Tuesday, January 30, 2018

Misty, run

With  a closet  full    of   ruthless  tutus      when    the  police    come  to   shut  down  the party   and    inspect   the  house   with  flashlights beaming accusatory    in   a  march   that   feels   so   righteous    it  makes  us   sick   to  our   stomachs       we   have  a   hiding   place.  So  many   bodies  beneath   the   heaping    gauze     and   wounded    with    joy     I’m  never   leaving     the    stage   again      and  I’m  taking     satin    literally       black   feet   have   never   been   so  comfortable   bleeding   and     fearless       authority     has   never     been     so    imaginary    and    jilted       I’m   throwing   us    a   party        I’m    dancing     off      a    ledge    into    the   steady    blue   light   of   my    power   to   imagine   and  then  spin   you     out      of        existence        

Sunday, January 28, 2018

Thursday, January 25, 2018

Petty Immortality / Petit Mort / Getting off

You used to  be funny    now  you’re  just   dumb    and  that’s    a  muse     agreement    that’s   a   jeep  and   a museum      entrance    a   numb   bloom    of  dental   records      to   prove   it       was  your   horsemen  dressed in bones  and lighthearted  vengeance    and  kept   on     riding    and  eating  ham   from  the whistling   pockets  of  cedar   dens  while your   vehicle’s tongue is bitten  with splinters    and  your   fingers   and  compassion  forced  to insert  itself    into  moments  of  mutual  suffering     and  lurk   and   crack  you   open    and   taste   and  ruin  the   nasty   opera   of   your   wishes     So  now   you   wanna   live         now  you wanna   be   loved    instead   of  worshipped      now    you  wanna   wear  protective    styles      now   you wanna   fold    your   eyes   across   mine  like   some  minor  kaleidoscope  and   think  Ima   not    swerve            or   otherwise  deliver no mercy       now   you wanna  love  me   even  if  it   kills   you     wanna     do  me like you  did  white  jesus     and  then  pray to me like Ima  even     cuddle or rustle  keys         now    you  want   me   to   teach    how   to   live  forever    or at least how to  dance   in a finite   expression   of   something   other  than   regret       and   you   think   Ima    not    swerve          It    was     the      end            of    western   thought       we    had       reached    its  paddled  cliff       fought    our     ways    back   to  the   restrictions   of   innocence   so  our virgin could sit on a toilet and fuck  her  boyfriend  while  his   wife    was at the party   looking    around   like    she   was   lost    or    had   lost  something     the   cross    or   the crossroads   or   her  Bone  Thugs melody  that    was    a  hymnal     that   was    a  double   breasted  jacket   on   Malcolm  Little   type   switch    in    the   pattern     of   loveless  riddlers    drifting    into    car   radios     and  infomercials     in     tears   and   handcuffs          

Wednesday, January 24, 2018

Saturday, January 20, 2018

A Place to be Glad

Afro-asiatic    spastic   tickle  in   my   throat    when  I     go   for     it          did  you   know   there’s   sugar    in    the   ocean    tangled like slow laughter in the weeds ?        Did  you   unload    the  gun     or   remember    a   shard  of  coral  calcium    and    send   a trance   yawning for  sunny  mirrors   before it lunged  into  your  artery        either   way   you’re   gone         I   want  to  be  honest      I    celebrated     I   danced     on    the  blunt  glass    of    your   nectarine  attitude    and     sipped    the   bloody   mud  packs   of  my    own  deliberate footprints  on  the  way,    fasted   on     that   blood     until   you   came  back    and   my  throat    constricted    in   a two-faced seizure   of   hope   and    dread.   


Resurrection  is  petty     a   hustle    a    hassle    I  love   you     I’m   so     glad      

Friday, January 19, 2018

Wednesday, January 17, 2018

Tuesday, January 16, 2018

Telegram


Do you see treetops? STOP.  A brush fire cutting through the noxious green. STOP. Brown hands the color of branches waving x’s into in the dander.  STOP.  A random uncle walking into the flames. STOP. He isn’t random. STOP. That’s the genius. STOP.  Of panic turned to wish. STOP. It’s Nat Turner. STOP. I watched a massacre. STOP. All those men on the run with him were hung. STOP. And then cooked. STOP. Eaten. STOP.  I was eavesdropping on God. STOP. She let me try on her costume. STOP. And I got stuck. STOP. And you know what I saw? STOP. That uncle who followed the flame. STOP.  He was going somewhere the others couldn’t yet see for trying. STOP.  And he got there too. STOP. Him and Jim were beautiful blue red and overriding everybody. STOP. And Nat was there beaming, slaying edges for a living. STOP. Sending everybody back-up. STOP. Laughing at death

Sunday, January 14, 2018

There are those people who care about it all

The vogued antidepressant apathy or its cousin  pseudo hip  indifference with an  artistic element/ that nauseating disaffected affect         like   capitalism   but I’m  black  so  catch a rabbit   with  me    pet  its  hung   foot while  I   get this money     which is really   fear    transmuted  to shame and  deep-rooted insecurity   transmuted  to   numb and    here   come  Uncle Tom  n  nem  talking   about   their   institutional    situation           peddling the   scum  on  their   vaseline      always    reaching    for     a   victim         searching  all the kitchens   for  someone  to  coerce   into     mere   representation         and   the gall to   convince    them    they   enjoy  it,     that   it  keeps  them   safe     from   the   nodding   epiphany   of    the     real        self           but   finally      suffering    is    the    distance  between    your    knowledge      and     your       action        measured   in   quiet    complicity   emotional  stinginess   and  brick  buildings      and   if   you   just   let   the   trumpet   shatter    that    constipated    grin       if   you    let    the   shadow      in        you’ll    find    that   going   crazy  in a  society   of  sick  men     is    actually      a symptom     of      healing               that they call   falling   in  love   with your beautiful  black  self   and  admitting it  truly   embodying  it    crazy     a   betrayal    and   keep  it   just enough   at  bay   that sometimes  you  don’t   even  notice    the   rage  of  self-denial   in  its  helpless   demolition of  all of  your inner  resources          and   so      as   the   cop   held  the mortally wounded black man    and  asked  him  who  did  this  to  you    while   he  bled  out  from  the  bullet    wound      fuck  you    
were   that man’s   last   words,  a  red river down the   gendarme’s     arms                                        I  should   care,  and  I  do  

Saturday, January 13, 2018

Sunday, January 7, 2018

Kafka on the Slaveship

Nigga what?  You thought you could write a hood classic about turning black and free and apathetic and neurotic and narcotic and nilotic   and bloodclot and bombaclot and working class and shiftless and Peter Tosh  and  Lonely Sky Boat wasn’t gonna  implode through drafty speakers  in the  rafters  the netting  in  the knee cushions, ‘cause we’re smugglers too  in ways  you  wouldn’t    suspect or abuse out of us    you   thought   you could  wear  blackface and lament it’s baffled magic and    we wouldn’t  be  on the  other  end of  your   victim story  to  show you a hoe  in the field?

Wednesday, January 3, 2018

Bright Mississippi

It has always seemed easier to murder than to change.  The train tracks shiver like confetti in the Salis heat and emit a deranged stillness. There’s no woman on the lobby bench with a briefcase and a private detective. And The Nile Part 1 is scratched on this Sun Ra lp playing in the place of arrival calls so resin leaks from the thin and constant slap of the flute against the idea of a mutable totalitarian proletariat and the skeletons of Semple and his moonshine yarrow dance a farce of larks and logo into the slopes of mud and mama. I miss someone I cannot become. Someone sent me here to make certain to not become her gunned down story but I hunt for a patch of that distortion on the path to overcoming.  I hunt it down and kill it, trade its parts for a trip. This is violent time. This is clean up time. Elijah and Francis have made a pact. They are tenant farmers and lovers and at war and driven toward deliverance. When Elijah discovers Francis is pregnant with the child of their white landlord he grabs her by her perfect nappy roots and drags her to the Salis union station where no trains come in and the endlessly sinking flute maneuvers into arrow. He swings her by the hair and lets her land on the scalding iron tracks, walks away backwards awaiting the imaginary machine that will do the mercy killing for him, backs away into the coaxing bethlehem while she becomes the end of the world, bold and eternal. He raises the yellow girlchild as his own. She is beautiful and humiliating playing in the soft dirt with her brothers and sisters. Some rippling neon   answer to   a circus of whys   and yeses      is always  ready

Tuesday, January 2, 2018