It's not the
"I'm going to be a failure."
that I worry about.

It's the
"Am I going to be a failure?"
that I worry about.

A failure
in the sense
that I never get my ****
together
and take my writing seriously.

I could really be something,
but I could get stuck on a
could.

I am afraid of myself
and the swallowing monsters
capricious
within me.

My people
are the kind
that were
sharecroppers.

From the dirt
of North Carolina.

They pulled themselves
up
by
tilled mounds
with boots
always pressing down
on their knuckles.

Somehow they rose.

The sky turned its
bluest
with
punches rolling
in from the west.

Punches
cold
and
steel.

But somehow
they didn't
escape to the rivers
and no
new nooses
found their necks.

With
small crumbles
of dirt
clinging
to their backs
they shook off
that universe
of roots
and
boots.

But I am not of them.

I realize that now.

I do not
have the resolve.

When I think of the generations
of powerful flowers
before me
I look in the mirror
and see myself
clean
with no memory
of fingers
that used to know
black gold.

Constantly searching
for that
patch
of tilled black earth
inside of me,
I am dying
with a new noose
around my neck.

She played with the sun-gods
in shadows
under the poplar.

Thin leaves
made even thinner shadows
and her face
was the face
of a leopard
underneath.

When she finally got up
after her fingers cramped up
from playing
in the hair
of the sun-gods
she had a brown smear
on the seat of her dress.

She'd slipped on the dress
without *******.

Her cheeks pulled
the dress into its mouth,
closer to her *******.

The
eggs crackle and ****.
I stand over them
a
god.

My son
used to write me poems
when he
was little.

Poems about
how much he loved me.

Now
he's 21.

And I leave his Christmas gifts
wrapped hurriedly
on the
dining room table.

I turn off the range.

Ladle the eggs
in between
two slabs
of toast.

Zip up my track suit.

The gym is always open
even on Christmas
for a few hours
as the fried whites
hang out
of the sides of my sandwich
floppy
like
dog ears
and my son
sleeps
to find
the soft bundles
and a quiet
house.

"She talkin
about quittin me,
she said
'I'm tired of you coming
over here
sweet-talking
just to get in the door,
then
you go upside
my head
once you inside,
no,
not anymore,'
I said,
'baby,
I apologized for all that
before,
why you keep bringing
up
old ****?
You need
to learn how to forgive
and forget.
You know
I don't mean nothin by it,
fuhreal.
But all you ever do
is talk about
what I am
doing wrong
what I have done
to you,
can't we just be cordial
and sip on this thing
I brought over?'"


"So she let me
in
and
we sipped that night."

I picture them glued hotly to each other
on a couch;
a bed;
scrambling
together
drunk out of their minds
on
the ***** tile
in the kitchen;
two plaster figures
stuck together
by
bad chance
and
some fault of fire.

Paul Masson.
Hot sauce.
Colgate - old and stale
as puke.
Grease.
Newports.
Former head.
Recovery.
Country dirt.
Pecans.
Cotton.
A black fist held high.
Hope that one day
he'll be able to fit his ex-wives
into a nice,
cordial sentence.
Love.
Real love.
Man love.
Type love that kicks *** when it has to.
Sears cologne,
OG ****.
Some Christianity,
but not a lot,
not nauseating
and obnoxious,
more like
quiet
and
almost not there.
More Masson.
More Newports.
Gold fillings;
the Midas Touch
on his tongue;
the ability
to blind you
in the glow of his breath.
Rotten *****.
Real rotten.
Rotted to viral nostalgia
because it tastes
like ****
and makes him lick the roof
of his mouth
to get that smell
out,
just to make
room
for it
again.
Chitlins.
Obama's saliva.
Collard greens
with all the vinegar
and red pepper
in Satan's *******.
Herman Cain's armpits.
Fear
for
me.
Love
for
me.
Power.
Former riverboat
porter.
The smell of rich white men
that talked about
*******
while he stood
stoically.
Strength
like
you've never
smelled before.
Human.

A crazy *******
got in my face
the other day.

"This is my shop!,
I put the work in this *******,
see ya'll young people come in here
trying to mess up my shop,
this is MY SHOP!"

"Mmhmm," a fat ****
in the corner affirmed.

Crazy *******
are often your
barbers.

He's pulled this **** before,
I've seen him do it.

He'll just throw the clippers down
and get in somebody's face,
while they flip dumbly through
Sports Illlustrated.

It's funny as hell.

He had spittle
in cakes at the corners of his mouth
that wiggled
like eggs on an unbalanced beam
and fat lips that looked
like rotten peach slivers;
all brown and ugly pink.

He's in his forties and stumpy.
But all he ever does is yell.

I punched him
right in his lips.

His teeth were hard and scratched my knuckles,
but he backstepped,
gave me one of those crazy people
"I might just cut your head off" looks
and walked to the bathroom to clean himself up.

Crazy *******
think
they're the crazier than everybody else.