I heard 2 shots in my neighborhood today
now none of my friends want to come out and play.
I said I hard 2 shots in my neighborhood today
and now none of my friends want to come out and play.
Black poets
deserve the luxury of writing about nothing—
sometimes—
to speak for no one,
“The white cops were right,” they chanted,
more Blacks need beating
and we need more guns.
Too many getting rich off welfare
too lazy to work.”
Make me somebody
nobody wants
to stand around.
Make me your social problem.
Make me feel lost, branded
and hide whipped.
I wonder if what I’m seeing is only my silence
my little silent laugh my little look-around
at the forest of faces growing new faces a long line
of faces and now the old white guy is busy
filling out his form hunched over all his words
I left the south for the west
and browned like a sugar sprinkled pecan.
There’s nothing wrong with brown
The yellow leasing office boy says,
I was talking about the carpet in the model unit,
I hate people who say something (then repeat it)
I hate people who say something (then repeat it)
I hate people who say something (then repeat it)
I hate bands that play too loud over the poetry
I HATE POETS THAT READ TOO LOUD
I HATE POETS THAT READ TOO LOUD
I HATE POETS THAT READ TOO LOUD
Say nothing when people pet your head. Smile (and don’t be angry, no
not that) when they do it without asking. Shrug because you have no
explanation why your hair grows that way
she said with her own eyes she had seen
men with horses
men with rope
tie a loop and wrap a noose
around the neck
around the throat
of a little black boy just like me
your names were waiting for me
on the kitchen counter,
in a freshly printed newspaper,
and I with my responsible empathy
read your obituaries
The perception that we are
Permitted to enter into
The populous is paradoxical
That is to say only possible
So as long as our persons
Don't come too close
Cops don't say that they are afraid of blacks,
they just shoot them,
so why are you bringing it up on this fuck app?
My fists drum my
chest an de Village Spirit He leap to
dance in me. In hymn o plen-tay
my momma voice still weep, she
now comfort me. An in hymn o
Helicopters thud the sky with air commotion and caution
over brow crop dusting judgment light over fields of cement and barbed wire
Pot holes and cigars rolled.
Augusta Fells Savage, beaten as a child for sinning. Her sin? Sculpting clay animals. And still she worked. She worked to share her vision. Her vision took her to Rome and Paris and back again to teach, to create, to better, to live.
been wrong before. thought maybe everything was all good now.
slept through Pride. laughed about it.
snored while a parade was marching through
my upstate neighborhood.
You look like a thug’s sister.
You look like a thug’s mother.
You look like a thug’s grandson.
You look like a thug’s pal.
Click, you just received
another donation,
another like. . .
trading,
remembering
we have no life boat,
I know the truth on the hazy summer days.
when heat squeezes the odour out of breeze
caught flowers, sweaty inner thighs, and chlorine pools.
I know the truth of the sky mid-turn, mid-hack
in a cloudless space, dazed by the shimmer
They dance badly. Thousands of preteen heat proms
burning each other alive, smashing wheels into forks and spoons,
and fucking on beds made of thick, wet, addictive paint.
The wolf in the woods took my daughter
Locked her in the boardroom where she took
Down that dummy corporation
With only straw and a spinning wheel
Sinking into the fine fibers
Fluffed cotton candy
The aching head marvels
Over the fading soreness
That was just unbearable
subtle as a snapped neck’s whispering
drag/drag/drag alone
of the bitten blood
semblance of dry light
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O’er a galleon, reflected in the river the frightened animal’s open mouth land a table covered with candles of a large hole at the top of the world the cars drive toward me with muffled headlights free an animal sitting high in a tree
Maybe you did not (openly) feel shame. Or you understood shame, attracted it, embodied it, were given little pieces of it every time you called a parent, every time you handed in an assignment, every time you drove your car or rode your bike, every time you went to the doctor or therapist or your beautician or barber, every time you walked into a gym full of perfection, every time you looked into your crooked mirror.
We explore soft minutes with interlocked fingers, while in a building half a world away another man sits waiting for death to lick his ear like a lover. Death has written him a letter wishing him well and inviting him to come visit soon. It begins, Dear John, and immediately music can be heard as if at a wedding or a funeral.
not everybody who dies will be guilty
not everybody
who dies will be coward
nor deserves
to be ground up and roasted
what you loved were
the impulsive turns and
errors of my defeat,
broken over your exquisite
lies lounging on desert-
beaten back street--
rejoice! for now among ye walks
a myth amongst mere mortals
drink up if we be friends and
can you get this one because i'm a little short
freedom keeps changing its definition on me
Do you want my granddaughters and sons
who are sweating it out in foreign lands
to starve me after getting wind that I am
attending useless meetings arranged
by the same crazy and clueless fellows...
my wife cooked another magnificent
supper and a poet hundreds of miles
away said in an interview that poets
would never be famous as Hollywood
Stars and I erased almost everything
I wrote for the day pleased to surrender
I too have started mornings
with kites made of lead
flying off foot, pushing a big
lint racket up the mountain
domesticated as the dozen carnations
you carry where you used to carry
a dozen dead elephants
inside a dozen dead snakes
And I will also tell you, having grabbed
the silver handle covered by a dozen
glittering fingerprints, and leaning over
(for I am near-sighted)
the Mighty Subway Map,
as if it were a star map - I will tell you:
Neither word nor name represents anything, but together they move matter, as if by magic.
Being a fucked up woman is an absolutely healthy response to living in this culture.
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