I thought that's what they wanted. They
mutter about me now. Behind the
mirrored window. I know what they say.
I’d say this story is
true in our hearts, but
a drag queen actually
pulled a real one
out of a garbage bag
Brothers, if I don’t live to see the day,
meaning, if I die before the face of bigotry,
take me to the desert and bury me
beside the border. For my headstone,
plant a barrel cactus, its thorns a reminder
Threw up our tags from Kenmore Square to Harvard Square
Catching air off red bricks in “the Pit” till cops gave chase
Years later
The beer has not changed nor the attitude
I hear coastal heat obliterates
thought all that Vitamin Dee
(or is it Deh)
makes you sleepy and you forget
about the color of the help
I think about parts of the heart sticking to the ribs, imagine the coroner scraping the bones like they’re frenched lamb cutlets. Time is syrupy in isolation. There are no weekdays and weekends, just time passing.
I’m not bathing in blood, but it’s certainly not water, either, that covers my eyes and flirts with the edges of my nostrils.
Trying to light a wet cigarette
with a faltering match, and I wonder
if my readers are also living life in vain:
What happens when chaos becomes beautiful?
When the lightning falls,
when the old guard topples,
when the broken bell tolls
for the final time?
Li Qingzhao wandered lonely as a cloud
Emily Dickinson wandered lonely as a cloud
Virginia Woolf wandered lonely as a cloud
Marina Tsvetaeva wandered lonely as a cloud
once god becomes a weapon
there is no such thing as a war that
can be won
you fight just because it
feels so good to kill
Please be kind to strangers
Who hunker down in subplots
Where reckless voices almost blend
But most of us are still not allowed to attend
My children watch me struggle
not to send myself back to space.
We pretend my shadowy smiles fool
people formed in time with my pulse.
Brick five twelve tried
to overthrow the government
but nobody seemed to care
or notice
You are all that matters in your border town.
Bullets ping into stone walls inches from your shoulders.
Stuff falls from the sky, lands near you.
Arms swing and fists send air the way of your chin.
They’re talking away
nothing urgent, nothing Earth shattering
but substantive nonetheless
like an old idea worked around from a new
vantage point. Did you hear about?
. Amerikkka is a mongrel insensitivity to empathy
. A capitalist concept
of man
exploits man
our mouth of grapes
a profile at a bar, again a sigh and cough
have a heart
forgive my sway
I’m done now.
We’ve got Fritz, as always, to guide the way
for our philosophical jaunt today
and to remind us all, though it is grim,
that God is dead and we have killed him.
poultry air raid bombastic
missionaries regenerate scabs
sore momentum badge
constructed wholesale bee
The answer is: may plasma be a state of nature, may my aisle be flooded with fluorescence, may there be a balm in Gilead and may there be an inferential estimate in each machine.
Injure life support of the other species
and slowly disable your own.
Perceive redwoods as greenbacks shivering
and shrink people into coinage.
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