From form  
vile evil
in the shade of hades
sire and rise
the lived devil,
the tornado donator
that is the heart of the earth.
God denying, dog hating,
it listens for silence, the license
to edit the tide to its whim
and sink man’s canoe in its ocean.

Wise are the parents who give
their children difficult names.

Names that are a chant to God,
a sacrament with every utterance.

Or names that light a fiery rebellion
in the mulling brain.

Names that speak of the glory
that was before the slave ships.  

Names that display the wonder of sky,
the Eagle, Buffalo, Wolf, Deer.

Names that should hurt and choke
when mispronounced.

Braves names spoken
by brave and unafraid people.

Names shouted loud by those
who fearlessly, openly love.

Those who dropped their names
in the easy English soil, reclaim them!

Speak it in the accent of the old country,
the tribes of the African plain and rivers,

the screech, rumble of the clouds, creatures
that gave you your forever sound.

Gather your jewels from the ashes.
Mine them until they get their attention.

Collect the pieces of your lost continents
from their miscomprehension.

Your difficult names predate centuries
of their arrogance, ignorance, prejudice.

You are history
not their rewrite.  

Don’t explain your name’s meaning
to those who have forgotten your story.

You are the original and
they are the stereotype.

Bend your syllables, vowels
into a new understanding country.

Keep your difficult names
proudly unassimilated.

Keep it
your home.

Today I will be
an apple bringer,
a sower of Job’s tears,
a healer of grief.

Today I will be
the tarty sweet fruit
passed hand to hand
in the peace caravan.

Today I will be
the cooing melody
among a flight of doves.

Today I will be
the candle of the night
that shines the best
of my country.

Today I will be
the wind that spreads
the camphoric cries
that can not be blown out.

Tomorrow the world
will grant justice
for the obstinate tears shed.

Tomorrow God will
dance and sit amongst us
in the wake of his beautiful moon.

Tomorrow the residue of his love
will turn the screams into almonds
that we will eat with him.

Tomorrow we will witness
the miracle of all fallen songs
blossoming into tulips.

The tears fade in
the screaming inside howling brick.
It is our cancer
swirling around,
stone, flesh and home.
Our history is in its eye,
our profile in this wild night of carnage
slouching towards mornings. We turn
away and the brick frees us.
We turn back and are inside
our granite selves forming in the sculpting wind,
erring in the perfect sad light,
different, broken-whole.
Our names are erased from brick,
letters spreading like smoke
in the all defining wind.
It drops in the field of its birth,
a flash in the silent mud and clay.
It shimmers on my wife’s white blouse,
and when she walks away,
settles in memory.
The wind chisels a robin
falling, dying in my stare.
The cloud of my neighbor
floats towards me, pale eyes
trying to define me
but I am not a window.
Her face is lost in the brick
and the wind erases her,
the street, their signs,
the names of those in houses behind.

In the Charleston marketplace, a boutique auctions off
detailed limited edition replicas of black history: a slave
who hugs his chains upright over his porcelain hands,
is sold for $1200.00 to a man with a black Amex card,
a horde listening to the Emancipation Proclamation
goes for the same amount, Malcolm X gets $1000.00,
MLK just a little less, the OJ bobble heads sell for $60.00  
in the store’s gift shop while the white Bronco in
slow pursuit complete with flashing police lights
and breathless live commentary garners $2400.00,
Rosa Parks languishes at the rear eventually getting $300.00,
Eric Garner, Treyvon Martin, Rodney King are
part of lot sold for $500.00 clearance and a free
Black Lives Matter T-shirt, George Floyd gasping out
“I can’t breathe,” enshrined in a porcelain halo nabs
the same price, while the last figurine, of his murderer
being embraced by a very happy Donald Trump is
purchased by a man in a MAGA hat for $10,000.00.

Pick a day.
The random date generator chose:
January 13, 1835
There are still generations formed
from those that fell in
love, married,
birthed sons and daughters
on that day.
Each an unrepeatable existence.

Family lore and crests
enshrine the first kiss,
the birds that soared the sky,
the color of flowers in his/her hand,
words spoken and written in the heart,
the dress she wore,
the beard he had
and discarded or kept,
the Fahrenheit/Celsius of
the exact hour, minute second
of their first heat,
the time that their fingers
stopped accidentally
brushing against each other,
the number of teeth
shown in the first smile.

Count the time
from first hello to last goodbye.
Enshrine that number
of seconds, minutes, hours,
days, weeks, months, years,
in the tales told about them
by their children.
Knit together
all the overlapping
welcomes and farewells
into the colorful threads
of all the houses born and fallen.

I look at that history
and I love you
solidly in the echoes
of all the past.
You fill my time,
even my sadness.
I have gazed too long
Into the light of you.
I only see
the burnt-in after glow
of all the whiteness.

The oaks perceiving the assailing breeze shiver off  
their nuts, swallows and squirrels

upwards to a dark fearful sky
that camouflages broken peace in the wild promises
of the swirling winds.

Night breaks night—
smashing every compass point in impatience.
Bricks stem to snow, the wind ghosts every leaf
in mournful woe.

The wasp tail shears enter in breathing
a final winter to her old house.

Inside her chest the wind hornets sting her,
with the loneliness of the yet and not yet to be.

The sofa pillows fly down the stairs
saving her small barking dog ascending the dark.

She hears black birds caw to her in the chaos,
the bully air stabbing in sharp awe,
stabbing her aware.

She knows it now.  She sees the reason and agrees.