Ritual in Ice and Satin

What’s up with the birdcage    newspaper a corridor of   crimes and protests the layering will become as grotesque and limp as veils in a closet   still covering the heads of the devout imagists the palm leaf waving like a jester in the queen’s  court fanning her majesty because it was the winner whose head we chopped off  and the criminal we made a circle around gripped hands desperately and yelled his past good deeds   at him a violence of contradiction after which he was condemned to a life as a modest well-behaved   man that was his punishment for sacrificing his mother a life without mistakes a heaven with no hell america   with no enemy who cares enough to tear her to shreds

 

Gospel Album Cover Shoot

Slender faces   aren’t patriotic  so slip on a head   wrap play the reformed womanizer    terrorist. There’s something warped   about his smoothness. Are you going for the god is black    crowd or the one god folk. All I know is every friday is good this way.   Let’s stick to the evil that we know. Repeat when  blood    was shed    love was gained          And now for   big joy… his  playful child looks more  like a runaway slave,  smile a hundred thousand    for the return and capture       dead or alive

Do you think you were given a second chance?

I   slept  in the voice   of Edie Sedgwick  for a day depressed     rich naked taking to leotards    and stilettos stealing oaths from biblical  hoes making every would be elvis groan  like richie havens you’ll be a woman    soon a white woman a nightmare a dream       I was having a nightmare in which I became my mother and    then from out of nowhere she split off into her own double     and bit my hand I woke up

No such thing as   blood in America      

OJ’s hypothetical   confession had pet   the foxes into next night     a knife that bright Charlie   he called leader the mole above   every perfect set of lips at least mine,   these ones right here kissed deserted the    end of history her eyes were like tea cups   his were confucius about to weep in stereo      he laughed into a hose that sad snake nobody knows    nobody knows

I  still have   Abbey Lincoln    the last bloodless  name on the brink of   shaking loose

Did you  tune in?    I’ve lived   a mostly nonviolent  life OJ continued again    a nonviolent existence

And I don’t  know where I’d  be if she’d asked  me to try it the   white shit making slits in   her arms more nylons more   ways to match fabric with flesh        he went on if I did it you saw    the photos the hope of red in     a so blue whole made a family bold     accusatory is it possible for a black man to owe  a white man money even then is Halle Berry still paying  her white ex-husband 13 thousand dollars a month to say once   upon a time it was possible honey in a locket encapsulating the  last wing of the final bee whose battered pollen makes good memories  of the daffodil the infidel the ready teller go on rose strapped  in velcro

Did  you blackout?   I might have  he laughed half  timidly half aggressive as a       back up generator the Juice you   didn’t think I knew about Juice?

Black Rapunzel's Confession

Fetish, my favorite place         undifferentiated shades of paris    and wasted aristocracy on the fizzy  blond meat of their delusion          such approval in units called wigs or     gag orders one for all the nights of her  alltime youth and every lisping rooftop dizzy     with tuxedos and blow red lips and yellow afros pinched  into nylons and pinned down along the nape of a brown    skull howling in the shoulders of Jimmy’s guitar no castle     tall enough to unburden the coil or cloaked spiral of her intel         what she knows hidden under a bleached haystack that rivers her back like  the possessive fingers of a deadbeat husband she divorced some time ago but      he’s all in her hair all loose there all wet and civilized

Drug Money / I don't know about these narratives of progress

If one  more score  tells me to   play subtle or  sings what   was it   you said   about luck     into  my cupped      palms  it might get     wrong for a while    like cold stilettos on   a mountain road but couldn’t     find the rest of  the body and the snow leaking limp    blades of ice age was a relief       next likely fix was Huey really smuggling    drugs into east oakland when he was shot was      eldridge really falling off a ladder he’d used to   peep at a naked white woman is addiction the     same as need or more like revenge pulled    the knife from killmonger’s heart then clay’s then ours arson        and charlie’s still crying and snorting his alimony looking  for the punishment he can’t find the strength to inflict on himself as atonement     be subtle tuck hips close your lips tell it all give nothing away        lady my lady my contagious laugh and slaver interior laver, here it means to wash in   French lav (like lava) vay like wavy cosmic wash the labor clean and high say nothing    of the cure for salvation pretend an eighth paced seven days is plenty but your whole place smells   like stale tortilla chips and empty bottles and to get across the room you pretend to be hopping over mister cleaver in    snowfilled stilettos and even then the snowman melts and you slip into the next phase of soul on ice     where he celebrates his crimes and sends for cigarettes and lsd never saying sorry or please never leaving Tangier with         deer and lamb one animal one awful black spell

Public Servant Number One

None  of the blades  in Al Sharpon’s   stomach bump the lattice work   of his slick back to pink oil    status and he will not stop   taking pictures in his undershirt   in DC bathrooms and then I had this    spare kimono from an era of clemency    and flea markets and the urge to burn  the dried roses with it before they bloom again     and as apathetic as liver thistle after   2 AM I believe him when he says it was vitiligo and     not just bleach and good no lye relaxer after Embassy    Suites we couldn’t go back to the Best Western in Newark where     I fell asleep drunk in the middle of kissing him and woke up       to cash and an empty robe hiccups cold tea his shoes full of snow    on the ledge of the balcony

Coming to America

Decapitated on the cover  but    still   looks   a   touch       naive         department    store     glaze      in    the   eyes       holding        Charlie Murphy’s     hand       making      neapolitan        while      just up  ahead      Eddie  Murphy    enters the wrought   iron  gate   with  Arsenio    his bodyguard and her   friend    Bridgette   everyone    wearing   a soft grin   and   post  cold  war/ women in the  workforce      shoulder  pads     that’s  the   scene from  when   my   mom was   on    the     cover   of    the     National Enquirer      I  didn’t ask  too many   questions I  didn’t  want to know  the answer to        Bridgette    was    a  single  mom      at    the time   also   but   between    that  affair   with   Eddie   Murphy   and how they beat her up  real  bloody that night for calling him   a bitch in front of his groupies      and     slipping   on some melted   ice   on the floor    at a   Marina   Del  Rey   Cheesecake Factory  that  time we all saw Millie Vanilli at valet      she    was   able  to call Gloria  Alred   and    ended    up   with     a    beautiful     new  house in Glendale    for  her and her son.         There     are    so    many     ways    to   be   dignified.   So many   ofays  to call  when the story   breaks

 So  many ways  to be saved.  

Cruel techniques