Maafa's Good Diction

I could be that  believable gypsy   in a ski mask     they call me a       secret so I sing in the   cut   

        The  rubber   gesture   guts guesses     at what it is   coming through the   sound      

                                                                                                                                                                I'M SCREAMING        

 a confession     of laughter through    suffering an African proverb   thing I mean turning intensity  against itself as a mode of   assimilation has its own language   good   diction     I’ll  always  miss Malcolm    stay on topic     we were talking about   Black hypocrites invisible  hypocrisy like Blackness like   that small plaintiff nudge like   backstage ugly neon gutter rider     sweat hugging the blue lit rafters and    you laughed to keep from screaming skimmed    the air for amphetamines it’s crazy to know how   to say anything to make anything meaningful/sinful  soulful kinfolk as it is this tenderness in    me is razor scores carved into the concrete tunnel    between Angela and Fred Hampton The interviewer asks are   you in love   with him      and    she cannot    even be bashful     anymore or caveat   to revolution his     corpse at the window     dancing peeping clinging     clamouring her screams the supple   smell of before rain is dwelling     on the Black song asking it back to      itself she just sat there in the dark room   under the grey mushrooming spotlight and giggled in   that direct shrill pitch she could never disguise not    beneath afros not beneath straight perms or braids or   rage or dread or origin fading into war grin I'M  SCREAMING    she    answered                    and       they enter     that silence       together

Blue velvet, and silver

What you won't do

Maafa's Constellation

A new spelling of my name

Maafa’s Interanimation

I love my lion   into low limbs      a lean can   see why the nursery rhymes for lynching begin in his mouth    and meth don’t shout teeth black with   reluctance to shine come shine     

My  lions   are shiny      hind and shins      the heel meets the perineum    and clears the mind or something        now I’m thinking about irons   and my wrists itch of flood of sculpted     air and errance the itch of ache to be    dancing           

          Monsters      in every myth      are the hungry beast   cuddling with hunger   please don’t be hunger         don’t be her   

Be    the   words go     back sleep       tattooed      on that star    as spell but   also arbor arbitrary   hellfire we’re writing      hell’s obituary deleting the       delta in our elbow boats   

Where you gon’ go?   

Are you afraid of where this song is going     as you so lonely ride it

The beautiful and omnipresent love

Maafa 88

With each    kill more   confidence more alliance      more hints of lavender in skyloaf     more bile more no boat bride more inertia to rivals who are no rivals but    a virus of verses kissing her jade ring stride    with a the circle eyes of lazy love             

It's important to me

Past Life Regression/Rebirth

The ruby in the center of the room was another me speaking in genderless tongues, ruminants, peeling the hunted entrance off complicity and with its rind turning the silence elegiac-wide. I had my own room in Iowa. Four years old, I had this one tribunal of my own where I went to meditate and make chimes of the bars of light that the blinds made on wall with moon and siren. I don’t understand where fear was but it never reached me inside the violence of home I felt like an anchor and chord and a record and a miracle, I felt saved already, I felt safe because my parents were a little crazy like in the movies and the unhinged are honest and always looking for evidence of their safety or of the bounty waiting on the other side for when they regain composure. I am the bounty in that house, the evidence, the child prize appraised as obedient, pretty, be easy, I am the other side. My sorcery is— be a miracle and say no with your body. The throat closed and third eye readied sustenance, I ate my dreams. They tasted like blood and denim. I drank my blood. It was the cool mud of ancient Minnesota. In this one most memorable feeding dream, maybe I was abducted. I traveled beyond the horizon separating event from event, that lying line of blue, that aqua whimper against the onslaught of truth. Either way I went to sleep, mama tucked me in, everything was patient. And I woke up, arms in an x over my chest, in a headband of shells and feathers and a leather dress, bison and lines of orange paint on my cheekbones, like I’d been sent back to see who I’d been in a past life. A girl, peaceful in battle, a swarm of heroic indifference to struggle, a matter of fact nihilistic hero. I was shown some past life self and also joined with her as sigil, healer, letter of sky in the bled out genocidal reel. Being reborn, I got up, walked across the hallway to my parents’ room to check on them like a spy. They were ok, quiet. I went back to bed and contemplated the familiar unknown of rebirth. I was four, I’d never seen a picture of an indigenous girl in the soil waiting to be consecrated, but I knew her, like I know myself. How could I speak about my trip to the end of hunger? There’s never been a more complete and urgent sense of peace on the killing floor. There’s no road as unspeakable as a child who still remembers her previous lives, caught between every tongue, their rumbling significance, their appetite for reunion with the now. What saved me in that house was the spirit remembered in flesh that neverending night/now. Escaping the distress of logic is what saves me.

Requiem for Mamie Till

On the edge   of duress     this pressured   ecstasy of leaping   let the people see    what I see  

     there  is something   already too   symmetrical like   angels in Emmett's       manner some nerve in his    eyes as crisp as September roads   some road in him as smooth       as it smothers the crooked attitude of   those who beg to touch it the flickering   acquisition of that shine his perfect pearl lips  and shimmering teeth we go blind when he’s happy     and she is prone to shimmering with him and all   the men wear big black hats to her daggers to her      eagles to her solomon’s leap and they are prone  

                                                                                                                to shimmering   with her    

  Revenge as  endless and    unwedded as love     we made needles in   the skulls of evil men     and then left them   to their entropy thinking     

         they  got   away with    something swoop   kissing at the verdict   like the frozen corpses of  Pompeii Mississippi they really   did this kissing / killing filled  their DNA with needles you have to   laugh at their ugliness you have     let the whistle echo in them like an itch to  dissolve all will but repentance            

Mamie  will never  be the same   

She can see daylight   on the other side       it has a hidden name      

Let the people  see what she sees  

Maafa’s Equipment

What  is the  black body   when setting  up floating fences      when I moved and noticed    the dead lemons pentagrams   for love rotten     rubber yellow like a low rain and   it glows as the ghost of a dead   sun it’s roads unzipped to show devils     we love forever honeycomb low veil will you   come home and wave slowly Will you roam   to me with wax and memes clean my delirium and   I get hungry punch the dirt like hunting and swallow   something country bounty slips down me like leaky snow holds  in me a calm knowing when the land will change hands     it will already be a ruins I rinse my mouth in blood     I love the bite marks of tractors on earth but I wouldn’t wanna    be her        

Infant Energy/ Infinity

This time traveling beyond language was a survival   vigil hold mechanism  at   bay but     also the chance  in it the chant  me(chan) summon this   time all of your agency     at infancy you fancy this  time almonds and the crease in the   air on the altar cowards whispering   their prayers at babies we say resurrection  this way and some are shamed into surrender   and some coerced and some just don’t remember the song    of themselves come back to learn it over anterior return   retinue it burns in the new bodies of stars of cannibal  roses     

And   the the titled  heave of any    ultrasound meme       is getting around like     a rumor and rummaging through the   sun’s belongings I don’t   see so much of a difference   between ownership and hysteria     I don’t see these things as different   things and my sense of pleasure is in cherishing     the perverse unity of speechlessness and forever this   way the way the womb does hug its phantoms     in tom toms and Rosecrans / normandie not the one    in France not to outlaw digression but to long for the line of     sight from purchase to loss of will and let it recoil: a healing     

Reenactment

There can be tenderness        in the cedar wrapped satin    instrument of torture I beat with   a hammer until it believes it is really     a foot & my bloody feet look good in   the field like how they would appear in      leaving the slender green gashes make an alphabet      of  that    way  over there!    scatological   departure with         an objective so clear     and coiled its    

modesty     will make you   weep      

The modesty   of a Black  pianist because   it is not sublimated     rage makes me     weep     

that    pathological       tenderness of     this and this   and this black body        bleeding nods and curses       seeps into the dirt as render then     whatever murder silence is       

His           immersive sincerity         his endless childhood         a rubric for the silly hope     we all keep in our skin       like buckets of candy and the    sugar never expires but its sweet fades       to the faint funk of daylight in a movie            

         What a  terrible    way to keep     a record

How to Style Scars

These shrines are telecommunication devices      their displaced patience becomes oppression     a totem’s pressure on the spine no sun spin     blind and lucid is a brisk skin of a    laugh or wince the light in half toward the black     thought or some pathogenic gimmick and its     phlegm of cranes something dainty went up a ladder   made of the body’s excess its surplus its majestic overproduction         and the bevel was thin and pale and forever a lesson to   rub   

               She   squinted      to signify     one of the   jive healers was    learning sincerity see   jesus seasick jesus she    widened to intensify the significance    of no one in particular the        branding iron and some candles a net     sac of swollen peaches as it punches the pole      that sweet illicit juice of flesh slides down the      isle linoleum orange lunge is this what you call a wedding         we met in the metro no retrograde no blood gave off    the aroma of transmutation like the unspilled blood of in a    puddle of shrines I was always wearing velvet behind some elephant     man with a television show and no mansion I was a good girl wishing     on stars while my hard r sizzled    

And   it occurs     to me these    ruins are the     blighted heave of   an endless trance   and we might even       like them that one dance     lifting the invisible weight in segments    of giggle makes it seem like we like   a world almost over like if there’s something    we’re late for we’ll feel just distorted enough   to make a move        

              And    that was    the new grammar            mumbled garden of nerve    and charge and here’s what       we’re not finna do and    are you a martyr or a lot   of dizzy renditions of what if or       whatever the killings are pathetic tributes     to the power of black life you say I can’t   hear you say it!           

               He    was busy    kicking the    ribs of a   child and her       skill was less death      

She   was busy      reviving the   shrine and it     looked better   than free shipping over   fifty dollars paradise      

Whistler   at white girl          this is your likelihood    coffin paradise  

Go   off,   queen   paradise    

Wait       softer   paradise                          

Are   there   maps to    get us back     to ship     I think it’s   a pitiful riddle     on the railroad   I think the lyric       being over at last is     so shirll about its presence as     disaster to get some attention     we have this wicked laughing disaster    with no name now we named her     Ma a fa not worried nods don’t   blame me 

And   obedience             is no longer cunning         these shrines are coming back    to life to tell you what     lie you’re sick with   that victory also oppressive   also let me out of this boat          

Nina   goes on     trembling            

          LeRoi’s    bright red     eye at the   oral history recording           

Miles’   dick shriveled     in the pool 

       Get   off my    dick       

My   mamma   loves Dick  Gregory   

But    Cavett had    every guest        

But  Gregor  Samsa   fasted for   two years to   protest the Vietnam     War maybe            

        He    drank   only water             He bought Yoko Ono     her first black event       in attention   

The   drug   addicts     are   in a pile    on isle one   

And  I saw   Michael Jackson    come in the backdoor    screaming did you   see him?

Run on

Child  Born On a Wednesday   who  knows  why we   keep the  names of the men   who beat us   my mama said dust and  taxes I rubbed   some syllables into good   drugs club went up     club went up in flames   damsel came Denzel came Malcolm’s      pain came off like a veil after they       shot him he’s on the gurney smiling he’s gone    on renaming pride shame like a master asterisk     drifting between his first and seventh eyes I wanna   keep his name some bride bribed plain— Maafa X I wanna     fix the hex on pain kept in living vessels and called     soul on that exactly deranged lie it got loose in his skin then and revolution      hence I wanna nah nod into a noose to do this / to undo this      

Phosphorescence yet

Sharing became my coherence    water music water music   Basinski Eisenstein Van Peebles had  I sold myself to fall in love?

Thinking  (of) who   put her head   in the oven  

Thinking, you are an intense piece of light

I just might   

Goodbye, for now

Angels bow at the sky       

In any unorthodox way/ I thought it was beautiful

The Slaves are Crazy

Decadent  with intention   and horsemen    sanity will be an omen when it comes

The broken fever      that lasts forever          will be an oath of participation    

And   the rebellious  heart would rather    be crazy than accomplice   

The slaves  are crazy     they   halve their   fists into these   knives turn the nave   

And the whole congregation  into tomorrow’s food    say massacre is sacred and  earlier you said this

    I mean  had the  tables turned       flipped over

I mean  if the    great paintings   of the holy   feasts we me  were Maafa you would  

witness      the clear luck   we crave beginning  in your erasure from   memory

And so    she went   on determined  to forget the    danger, onward, knives     for fingers

To  chop  the range   of crop like   a lobbyist I’ll   trade you this hallucinating    plant for first dibs

On   sabotage        

                    The sabot is a peasant  shoe (hear the show in the robot, the sad oath of signifiers)   and I’ll trade you for two show shoes in which I do  this switching and running through this forest it gets vivid  

 The sabot   is also a device that ensures the correct positioning of a bullet in the barrel of a gun    So to  come in   my shooting    shoes I will be   traded or killed by  you or running these    choices thrill me, throw me for       a loop? As in lasso I’m so   tied and up in these choices I look   like a pretty number 8 don’t I look   infinite innit?

The   sabot  is also  a box from     which casino  cards are dealt

The  common thread   between these objects   arrives at the walking     loudly that makes the intended meaning     of sabotage and the slaves are crazy      we thank your fake god and walk as loud   as possible in our crowded wooden clogs in    gunning gambling feet you leave Maafa no choice       but sabotage which is suddenly a feasting festive word       for black progress for a deck of blank cards some      shoes and some blushing bullets

Would you do don't explain/be glad too

Slave Demo Tape

Magnificent   clamor magnificent   sin nubian hinter      his and hers invincibility   shackle on our hill I’ll ball             I roll in the grass action movie star   style I’ll hold the child like I rein   the horses I’ll blame the source of my  power for my pain I’ll be correct I’ll be correctional    I’ll be so courageous my heart will go on my       daybreak won’t wander in the dirt I won’t see daddy’s skull       or Nipsey’s in that soil I’ll get us a building how they   love their definitive structures their limits or boundaries so many words  for rethinking no where I’ll let the building laugh us off it’s math of cliffs          call this demolition call this upswinging falcon singing and yes I have this demo    tape unraveling this naked magnetic thing yes there’s a record we left in the   kef and dirt as rut as slaughter leather that was us

Keeps Georgia On

Messianic, this ship

Lanonic and not like Lacan     neuroplastic not like a dolphin  fanning Fannie Lou Hamer from the  salt lamp window don’t make sense      fingerprint on the mirror then      abduction has its resonance

It   sounds      again

But that is no reason to blame the large birds of prey for carrying off little lambs   

Having been taken     ravishment a fake   thing victimhood is       and so what is it that this   torment really wanted?

Not the   pathos  of distance     not    the path       to jazz   and rap music     and misogynists and    this strutted witness                    not Mingus’ big ass violin which    brings tears of joy to my eyes cracks    me open where the messiah shows himself      for the murderer he’s been

We    wanted          to be forgiven          like my hero mentions into    the mirror again for the murders   we intend

Large     merchants     in her skin       a big selling      hint a woman has   her prices this ship  might be a kite         on the lips of her    endless confession

How glad I am

Catatonia

Antonia   Antigone your   moan be a koan   a keeping sphere or    natal occlusion and country  

numbed    blooming        alloy from scream   to mumble hip hope    of the only authentic ones      

Catatonia    my tongue      is slipping down     my throat as the    serpent lips in my spine       

which    is choking    too into the arrow   note green note la   lutta intoned against coaxed  honor

there    were no    words on   there that   body hadn’t articulated        when it said bending in every    

endlessly    sturdy austerity    ecstatic you   won’t  need  those chains      

Speechlessness     the place where thought   collects like a hive   and hides in like effort   in the

   force of grace

Is     the other   side of  the scream      at the primal scene      swaying not yet saying       no         which hums        like undeserved      offering not yet  saying indeed            which     lies

like     yesterday      same as saying   nothing is so     alive I’m a music       Maafa a muse in her

Atavistic   visceral  hold up    that’s the girl’s     name a silent    killing some strange voyeur     

Yearning          for herself who    she is strangling

Maafa's Lariat

We are gardeners and daughters of gardeners and we twist proudly      leisure is replacing ritual and I’m not sure if its    about evolution or the barren land but I can hear    myself think again and certain that the empire is temporary      I’m touching the public soil with bare hands and rehearing the     nearness bashful as a fold rehearsing the clearing to be sure we   neglected the necks of noon the next things and talked over them in     radio took a dose messianic unknowns and wondered at the nommo which somewhere    else is infinitive for ‘to make one drink’ I am making one drink in the gallop toward     garden relearning Gunther and thread spun to arrow where tapestry becomes bondage in the very language      you are wearing the close word and in its charge it multiplies together we defy the whole     swamp this way shedding the dissociative brackets for the path from sheath to strangle to black angel and   in our charge it rains so hard all the ducks drown slow There’s always a brighter downfall ripe for    celebrating we are gardeners and daughters of gardeners and we root proudly knowing plants to be the    reborn saints rehearng their hue as a row of muted sun while a hawk holds a ribbon up to the untransmuted energy     Remains keep coming and we glove and store the ruins as if some mummies made new There is something alive on me      if you come now you will hear it humming if you leave low it will let you know: the view of the dead slave in the beautiful apartment with its bright walls and vast proportions is criminal, is war     is this the code   to the garden’s    gate this looking in   and naming this is   the code to the garden’s   gate! And the raised dead   move like the breaking of silence      and since I didn’t say the shattering they      move in a ritual of twitching tones and atonement       drinks itself a chalk sky a talkie treating the   banality of horror like a rival smiling fiend to pry    the catatone off its throat these are our seeds     what seeds are these?

Everything begins with love

Literally the Autopsy (of the so-called black body)

No matter how far gone he is   he never lets himself get killed  in a dream and this vicious  nonchalance this Sports Chalet shit     he pulls when he’s afraid of   his vision hems and seams the scam like    a carcass waiting to be kissed painted given    its inverse manger yesterday’s kef in tomorrow's  coffin we have the loftiest vendettas we vex and    buck and bled out the tire swing looking for the    meaning of the house it sways from like a vacant clock     of Maa fa do not let the clot lodge somewhere obnoxious and   watchout for the stiff wrists of addicts and what’s trapped inside   his head as madness laughing comes out catatonic screams we need to deal with     catatonia some more the entire turbulence of the digital world silent as a   blizzard as it nears itself dirty as thursday jupiter and rage day to grow    and spiral we need to deal with idols and the sulking boundary between eyes and      yes we need to see inside of the genocide to its heart which must be broken      wound up & dreaming of its own murder it loves go so much we must deal with  blame but who? I feel strange as an angel telling you to shape your mind and die but    what a caress we get in your stillness and we can say the deranged names of western hills        like all bets are off Leon lost his mind waiting for Maa fa to admit she knew where the body was and    float through new snow to the tucked black shoulders on the white bones of water I half remember him being awake   when they took him away in chains and suede it’s so hard to say genocide but Maafa comes out riding how the  savior rides with the endless middle ahhhh or ox and the yes / no eyes at the end of suffering when it becomes delirious        lucky she is the one watching their broken bodies beg for more she is the one saying yes and no and  softening sinners’ limbs into lasso

Maafa in Constant Gardens

Torch  the crop    to bring rise   to fertile land and   dance with jodorowsky around the  shouting arrows

I don’t   want to    get all mystical    about growth  but torch the crop   to bring rise to fertile  land

the  black gardener  monsanto murdered     audibly is leaking  and squealing just beneath   the burn his body becoming   fertile land I don’t mean   to blame fertility for killing but  torch the crop and a fire spills its   nerve erotic destroyer and what I cannot   destroy shiva will destroy for me and listening   I see his gust of needles land on g and  grab a moan I keep saying to speak is to touch     he says please touch yourself for me he settles     beneath the torch a middle c orchestra trying for    bea and to be about it row of orange orphan clouds spilling  into new sky like the mild crackles in black hallways and the one  come from the killers to swallow torches is talkative as a  reach of sunflower pollen in the isle pollen in the limbic    shyness of voices that can feel themselves copulating in the field helplessly     like echoes and cold moondust falling flinging itself at the mercy of the season   of broken crops that kiss to hunt the rain that suck on garnet to keep thirst     away that chase the firefly into the beetle’s name so you’ll never know shit from magic unless   you burn one down oh cowards how I treat your effigies like flags of unborn nations and    your flowers the first fascists again fascism has a pact with spring investigate nothing and no   one but the land and the mouths will show as crows with flutes for wings where gardens are   for warnings that never end

Maafa One

There’s a man on the surface of your skin,  

remember?

      Mandarin oranges straight from the can   pinched like pimp hand zeros (heroes?)

I was choking

So I only ate soft things    no chewing choking on the softening seed of  a bullet appalling me

From my mother’s  throat Maafa    can’t breathe  the boat to shore

Maafa   don’t study    war no more  

Sometimes we call this intention       but in this case it's that she’s onto the banality of horror  

She’s  bored with the angry   men their broken   livers bending the skin between the brows

   Into    ladders         there has be    a keener voice    a sturdier steam to  tend

This    is the   end of the   beginning of genocide      it begins swallowing soft things

And then pans    to Quincy a    recorder Edward Kennedy Ellington’s  steeple chasing him

In     tented Italian       footage of everything  but the passage down the canal  to level where

He    he calls   the notes  no more innuendo     tell me

Quincy is holding  our baby

Black beauty is the most powerful currency  in the world