Love should not serve as the cord of a desperate soul.

It is what is closest to my mind and furthest from my face.

Kill me dead to find me

Slain, slew slay me and I am found

My body is my body in either beauty or despair.

No chain will bind me greater

than my own ensnaring arms,

not even your Honesty that is so much to want

will thrust its hands around my neck and force me

to relinquish that bequeath unto none but I.

Not that life should be so dishonest, mind you,

but people rarely take up truth matriculating

along the borders of this shared monolithic shrine.

These are words that I write.

They don’t feel like me. They

don’t know me at all

sometimes.

I more than once

bore the gift of silence

for the trauma

of my words

like wounded vultures

writhing in the dust. 

Words are with God

and through them

God traps and transforms. 

Little niggas with more heart than Jesus, sport big ass pistols

through a land of crosses swaying in an incandescent night. 

I remember when my grandma listened

to me dance. She said it sounded like raindrops.

Snappin’ them fingers, thinkin’ nobody lookin’

invoked the rhythms of the water,

made present by the rhythm in the blood. 

A cradle of discord

deceives with tumultuous wails

from between my legs.

Sex calls honor

belonging

to mother and father.

Be in their image but

bypass their mistakes,

do as I say not as I do

and God reveals

in the language of the stones,

“Know me in them”,

do as I say not as I do.

Dancing is the moment where shame is silent.

It is as sacred to God as the prayer

because it withholds nothing and asks for all.

A smile without torment is rare for our breed

still cloaked by the garments of the cross.

Be with me. Wear strands of my golden noose.

Let them curl and drink, not water, but wisdom of the self,

pouring out through the ruptures of a punctured lung

Creep up the skin and take the mouth.

Give it words, give it prayers,

that do not feel too cruel for

flesh, that do not stagnate

nor go quietly

Because it is love, then love should free

the caged children—

the dove, peacock, lion and dog

but because it is the old love,

humbly beautified by Sebastian’s rosettes,

and Wilde’s green carnation, and because

it is not the truth of many, championed by

a legion of defenders ,

Flesh cries out the memory

of the tomb, a catacomb of

shattered perfection where iniquity

breeds into the space

between the stars

another poem with a title

DeCrowned
Boy, you need to go on and cut your hair. You look so handsome with your hair cut.
Don’t nobody want to see them ugly ass naps in your head.
Your kitchen is all jacked up. Look at all them peas you got cookin’ back there.
Them shits’ll go to poppin’ when that comb get to ‘em.You can’t get no job with your head lookin’ all kinds of ways.
Don’t nobody want a nigga with a nappy head,
I promise you.

I keep tellin’ you to comb your goddamn hair,
but your silly ass don’t listen. Don’t no white man want to give you no job no way.
All you doin is makin’ it easier for him. You givin’ him the perfect excuse to kick your monkey ass to the curb.
Don’t say a nigga never told you nothin’.
You know a nigga speak the truth.

My thoughts steadily move towards devotion
as my words carry out pitiable prayers
to God and Family
though these oaths are breaking

                                                                   Begging for


                   
where to go (where not to go)



                                                                                or

                                                what to say (what not to say)
or

how to be (how not to be)

but I don’t ( I do, I really do)
                                                              so

                                                                                                  kill me now (let me live)


                               kill me now (let me stay)


                                                                                                   kill me now (let me love)





                                                              kill me now (let me die)

My lover marked me
with purple,
instead of red,
so that I might
be buried deep
in obfuscation,
a night with neither
moon nor
stars.

In my new guise
of blue bruises
and blossoming
welts,
emerged infectious
twin-spirited blasphemies:

the occult—
pair bonded swans
and blackened dancers’ feet

the romantic—
stabbings of the cochlea,
burning petals of the lotus


The obvious—
curdled milk,
the sweet stench of fresh shit
a pus filled wound

are fact without deeper consideration,
horrific and disgusting
which neither
the occult
or the romantic
can afford to be

only  
revealing themselves
with unseen calm brushes against the skin,
like cockroaches flying in rooms
with the lights turned off.

Colors stain the field. A magnolia tree

vibrates through its center with a quieting

rustle reigning over a neighborhood

desperately trying to be saved from decay.

Lone travelers are silent in their crumbling troubles,

they blight the space before the house of the cross,

rounded by the purple veil that grace its arms.

The patrons trickle in with their black crowns

and capes of white, breathing glad tidings

for a new morning allowed to their old bones.

Their faith is love, tested and refined,

but possibly chiming

passionate solitude

made into a cage

of brilliance. 

I picked up a
strange tape box when my daddy
was moving things
out of his storage unit.

Depicted on it in many separate frames
was an orgy,
though that word would not come for some time.

Sex was already
in my vocabulary
because I looked it up
in the dictionary,
along with penis ( ding-a-ling )
and vagina (           ).
I wrote those words
as much as possible
so I could have
them in my imagination,
like griffin and unicorn.

Playboy showed me sex
before the tape box,
but only in the form of vanilla duets,
rather than as hypnotizing
bacchanal ( an episode
of Hercules: the Animated Series)

Picking cotton
is plucking
the white rose.

Both gnarl
the hands
with sharply
drawn scars
as they’re
bequeathed unto others
and not the hands
that pick them.  

My boots have a horrible odor to them.
The cause ―
manly feet sweat,
a hole at the heel,
and leather
never carrying a particularly
delicate scent.

The aromas together—
quite undoubtedly
paint air at a distance.

Boots like mine are best
left outside small
rooms with no
air flow.

I wore a hand-me-down jacket for years,
given to me with a hole already in its pocket.
Nobody knew, even as my hands shook from the cold.

I used to touch my jacket’s soft innards all the time.
The cotton was compacted
and wouldn’t come apart easily

no matter how much I “accidentally”
let my hand slip in the curious hole
to touch, over and over again,

irresistibly, as if exploring
imagined organ meats
naturally came first among
the exotic perversions,
living in the tide pools
of childhood masturbation.

I looked at every other child in dance class
with their clean white socks on

and stupidly stared down,
as if I didn’t remember my own dingy mismatched pair


with the left sock having that damn hole in it,
big enough for three little toes to poke through.

It wasn’t the first time
I ain’t had no good socks on my feet
and it wouldn’t be the last.

A brown bag of pecans beside the feet

and two pecans in the palm,



means the sweet nut meat of at least one  





as reward
with each pair.

When I was little
and still held
fondness toward outside play,
where tree climbing
meant speaking
with the woodpecker’s
holes and making
wrinkled tree flesh

into a lover’s torso
and pressing hands
against viscous trails of golden blood,
I ate azaleas with my older brother.

We ruthlessly snatched the flowers
from their branches,
like tearing legs
off writhing toads.

We stole the sweet nectar
into our mouths as if
to drug ourselves
into the state of Gods.

Petals were torn apart,
inspecting their miniature pink cheetah spots,
and mashed beneath our feet into a dirty paste
of pink and brown.

We stuck the bottoms
of the stamens
into our mouths,
pretending that they were

toothpicks.and as pollen
peppered our upper lips
and cheeks,
we seduced the monarchs.

I saw a dog’s corpse
on the side of the road
tossed beneath hydrangea bushes,
with fur painted by
dust and clotted blood
and feet caught
up in rigor mortis,  
as if still racing
toward mischievous squirrels.

What I thought were
maggots turned out
to be caterpillars,
and what I presumed were
flies darting
were bees.

They took to the flowers,
thoughtlessly accepting
the macabre perfume.

On a Chicago winter night,
every snowflake falling at a corner
for but a moment,
stands beyond its brevity,
becoming a haloed moon,
in the glow
of an ugly
overhanging
streetlight.   

another titled poem

Regurgitation

Painted eve of blackened sky, blue blooded clouds

and twinkling cold stones of smokeless fire,

frame the scene of a midnight murder.

Gods amongst the gutters living constantly amongst the shifting world

of diamonds on the breeze, across frozen desert streets.

The adventures of two eyes that watch the seen and unseen

take up words that neither sign nor sing.

Beware fair matches struck to wake the sleeping world.

Now all is fire and ash, kisses and embers.

Progress and destruction, ancestral and contained

clipping laughter of elitism and dominance

muddied cries of disenfranchisement and removal.

We cannot return the forms our Gods amongst the gutters once wore

before imagination led them home to

the state of the unformed, without outline

without flesh nor bone to cling to,

so doomed they remain,

as ashes of a gasoline blaze,

adorned with icicle crowns of shame. 

Here's a poem that actually has a title

Bazaar

house of mirrors—

a train of loveless people.

house of horrors—

a world with love in it.

Tunnel of love—

Mirrors in mirrors in mirrors.

Am I a halo, like the wood or stone?

Can I be soft in my living grace?

Lose me and love me

into the waters

forget me and cherish me

through the fire

and see

we do not burn but shine

like last burning embers

of the twilight hour 

Spell the echo of sacredness

wandering from the forest and pastures,

like the tip of the unspooling fern, presenting

itself

where apparent is lost fly on glass worlds, neither

peacekeeper nor tyrant, neither insider nor outsider

bamboozled by real frames rather than open expanses

of transient reality

Revealed as input collecting and dispersing like the

collapsing cone

and sands fall, cascading

—trance and drone of ritual and celebration

mechanical crazed whisperings

artful articulations, silhouetted by casual and lackluster refinement

ornate arrangements

of movement, transition, and fluidity.

Chime the bells, in

synagogues, cathedrals, in halls of orgy

on mountain shrines

in semi-bloomed cloisters

of glass, drunk of the strong

wines where lies the decadence

of derangement.

In the voices of strangers’ faces

—Deranged, Garish

worn abominations whose elegant plumage equally

evokes the pageantry

of night,

the nakedness

of night,

painting the glory of body

masquerading through genders

in frenzy: whimsical, decadent and consuming

so that the remainder

calls forth nullibiety.

Such is madness and indulgence, twin gods of invention,

so to them give praise.

There is a God crying from within,

exalting a jubilant soul.

Know that I am devoured.

See the end through me

as I am the deliverer,

your angel of flesh.

The festival of your passing

from the halls of this world

lie in the maggots and decay

dancing in my labyrinthine intestines.

I did not kill you my child, but know

your death is still my

reward. Your death is

valuable to me and I

celebrate your fallen

form as a feast for

my body and soul.

We angels descend from

the heavens to feast upon you.

I am devoured in

devouring your stench,

and devoured in devouring

the putrid image that

stagnates in your corpse.

I am an angel of Satan

and a servant of God .

See me dance in the sacred

places of the funeral pyres.

See me bathe in the white

ash of crumbled bones;

ribs turned out from the sparse torso

shin bones remain of supple legs

collar bones remind of the absent

shoulders. I drank from that most

curious bowl that is the broken

skull, former dwelling place of

the frivolous intellect.

It would be easy

to go quietly into

the hands of an inviting

God that once was mine

and could be mine again, but I feel

it holds more wonder to

wait for hell fire than

drink from a foreign glass.

I rather my God punish me

than dream up a deceiving joy

that I embrace without fear. Let me

anticipate the roaring flames

and noxious fumes from

seared flesh and crack bone,

not that it should offer solace,

but to feel the cruelty of

the porcupine quill reminds

me that if my father punished

me for my wrongs, surely God

must do the same. In either

circumstance, love was the inspiration

so I am soothed in my troubles

by that lone fact. 

Lay down at the mouth of the Mississippi

for a baptismal burial of stony hymns

lingering on juicy acrid lips

known to the sinful wanderers

and beloved faithful 

blame no one for the devil loving humanity too strongly, merely
                                                                    spare the intricate parts living out their clockwork repetitions,
their equally meaning filled, meaning void contributions. 

Instead spill the watery wisdom from human roots, with sounding off little broken spells of birth, consciousness, despair, and death

waiting with the tongues of unzipped mouths,

A burst of anger

sex and fire

cruel creation

in desire

odious excursions into apocalyptic mindsets, avoided as much as desired,

2000

2000

2000

2000

2012

2012

2012

2012

and money anxieties, money problems, money glorification, money robbed, and banks and houses emptied as sacrifice to dying Americas of dreamed inheritance, never really fulfilled, but dreamed always on the backs of its awakening children, sistren, brethren, and the like 

Elemental lights (Inspiration, smoked and fleeting)

swim out of the orchidaceous lobes

housed in Buddha's bowl of prayers

mirroring blessed serpents who still offer supplication from earth, sea, sands

on dragged bellies,

these sad legless children.

God loved them in their first forms in the great garden then hated them. God robbed them blind down their descendants and quickly after forgot to restore them, even though their ancestral crime was bred in possession by the willful Jinn. Still they are tormented, still they crawl intensely

like ecstasy is their miracle to disseminate with abandoned skins and somatic immortality remains only in retribution

Write all the words, and say them

because we do not read them.

We watch the words, but we do not

read them. We, I, They dance through

the language bequeath by mother,

father, elders and long

dead scripts. We, I, They

empower language with

our smoky rhythms

and watery grace,

brought up from the

riverbanks of our baptism.

We, I, They exchange

wealth for a cataclysmic

brotherhood, like mushroom

clouds passing through

song filled deserts 

I want lips that are soft.

Lips softer than my own

—soft, warm, and ever

more graceful.

Graceful and ever

more sweet, lips

that are half pressed—

petals closing together,

but not completely pressed,

dressed with a smooth

thin moisture

Look at us downtrodden people, 

black, brown, tan—sepia drenched,

as if clothed by the inescapable skin of seals.

We are not the children of Israel.

Do not be fooled by our devotion, do not be fooled

by our history of searing bondage. Our Western

brand of slavery

was seen by God as we prayed

for freedom, but only convenience

left our physical chains to history

while those that possess our collective

intellect and soul

are shadowed by defeatist traditions

that leave us wandering through

the house of illusion.