They have tried to turn the language of your body
into ***** words, calling
your strength, grace of motion–
your poetry,
“Black Magic”.
But, Dark Art is that whitewashing illusion.
Misdirection.
Magic
is whatever color you see when you look in the mirror.
So, they slip their mirrors into your pockets,
commandeer the covers of magazines,
and big screens.
They costume in your clothing, your words, your art and artifact.
Keep you chasing shadows and slurs.
I want to say to you,
you need no one’s permission
to shatter glass,
take up space,
to outperform the top-hatted man blowing smoke from his stage.
Tell him to
Move. Over.
Unmask his ball-gowned, silent accomplices.
If publicness is not being shared,
it is being stolen.
Carry on.
Perform your magic in every spotlight.
I will stand aside,
and shout down your imposters.

Quake beneath my soft tissue,
tectonic passes at the good china
warm like stray memories
gargled then regretted

You're the parade,
disfigured by June wafting off the asphalt,
luxury on four wheels,
costumed in roses

but we’re not palace,
not opera,
not cathedral
at your inscrutable
command like milled limestone and
personal mythologies

It’s like castor oil for a punishable girl, and
I swear I’m just venomous!
Sometimes.
Spitting and rattling,
Oscillating slits in the sand.
Suffocating, *******,
the sun is to me,
a lovely burden.
Blame me into a corner
and I’ll stay there,
coiled.

Sparrow,
you're my only;
lightning rod,
one off virtue.
They hid their smiles for me,
that I'd know you singularly.
Beneath your mechanical surveillance,
I am blind to every
copy, pigeon, finch,
and fairy.

Does grit mean
strumming the stucco with your knuckles
so it bleed self-evidently?
Carry a tune,
callous of entry.
I'm a saint by pumice stone,
adored through moony scruples.
I'm the sun behind her mechanism,
brimstone gentrified in duplicate.

They're all fine.
From a certain distance
thinness, or atmosphere they're
two dimensional and matte.
Couldn't be singled out, but by
telescope,
as a blemish in the image, coarse-
in grain practically falling apart.

I swear I can't bear those penitent men,
rinsing their sins all over my feet.
Fasting and ash,
but I just want to be
worshipped,
as polaroid on his cork board-
only so pretty as poorly rendered,
and about five inches
by three and a half.

I'm writing in lines of
(applause)
for landed airplanes.
You know how they have been
dive-bombing the seas
lately.
Cast praise when they beat runways,
grit has been a rough entry.
And then there's going home; gotta face the kisses
and stomach the pounds, if you can,
distantly.