Men, Etc.

A thrilling escape to freedom

Smoking Dope

Even the lantern I hold up to the jutted flame is vicarious,
I mean if I don't do this shit why do I understand it so well   casually like a game     find the damned so glamorous
and all the fiends heroic     at least the talented ones             like mammies and jazz, mundane obscenities    that spasm of our common myth, that's all the laughter   and  shatter  I can lift in     and live         How talent invents trouble because we get bored with the thwarted neurotic trill  of elsewhere      and conform to that boredom  as cowards   and  loud capital      and that's      what trouble is,    a certain  sound in the feeling     having conformed to boredom to stump the soul   a sudden mutation cattle run  not like revolution,  not courageous enough to bluff in circles       but like   space travel ,  quantum     how our values      make the   money   sad    and profuse   as a user    settling  his millions    into the trunk of my father's better corvette   and    letting   me watch   my father get in,  hostage to his opinion of what's    happening       again           and drive into the ocean   of my   style     this is   my style afterall,   my form — the seedy   and shy way we   take to  the edge   all lazily   and intentional       show  out      grow   a habit  to shout about    the way I'm addicted to men     at last    to the power of speaking    that longing that always grabs for a new name    can celebrate   the   playful retina   between experience   and   dream   the way  I    mean to celebrate     the fancy wreckage   of   all our  flashbacks     to              have  mercy on my     shadow     dear lord       I     believe     you    have broken titles   and ties    with  the cold safety of omniscience       to     patrol the unknown for royal niggas      mutter our names on royalty checks   like a series of insults   until   we get     it       whole,         and         teach   us to shrug like angels        That's one theory  

Medicine for Soft Times

Turns out all my heroes beat their wives. How redundant. And my anti-heroes shove them into the footwork like diabetic soldiers. My circulation craves the wine of I told you so but I'm uncoerced and free to shudder the levels of mistress all over the court   ship     ships have always been difficult for us   and the water they lean on and what's all the fuss about the love of boys   who could have been men      there is no weakness associated with this    just excellent nostalgia   that almost French kind of lime glimmer in a grey corridor of shiny niggas    ah  that word binds itself to hope  in my every nursery   does that sign really say    service meat     is there a new dimension of food   we can't yet  see  but  as blood and beauty 

Daft   patches of dimes in the iris   shyest dancer    actually the boldest when the lights blur whys   and wise       First Amiri Baraka died.   Then my grandfather. Then Bobby Womack. Then Horace Silver.    Then the land.    Then the fantasy of the land.  Then the lamb in the hybrid   jesus idea.    Then the idea itself. Wide   is that belt they would whip out   wide as we could ever spread our perfect legs    rough as the empty tire swing in my   inkling of   home   with my other king and my other king      I think suffering is finally the only joke      the thing my incident woke   up / too    another black comedian with a gun and a loose child     this one adopted      this   one napoleon   this one   with a time fetish   this one    with a couple of drums locked in the basement   this one  who loves   to wait   for the night  to strike its most intimate dice pose   and clap alone til it grows into morning  

I'm not saying these are soft times but Imma find me        some medicine  I'm not saying I lost mine    but Imma find my    men again,  even the liars    keeled over the fetal bodies of their forgotten widows lobbying for silence     can be recovered     like an herb    I'm finally going into to the forest with someone who's been the forest    and I'm finally the one who's going into the forest and the one who's been  

Élan Vital (Mesmerizing Niggas)

Cause it's like a big dream. Cause she's on the dream plane. They've found a way to turn even the the safe zones at the end of Alice Coltrane's Prema into commercials and advertisements for Home Depot and shit no one ever cared about but everyone did in bouts of situational play me for the herd, mercy hurts like pretense, relief would be too intense sometimes, our nerves shattered and reinvented as moods we apply to all this terribly imperative information. For example Martin Luther King's closest friend said Martin  used to use the church collections money to hire white prostitutes and beat them silly at sex parties like the cops did his women in those peaceful protests. If there's no such thing as justice then why don't they make commercials about this so I don't have to read about it casually in between buying heirloom seeds and sandals, look out the window and a lonely g pictures his life as the yuppie couple across the street walking their german shepherd at 6AM and denial is the only organizing principal we all soldiers for the war on our own naturalness not that it should have come naturally to King to think in every direction at once but because that's what niggas do     that's what heroes do      that's the dewy rosehued flesh of a true day in the morning