Friday, September 7, 2012


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, tansepia 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.