rafting walls. foot-to-butt—get it crackin’ bitch!
too soon to quit too late to cry
American Sonnet 43
i am listening for your footfalls, life!
i am here. waiting. with my ancient hammer, a
hangman’s rope and a butcher’s knife. i shall
pound your head as you ease through the door.
i shall drag your groggy body into the gloom
and dispel it. i shall bind your wrists and
hold you for ransom. i shall steal your laughter
and drink your pain. from your confusion i shall
fashion songs, dance and chant my victory stomp
a ritual my father passed over done taught me
the lotus moon is a lover’s wound
it frees the red/my bloodjoy
runs running running
soaks the earth
American Sonnet 44
—after Stephen Kessler
brewing bathwater for wine she rises from the flaming
tureen of unconsciousness wearing nothing
but native fangs and talons—the welcome rampage of
mouth emitting sighs. so beyond the Irish of
inspiration. so set for arousing tender shrieks for
attention and cravings for ice. alive
with poisonous awareness. every lover perishes with
the memory of her sculpted skin, intuitively absorbed, becomes
flawed masterpiece blasted to fluorescent space junk by her
cacophony of slaughter and the quiet talk of stars
somewhere they are unearthing the evidence
that a heart existed to match the skilled
petrified grace and implacable face buried in a lost
yet scholarly file. desperate for a drop
American Sonnet 49
my cash-starved seducer with blueviolet skin
croons Alabama-tinged bossa nova over tall tan equatorial
lovelies strolling the white sands of bikini-laden
beaches where coconut palms nod sedately
beneath cloud-flecked azure the sun frying
neurons like high-grade hallucinogens
as he simultaneously hugs the mike and my thighs
locking my big browns with his big browns
making salacious promises to lick me into next week
but, jive on ice, we are chained in the brimstone
dungeon of passionate dada (dat sumpthin’ wronginus
stronginus), flurried in our copious colloquy
on The Ultimate Answer—greed feeding greed—each
hoping the other knows the sideway up
American Sonnet 51
in my last incarnation i inoculated myself
with oodles of dago red and stumbled into fame
without falling. i worshipped in the temple of Lady Day
and took Coltrane as my wizard. i always wore my mink coat
to the Laundromat and drank pale champagne with my
soft-boiled eggs. i believed King Kong got a raw deal.
i believed great and prolonged sex cured cancer. i believed
in the afterdeath. i was liberator of cough-and-gaggers
from the cages of their spew. i scavenged rusted auto parts,
built a niggah machine, loaded it with atomic amour and
wiped out all purveyors of poverty . . . swapped my pink
pearl for a black sapphire. and then one quincentennial
i rose from the magnificent effluvium of my jazz
to discover my children did not know me
American Sonnet 54
dearest cousin,
forgive this ruined narrative begging the first
element of creation. last time i was here i was here.
now i wonder what, exactly, are the components of my
invisible spectrum? sun-ra rising.
i went for a reading of palms to rediscover
disappointment. “better an almost-was,” said the gypsy,
“than a never-was.” her peculiar conjure left me staring at
my naked brown feet for hours. when reverie broke it was
near dawn, mist had occluded the volcano and i found
myself old, alone sans shelter from the ever-blessed heat.
this note is sent perchance you’ve wondered what
befell one adventuresome one solongago lost, this missive
in an empty ron rico bottle set adrift on a sea of flute
music—this repetitious rendering of pain—for on my
one-palm island dwells no such beast as joy
American Sonnet 60
white tequila white moon white lies
wyoming love symphony yellowstone afire there’s
nothing there but there wyoming wampum our national
treasure the whole damned state is pure park nothing
in wyoming but K-Mart. way out west in the wondrous wilds
of wyoming (i love toby. you mean my husband? no, your
dad) beautiful beauteous wyoming of the waltzing with bear
and jackrabbit run lifers wyoming lotta beer tribesmen
stuck on reservations doomed to sundance on the purple
wyoming sage forever where all the rusted-out chassis go
to die wyoming big blue sky death/dead of quiet peopled
by renegade spirits glass entombed arrowheads where once
was the Shoshone the big whiteness of New Spain and
sun-weathered leathery wyoming hide and shall we gather
at the big wind river and boil it all down to glory
American Sonnet 61
reaching down into my griot bag
of womanish wisdom and wily
social commentary, i come up with bricks
with which to either reconstruct
the past or deconstruct a head. dolor
robs me of art’s coin
as i push, for peanuts, to level walls and
rebuild the ruins of my poetic promise. from
the infinite alphabet of afroblues
intertwinings, i cull apocalyptic visions
(the details and lovers entirely real)
and articulate my voyage beyond that
point where self disappears
mis violentas flores negras
these are my slave songs
American Sonnet 66
—after Vallejo
i am dying in lala in a blizzard of sun where
my killers always profit from my death.
look here at the flat little rectangle of embossed
gray stone/the evidence of days. and there, the ants have
taken over speeding busily to and from the oblivious
hill. something tiny yet beautiful has declared
root, an absurd pinkness. and over there, its white
sister. and listen. the precious costly silence broken
only by the distant sigh of an airship’s landing and the
aria of a sad bird on its sagging wire above the unkempt
yard. so many’s the years one must pay till paying is
up. and only the lucky find their ways underground
oh. thirst. oh. pride.
i am dying in lala in a sunblaze in
a dream dreamt then forsaken
American Sonnet 70
in his grace he was silent. in his silence he called
god. my father took his murder with grace they beat his
head for decades from 1914 to 1991 they beat him until
a tumor rose from the wound and devoured his eyes they
beat him until his future became an unfruitful past
the tumor grew arms and pulled him head-first into the
underworld. who are they? the famous tyrannical they the
they who control production and distribution the greedy
they who always go around shitting perfumed shit and now
they turn their beatings on his son my brother on his
daughter my sister on his second son my baby brother they
raise their killer fists and beat me simple they raise their
killer fists beating and beating until they are certain
no one raps back from the other side of the tombstone
god. in my smoke i call you
American Sonnet 71
first you must prove that you can sing while running
backwards. good. now prove that you can read under
water. excellent. not a bad ankle grabber when you
use your lower lip. okay. now, let’s see how you handle
a wallet. bank account. taxes. bankruptcy terrific. quick
study. got one for you. do it all twice as fast with
one eye behind your back. damn. now, do it all even
faster than that with one eye between your legs and both
hands cuffed at your knees. bravo. no, you don’t
have to stand on your head—yet. but now, i’d like to
see you do all that while hanging from monkey bars
by your big toes. no shoes. whew! now, drop ’em.
drop ’em. oh. well. that settles it. unfair competition.
you gottalotta balls there. cuntteeth. but no cock.
American Sonnet 75
my recalcitrant darling, what do i mean about
you? arms unraveling becoming independent
again. the four-legged fur-tongued night beast
struggles toward liberation’s light, groping thru
a dense and burred lingua erotica. lost, in fact.
and feeding on whatever’s digestible, i seek another
way to say it, like, leaning on vital establishments,
i leap on the vibrantly effervescent as longing
orders visionary efforts and, in labor’s oily viscous
emissions, lick over various events, shade encounters
black and red for mood à la gambling on the curative
nature of release—“i’m going off for a few days to find
my way back to you the way i must be. rule out happy.”
for without you, how am i to be who i’ve become?
American Sonnet 79
—after Melville
blue blooms on ridges, pales lips and nails
son o son
hard’s the harp in my soul’s wailing
boy turned man turned ravaged babe in fate’s maw
lightsome slim and sinking as implacable dream
serene sounds the precipice above, below
white fevers tear the reason from his brain
nurse o nurse o nurse
and morphine brings on icy slumber
till on a sigh he slips away
the horror of sheer impotence strands us
in nameless chill
and we are dumbed.
mother father brother—all dumbed
after. i take cuttings of his hair and kiss the air
American Sonnet 82
calling all bluefools calling all bluefools
mayhem on the corner of Kickers & Benders
calling all bluefools footloose in dystopia
all that stomp about equality was just stomp
neocoons are perching on haunches to
consume an anthology of 3-minute eggs
failing to move on impulse
(the head rumpkin espouses colorblindness)
an escapee is holding hands to ears, touchie-feelie
for what was solongago marched
first one wag, then nakedly another
cries make the assassinated sleep deeper
screams of protest come cheap
all that talk about blackberries was talk
here. it’s like that
American Sonnet 85
jailer? will you still love me when i’m flit?
will you pay to hear my angst of sob and bathe in it?
jailer, the cuffs between us the cuffs so dear!
what will you do when i’m no longer accessible by key?
jailer? do you believe faint cure bests
no cure at all?
i do not know my back as well as you do
all down my crack and up it too
jailer! this contraband is such i can’t conceal
wears my lips and shreds umbilical zeal
the chancre blossom of our forced embrace
will never heal
jailer, why so quiet?
i can hear a politician piss on cotton
Essay on Language 5
logopathy/body jabber
bifid one minute black hairy the next
speaking at stylistic odds his logomanic tough-guy accent wears
bifocals and prepares a detailed analysis of the logic of
sex/slides off his tongue into my ear/wet urgency and now his
talk is at my talk tasting. forty-four flavors of flesh.
“delicious,” says he. and now his talk is wagging at my nose
inviting me to explore his orality. i smell a hope. and now his
talk intrudes. first one salty armpit and then the other
resisting southerly movement
proves futile
my sensitive site of contemplation
submerged in moist leathery tickles
verbs and adjectives flying
at my coccyx
each dimple arouses
a new carnal discourse
there’s no escaping
his lingua enters. discharges. the warmth of heated
expression.
driving me deeper into
the sheets. arousing my terrible
ambitions (since i have
no erotic fantasies left)
say how good how good given the
raspberry
this logorrhea. muscles straining to
lift me thru my skin
I Imagine the Angels of Rage
—after Martin Espada
This is the year of The Thirty-Nine
those jettisoned bodies
gazing comet-struck into
the god void
aboard the Momship
levitating impotent souls to escape the
black doom of plimsole consumerism;
this is the purple dawn
that enshrouds hope’s refugees and
honors the renegade judges
who sanction bigotry as
constitutional law—whose
files whose lips whose genitals
are smeared with the sap
of voiceless sages;
this is the year of the petty piety
police who reverse all
fair acts, blister airwaves with false
Word in the name of religion,
apply Colombian neckties
to innocent throats;
this is the year the greedskinned men
pervert The Splendor
reclaim their right to hate
to profit from pain, to lynch
without apology for the
children they plunder.
This is the year my brain
detached itself from my heart
to wade the forsaken waters of time
to shiver at gravesites
naked before the thunder and the drums
and the endless rain of crosses
Salvation Wax
ram’s blood
sacrifice, the first law of my nature
tried till terrified
i cry in my sleep. this morning i woke up sitting on my
hands
disharmony in all my parts
—diminishing options—
father. i stretch my arms to thee
my points have no origin and few effing returns
this is the room where years collect like dust, layer
old and indistinct furniture, gray the walls
and yellow fantasies. dull glass refracts
the duller glint of unpolished silver�
��tarnished
aspirations. this too familiar lower middle class
gloom wears the names i love. i call it kin.
where on influence
west is the signature of a wordsmith
who died more than twice. multiple deaths
in the pitch dens of lalaland then
later, once in actuality, crushed
(i respond well to soft strokes and Arizona sun)
south but not quite easterly enough
our once private tongue of drinking gourds
and midnight rides translated, shape-shifted
and cashed in on by moon-skinned boogie bandits
leaving us muzzled hence silent, protest entombed
a monumental niggerness—rebels like me defeated by decree of
bloodless educated bloods whose hearts are never darker than
the ink on a departmental voucher or corporate desk blotter
(my core organ has changed but i still look the same
a clear and distinct genre of bent baptism
jes another bushbaby on the make
another inner city marauder
win-driven bullywully-headed)
of the TV generation, i have no new conclusions
and all my solutions are mere sequels
in the throes
dear cousin,
you think i’m being petty. but the moon’s muddy wane is on me. i
assumed that, as one of taste, sensitivity and intelligence, your
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