Maafa rubs some ribs to spices

He says acumen, she says charlatan      the charts with the lavender tint    depart from madness like responsbility  does in theory showing up on time   is sane says he’s fine and she’s mellow

       He says ruminant  she says balloons     send the statue to   heaven on red balloons     it’s so stiff it crumbles  midair and some stellar dna          reaches the tourist pretending to   be jesus now he is

She   says hourglass   he says forever     shoulders pressed to  the water talk to   the money changers tell   them this wealth is bland        and restless limpid or else so   intense it crawls on all fours and then   claps for itself

Let   the bells    let the blissed  out elisonian bullshit       let the elevator operator  with the shoe shine kit let   the idea dictate its bias      as you walk it to bed on stilts       with this child in your belly

She   says   easy she    says I miss  my uncle Charles      and I’m walking high    as he goes to grin

When his center was filled with venom and he asked her to drink it

A dumbfounded   anemia that forcibly materialized    in stenches and stingy lies    only the girl versed in wandering  nuance could perceive when it oozes   and the ooze of it soothes me like  indifferent sunlight that came from roosters      to the huge breasts of exploited waitresses trotting    back and forth between people who like the sound of  ice and guitars are you pressuring divinity into   obscene vanity because you’d miss a chilled glass and a lamplit   booth upon loosening that grip on strip malls strippers barbecue      another skewer goes right through your palm for emphasis are you gonna clean    that up?

Maafa's Crescent Incentives

The math of the skin of maidens    attacks them and then retreats.   Parts of a body believing themselves whole   like synecdoche or the deed on the skinny     property crumpled as erotic pills and plows She   won’t be pale just so she won’t be the bleak one and only   willing to add up to herself in your eyes your easy eyes     

Best of the luck to you with the Black Beauty

If we could scatter intricacies or let them billow,   echo billow. If our intricate needles could lift the low of nudges.    If ghetto melancholia were the altar and salve if evaluation   meant understanding dangle and banner and a whole green    star the shooter he was beautiful he was larchmont he was    my father come back to even the score he was anyone they    couldn’t afford for the commercial or the program and me and dramamine        and the confidential smile between victim and suitor he didn’t pull he didn’t        wear a tuxedo he didn’t choke on his own blood this is a song for the ruthless      and there is no innocent music

The sense of privacy in Gwendolyn Brooks’ Maud Martha and Jean Toomer’s Cane

To gather the last bit of shameless dignity we have    and wash our own dishes chipped and writhing with the sad chicken    from after the war and mutter  sooner     or later      somebody is gonna  show up about these trees     meaning     I’d   to see   you today     after snidely   slitting my eyes     at a few bicycle police.   I’d like   your embrace   to mean they felt   my indifference like  knives that I’m wistful  and dangerously approaching. Is   this what it feels like to    be on a bicycle with guns    in your holster and thrones. There    are people behind these doors who remind me    how to be intricate and recognize it    and let the man dance as I am dancing         for the camera that never comes nor ends up in  so much trouble you have to describe his hands in the cut   up gotcha color There is a way to be lazy and wait like a rumor      for domestic life to fulfill what it has run from in fear these cowards     who are also heroes of the small the fall these lies that go on forever     ironing shirts pressing confections into their mouths or television shadows in their  sleep like approximations of casual sex the junk of this privacy becomes tribe   a voluntary Birmingham

It’s either toxic sincerity or healing belligerence

I misread falterless as fatherless       then started a fight about what   time it is. Won. It’s one time     and then next time feels minor    and canary compared to fighting about       paternity. He’s bleeding like I was bleeding      he’s yellow like I was green. Alice’s tambourines     their manic softening suffering so I fought because   otherwise I’d be mothering another one another one I  paused the Soft Machine to sip some dumb iron messianic sap discovered   this paddle slapping the water like toll on that ass hypnotized   mesmerized

Far Beyond Hysteria

I guess I’m reluctant to confess this shit

The one about the white hitman  who coaxed me into his bed   with some liberation fantasy

Papers I couldn’t   read or wouldn’t          and left me for dead when  it got too good

They  took him  to the madhouse     to treat his fever       Took me for a barn owl  

And  caught our   offspring on  a raggedy stack  beside articulate livestock        By Black Spring

We  had Lena  Horne      and I was nearly    a doctor to keep  telling inklings and kindling

Crazy  little me    Beautiful me      exuberant about my grief       healing everybody but  daylight

Bright Pagan in her Pretend Isolation

The  undead  be devious      Their horizon is  silence Their pleasure   a form of doom rhymes with   Adam and union pool  comfort & the eroticization of  the whole personality so that    each swoop of value is a shudder    or muttering rushes of double names emptied by  the sharp thrill of terror the blurring of        belief and laughter in a chapel or more rational      place of worhsip what about a bath of light on the letting           what about the way we ruin everything is nice peaceful generous          dancing alone naked in the privacy of no shame I realized the dawn coming on             I heard the sky switch hues and the loose voice of chorus too

Maafa   you ain’t   pastoral  

  

    Nor  are you   sidity though     

Nor   home

Nor  anywhere   else

That their image of a hero is someone who is licensed to kill

July 4th on Lake Michigan

The yellow roses tarnished instead of blooming   like they were taking on the trauma of my reunions      all in the mind like snakes wind chimes

Hollow Mountain, That Holy Mountain

Everything I’ve  ever known to be  true is barefoot in grass with me     stomping the chapped geese   feathers. I passed a dead bird.    Then I passed a blue bird. Loose here.  And the bratty tree fingers giggling, churning.    If the monkey in your dream was on a leash it   forecasts happiness in love what a dream book that   was. We made enough money to play with infinity. Enough   monkeys on leashes to call it a wedding. I’m not jaded I’m perfect.    I’m taking today for several walks. The new Drake is awful and   soothing who do you chain to buildings, romance me. We had enough feet   in the grass to get back to get back to back loose / here The crisis is   this brittle nostalgia for where is the bright of nississippi is    the risk is it loose here? His dad beat his mom and him and the overseer beat    his dad he beat my mom and then the old bombs are stored in a hollow   mountain whose peaks pray for obsolesce and I sent him there and now I  dream of rabid animals who turn into men and follow me to that Holy mountain       that hollow mountain I never asked to be a bride I never trusted the ones who weren’t belligerent    and stumbling into to fortunes or furnaces, you know. I fed the baboon in my dream it bit my nipple and screamed with laughter    then flung itself into the explosive hollow of that holy mountain