleach  blond  weave   fraying   into   first   thing   looking   afro     

Slave / dance

In a panicked   enjoyment   of picnics    I found  guilt behaving  like  agreement :   yes   because I love   what    damages  us     yes     because    I   love  embroidered fable   dresses  made   in Vietnam  sweatshops made in American dreams    ,   what damages us?    Yes because I love  men    even   as   we lose our mothers to  aunt Hester's  scream,  yes because I love Frederick Douglass   yes  because teach  me how to Dougie     bitch /   yaaaaaasss qween   because slang is obscene and beautiful   cleanliness/   yes   because I wore the fable  dress to the club   so dutifully    my  silhouette  amazes   you ,  yes?  New to youth :

At the point of the bayonet and under the cannon fire        Don't  sing in tune to me   sing the pieces    west is   like     listening   to   fertile crescent  wheat mongering and going deaf to your momma,   west  is like    domesticity  turned glamorous by mistake   you're   getting on my nerves   making all these terrible   mistakes     count to eight    in your native  language     gather  eight   racks   of  blue    find me   eight examples   of the centrality of violence in the making of the slave  and reenact them backwards and     you're so lazy   you obey

call that living

You have such taste

Now let me rhapsodize briefly about the nightmares of the art

The October Revolution

On the opposite side of the globe there is an abandoned volvo made of mirrors
Where the same plants grow and same questions,  unanswered  burn in the black mind,  as chant

How many times have I been caged   for my beauty   rages  in stray  lines   a sip of hops  just in time

How many times  have I escaped      what kind of fugitive   did it  did   it   didn't   run    tumble grow cumbersome  hum   slave    hum   something   I can call     my favorite    when no one's looking