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.