I used to know a girl named Calypso,
she had beautiful shorthand
and we used to fall asleep
in her mom's house
until that was gone,
until the storm came
and she was an island
I had drawn with ink.

Is this where it happens?
Is this the where
and when?

On a bus going through
nowheres stocked with burned-out houses
and Chevys idling on empty axles?

I have passed so many of them,
that I don't know
when it'll stop;
all this quiet and oblivion.

Cotton is everywhere,
it's on the ground;
in the ditches,
all brown and soggy like
wet hairballs; in the wheel wells,
the rotor tiller;
the SNAPPER'
the squash;
your wife's *******,
tingling her constantly;
the speedometer,
the pulled pork,
collards,
mashed potatoes
and most definitely
the gravy;
it's in the eyes,
makes them red
and explosive,
it's in the dark loam
and gloam; the unwashed streetlights,
the blue dark
and even bluer
lampposts in the middle
of fields black as oil;
the pink sun,
white clapboards
and redwood siding
of that burned-out homestead;
the cotton is everywhere;
thrown up by the slaves;
a ceiling made just for
February lovelessness
as I pull on my Marlboro
and crook my arm
like the cornices of a power station.

This is a place where you can see everything coming
from far away;
a place where people come
to leave;
a place where people pack in the middle of the night,
and wake the children
while it's still dark out,
hoping for hope in the cholera
of a sunrise
and the 5 a.m. Greyhound;
this is a place where there is no flea
market, just a strand of people
on the side of the road
a table and a parti-colored distress,
while their kids play in grass lots;
this is a place where factories are built,
clandestine factories; factories with no
signposts, and no barbed-wire fences;
this is a place where there is always something green
in the tilled rows crowding up against the road,
not necessarily growing,
but maybe the signs of an arbitrary decay;
this is a place for old trailers and rust tears;
telephone poles more than a stake in humanity,
communication rather than introspection,
redemption more than salvation,
revitalization more than pleasure,
insight more than hope,
promise more than dreams,
this is a place where a father rushes up to the bus,
pushing the kids,
as he ushers his wife on board,
the little children hopping up each step,
as he says
"Get on, and we outta here."

This is a place where families don't have belongings
where you don't belong to anything.

This is a place you can leave easily,
because it is a place with a name
you can't remember.

The farmhouse is bracketed
by two loaves of fire;
in the night the house looks like the face
of Satan; the black void of the nose;
the house: vacant and shut off.

The two loaves burn beside it
through the night,
eating the stars and all the time
in the world.

A Tom and the thousand others
sleep in the foyer; closed off,
held in
by a tootsie roll the size
of a block of wood
used to keep the door closed
and the screaming
within.

Sometimes the cats slink out the windows
and make circles around the loaves;
silhouettes of fur, shoulders,
and contemplating tails
that swing and arc
through the night; it looks
like there are cats at the feast,
and they have brought the snakes
with them.

I spike my Koolaid,
with *****,
and pour in
too many blue packets
until it is black and icy
and whales of clotted powder
bob at the surface.

I am trying to close this gap;

trying to bridge this form,
and break your reflection
hovering at my hips.

But
in weeks
or just a few days
I have lost you.

The carcasses float to the bottom.

I get drunk
and fall asleep
to a singing blue tv
calling me to the deeps.

Your eyes flower
out of the black
into the dark blue
and ice
petals.

I climb the rough stem,
cutting my palms
and bleeding from my cuticles,
just to say to you
that you are beautiful
up there
in the night.

'Night babe
are what my lips
say to your eyelashes.

'Night babe of the black womb,
tiny body,
and hair like hydrogen fusion,
I hope that I have not said anything
that will make you blot your eyes
and stifle your lips
and enlightenment
from me
forever.

I hate
that your peach lips
are still
peach;
all that glitter
still to
eminent on your skin
both before and after
I laid you down
and played in the cosmos
of your belly button.

Stop calling me at night.

Can you hear me?

Stop calling
and reminding me
of the wilting fronds of flesh
on your lips
and the groves of light
on your abdomen
still too
fresh to me.

I have begun to say your name
too much
with
too little
to bare.

I hate those mornings
when all I have
for breakfast
                            is a
Marlboro.

For the first time,
after the last time,
one feels
independent
and sure.

But this could quickly become a last time
too.

My Marlboro is moving
back against itself,
and as it burns
the smoke it dangles
like a wet string
becomes
a second hand,
and I think that we are constantly ticking
down
until the first is last,
and innocence
is just a matter of time.

When you put your lips
on mine,
I just love the sound they make;
a quiet fleshy sound,
the temperament of flesh
is softer
than the temperament
of even the soberest buddhist,
especially yours.

I just want to pray at your lips,
just want to fear the enlightenment
that your tongue
unfurls.

Your lips could be the second coming.

This is poison,
"Statistics show
that one out of every
three black men
will spend time in prison
in his lifetime."

This is the remedy,
"I sit alone in my room drinking."

I feel like
society has tried to castrate black men,
because our *****
are so harmful,
especially to white women.

We break them,
make them unfit for society
right?

Statistics make us inhuman.

My skin color
has to be more than a distinction,

**** this *******,
Imma move to Alaska
and forget the girls I loved
and the ones that loved me
even though it was detrimental to them.

**** cops
and everything they don't do.

**** cops
who don't talk to peopl
like they are people,
who talk to them like witnesses
or victims.

**** cops
who put their badges down at night
and listen to their friends tell black jokes
and don't say a word.
(This goes for white and black cops.)

**** cops,
I've got nothing more to say,
all they've done is taken
when i've been around;
ransacked my room
and talked to me
like I'm an idiot,
*******.

Cops don't keep ******* safe,
don't want to
and never wanted to.

The police
watch the *******;
put bass in their voice
when they talk to me
"Hey buddy,
you know your tail-lights were out?"
All that bass.

Cops always call me buddy
and I just want to flick my switch
and cut a *******,
but I don't
I gotta stay steady.

*******,
I'm just trying to get to work
on time
and you might get me fired,
but that don't matter,
you want to keep me in my place;
make sure to rest your hand
on your holster
as you're leaning into my driver's side window.

I'm just trying to pay my bills
aren't you?

Some dudes are down to fight
but they don't.

But what's crazy
is that *******
won't fight around white people
they're trying to impress.

They don't want to be a ****,
even though
they don't know that we're all *****
in some way.

So when I slug you,
I'm not slugging you,
and when you slug me;
you're not slugging me;
we're just trying
to break free.

I miss the days of black pride,
black panthers
and black determinism,
when we weren't killing each other
and we weren't killing them
we were killing
what needed to be killed;
a mindset.

Without Marcus,
Malcolm,
Tupac,
Martin,
and Carlos
we are lost and we fight,
because all the black flowers that used to bloom
no longer bloom,
and the hope the resided in the birth of a screaming child
no longer resides.

When I'm drunk
I think about you.

Ironic.

I just want to purge you,
but I'm not that masochistic,
because missing you
will never be harder
than not missing you.

It is a black spot
as cancerous and consuming
as those wandering black holes
that squander life
like poachers.

When I return
to heaven
and all those angels stand at the gate,
I hope they've got their magazines
loaded,
because God told me
that depression is when
even pleasure
will seem like my pain,
and I might have to die
with the feeling that bullets create:
fire.
And that fire in my belly will drop
as hope riddles it with all them magazines.

I used to see my death everyday,
when I made it out my door
I was worried,
that I might catch it
quick
while all the remorse I'd stored
would remain.

One time I was tripping shrooms
and it wasn't a bad trip,
but God came down to me
carrying a baby in her arms,
an ugly baby
with big eyes and even bigger ears

God said,
"this is your baby,
it has seen everything
and heard much more."

"All the evil I've done,
seems compounded
by all the good,"
I said.

God said,
"when your heart is compromised
all else
is failure;
hold to your compassion more than anything else
and this child
will grow big and strong,
bigger and stronger
than that tumbleweed
tumbling
through your soul;
so when I come to you like this,
know that this is not the way
that I would have chosen to come."

I've never been into the bible
too many humans with their human endeavors in mind,
but I believe God was giving me
my own personal Jesus,
not a messiah;
just something to make me turn around
and see that the fork in the road
was not that far back.

It's hell down here,
hell in blue lights
and sweaty
bodies
hotter with desperation
than an empty frying pan.

From the frying pan to the club
we burn
and die
to wake up for work
in the morn.

When I come home,
I swear
I saw my mother
in blue and green
walking away from me
pushing a cart
wrapped in garbage bags,
looking cold as hell
and her plastic eyes
were clouded with brown tears.

When
I trip over my ****
drunk
in the middle of the night
and I hear sirens,
I swear,
I see God
doling out peace
while I'm afraid
for what years I have left.

I just want people to know I exist,
to know I existed,
to know that
there's something wrong
and I'm the black tornado
spinning up garbage
and dead bodies
in my mind.

If I die,
and nothing's left,
then you'll know why,
hell is a storm
and God hands out weather reports everyday.

Some girls just like something very traditional. does that make them any less of a woman. can a woman be a traditionalist and still be a feminist? I think so. I think that what we shared in that time was exactly what we wanted, to fall back into structured and secure roles, because we'd been through the centrifuge lately. And that may not have been who the both of us were at heart, but it worked to heal us, to make us both better for the future, and most importantly, less cynical. I think that what is most feminist about any relationship is the ability to choose. I've been in relationships where I'm the dominant one, and others where I'm not. It takes the ability to check your own self and being a pragmatist, because if you love someone you will change for them. You won't change your personality, but you'll change the way you approach a relationship if you care about them enough. I think that's what feminism boils down to. Allowing both partners to choose their roles in the relationship instead of having them chosen for them. So, **** it, my girl wants to be Susie Homemaker; that's her choice and I lay my head on that.

"I will eat your ******* **** off
in your sleep,
this is just disgusting"

We had been conversing proper cleaning methods concerning the latrine.

"Who does that?
Just ****** all over the toilet seat and doesn't clean it."

"Who leaves a ****** ****** in the toilet
and doesn't flush?"

We resolved the situation amicably like adults.

"What do you want for breakfast?"

"Blueberry pancakes."

And she got out of bed,
tapped me on the neck with her lips,
a good love tap,
and walked out naked to the kitchen
her *** and quads just bouncing
and beautiful.

I could see her in the kitchen,
all of her,
and i rolled over to her side,
where her pillow was,
took a long drag
of her smell,
and just passed out.

She woke me up
and I dipped blueberries
and fluff into lakes of syrup
and we watched TV and laid together
for a while.

Just close to each other.

I worked on her car the whole day,
changed her oil,
plugged a blown gasket,
and came back in when the streetlights
were starting to flicker on
And that Saturday
I got to lay down with her the rest of the night
and we were realistically happy.

What I really think it was,
was that
our dreams,
when we allowed them to,
coincided
beautifully.

Sometimes you wonder
how things can get so ****** up,
this happens
whenever it's about time for you to come home
and I'm watching Sportscenter.

Bodies flashing across the screen.
Commercials.
People cheesing over paper towels so hard they could be having aneurysms.
More bodies moving faster than I'll ever move.

Just bodies.

I loved you so much, I thought about you all the time;
just hot with you.

now when you unlock the door
around 6 in the afternoon
and walk in jingling all your annoying jewelry
you sniff at me, audibly, as you huff to your room.

But I'm watching you like a tiger,
out of the periphery;
you're just a body to get by and get through.

Apples and Oranges
means
that I give you something
of lesser value
and you give me something
of even
lesser value.

Like Natalie asked for the rent money
and picked at the lint in my jeans pocket,
formulated a ball of it
worked that little ball through the hole in my pocket,
to my *****,
they smelled horrible,
I knew it,
massaged that ball around my *****,
pulled it back through the hole,
out of the humidity of my pocket
and put it in her palm.

"You *******,
either you get me the rent
or I'm calling the police
and having you taken out of here."

"My name's on the lease too."

"I don't give a ****,
you're not paying it."

Apples and Oranges.

I swear to ******* God,
you eat my Oatmeal one more time
without asking,
and I'm going to cut your arm off.

Every morning I wake up
at 6:30. Ann wakes up
at 7:00 for work.

So I take her Oatmeal out of the cabinet
and pour a shitload in a bowl.
More than I will ever need,
just to **** her off.

And she wakes up at seven
and I'm just smiling there,
wolfing down her oatmeal;
anything to get a win in the morning.

I swear girl
you've made me want to
take all your ****
and throw it
out on the steps
these past days;
thou shalt not steal.

Lately
I've been wanting
to chop your head off,
but I'm a moralist
so I do it in my head
but sometimes...
thou shalt not ****.

But I love you....
thou shalt love they neighbor
as thine own self....
and I love you in the agonizing way a man's heart can be caught and snared.

I've had to sleep in my car
for six days now,
because of you yelling and screaming
and just hating everything about me
until you wake me up in the morning
tapping on the foggy glass
in a bathrobe, them pink, ***** slippers,
and some scalding black coffee in a mug,
and I look at you and I just want to....
thou shalt not ****,
again,
thou shalt not ****.

And it all started with you
waking me up with a bible to the head,
thumping me awake
at 3:15 in the morning,
standing over me reading
"thou shalt not covet another man's wife."

And everybody's a sinner.

Things had already started trending downward for me and Natalie. We'd talk about new people. Old people. People like old boyfriends. Or a girl I'd met that was different in a way that no girl had been different to me in awhile. And we hurt each other like that. Or by pretending not to hear each other. Or by just ******* when one of us didn't want to, but we felt we had too. Because it was normal. And per usual, we started arguing and throwing things at each other and smoking on the balcony by ourselves late at night listening to the dogs bark and sirens.  And we grew. Grew in cancerous separation. Once it started we couldn't stop it. One day she told me something final, she'd hooked up with an ex, and he had said something about "having changed" and she seemed optimistic. I didn't give a ****. My pride was nicked, but she wasn't **** to me then. I helped her move out of the apartment, boxed everything into that tinyass mini cooper she had, put some of her stuff in my car, and drove her to her new apartment. It was that easy. We hugged at her door. She said I'll call you later. I said okay. She never called me later and I moved back in with my parents. I think that what did it is that being in love is like being a parent, the love becomes the baby, and when two people stay together for the kid and not because they love themselves as much as the baby, then it goes from bad to worse. Then they really start to hate each other. Then they don't talk for years. Don't even talk about that grown-up elephant in the corner ******* on its own nose.

The chaos of my childhood haunts me.

Daddy's fist, mommy's ****** broken nose, streamers of blood, lawnmower catching on fire and the firemen trying to cop a feel of my mother, mommy yelling, me getting kicked out of pop's house, living nowhere for awhile, dumpsters, stumbling drunk into an old sewer, sleeping on ****, ******* in my sleep, waking up smelling stale like ammonia, car accident, fighting the guy who hit us because he called Josey a *****, pop slamming me into the refrigerator, me knocking him unconscious, levelling a knife on him once, fighting everybody, feeling like life was a fight, like i couldn't trust nobody. Even my new friends, brought beef to my house, a kid brought him and a whole bunch of other shaved-head ***** over in a jeep. I came outside with a butcher knife.
now i've got this flock inside of me,
because whenever I feel someone talking ****,
i just want to fight,
just want to react.

I hold all the good things inside of me
deep within,
even the little lambs
with pink, innocent lips
who are suckling and hungry for the thing i was really missing:
love.

I see Demons
in my sleep.

Their fingernails
scratch my eyelids until
little loose licks of skin
bleed
and the tears
come down
in torrents
the color of fingernails
and hell.

One descended
on me
one night,
landed on my chest
as a black raven
with green, wilting eyes.

I'm going numb, I can't feel
pain, or hatred,
or even love.

And if I do,
I let the demons devour it
until
hell is senseless
and the black-footed,
white-winged
demons
return
to flip me over
and eat what's
left of the meat
inside my rib cage.

Man I hate when a girl gets in your head,
because she stays there,
just squats
on your hypothalamus.

But even more than that
she takes over the left side of your brain;
sleep
takes
awhile.

Sleep is no longer
inevitable.

When I start feeling a girl,
I feel her hard,
and I feel her jumping
on my brain for fun,
even though she doesn't know it hurts.

**** my heart,
she'll make her way down there
soon enough.

Just because they have disappeared
does not mean that
i'm clutter-free.

It's a cluster-free, a clusterfuck of ******* insanity.

My uncle left right after
my Grampa's funeral,
split like a chicken's *****,
"he's in the airforce
or some other human-processing factory,"
Ma would say to me.

My aunt mable,
dipped out
dripped out two kids
then split
like a pillsbury biscuit.

My aunt pat's mom,
left Aunt pat on Aunt FLo's doorstep,
in the sole of her instep,
stepped out on a kid
and a husband
with a left shoe,
the right one
was left behind.

My pops
was forced out,
I saw him drag Ma
through the halls,
saw him whip her face in
with the brass-end
of a leather belt,
everybody's face was leathery
when the cops came in.

There is a litany of disappearing faces
in my family picture, a litany
of the disappeared
who reappear
over thanksgiving and christmas dinners,
when we wax nostalgiac
or hurt
over turkey,
gravy,
and biscuits.

Over love
and how many are missing.

Truthfully,
being alone in bed
*****;
I hate waking up
to myself
and nothing like you.

Nothing like your hair.
Your sweet and sour smell of ripe peaches;
Morning breath of cigarettes.

I think about
living in Alaska a lot more
now
than I did then.

I think about trailers with furniture
made by stacking old mattresses
and oil-burning lamps
and suns that die forever
and live forever.

The guy just kept swinging his lunchbox
and it kept hitting Shakira
in the stomach.

I had to say something.

So I did, I told him to watch where he swung
that ******* cooler.

And his boys got into it.
And they wanted to fight to.
And we were near the beach.
And the clouds were edgeless.
And the sun was pastel.

And I just wanted to **** all of them.

Shakira held me back.
My girl held me back.

And then I felt something sinking
cold, deep down in me.

I sat on the beach
and almost cried;
depression hit like peppermints.

And I'd never felt so afraid in my life.
On the beach, all those people laughing
and their fat ******* kids running into the surf,
I just wanted to **** myself right there,
I was so afraid and scared.

I'd never been scared.
Or afraid.
I'd gotten my nose broken
my jaw bruised a few times,
and I knew to put vaseline on
cuts over the eye,
but I was scared
and I can't explain the kind of fear
that's made me weak.

I've gotten into fights since then,
but I feel fear growing
everytime.

My fingers go crazy with twitching
and after it's over,
the ball gets bigger inside of me.

When you boil it down,
really get down to the flesh,
bone;
marrow;
mitochondria;
I am nothing but a fizzled
thing
pushing
third-rate
pulses
out of a fourth-rate heart;
that's why when I ***** you to me
in an impermanent cowgirl;
chest
to
chest;
a good, running thump
is answered
by a
descending blip.

I am a lovesick puppy.

Wanting so badly,
to let my nose rest on someone's ***,
and stick my tongue
in their stinker.

Aren't we all lovesick puppies?
don't all our fingers
smell like the unloading dock
where we were first castrated?

This is how you squeeze
a dollar
outta fifteen cents.

Cut the bottom of the tube
of a toothpaste
and lick the mint jelly
onto a toothbrush.

I like to think
that when Oscar painted
Camille,
it was their best time.

Afterward
Camille
becomes a blur on the beach.

But in all her detail
and naivete,
Oscar paints her
the last time
he really sees her.

They had coffee
and played with each other's feet
underneath millions of tables
during that time.

Home is
a hurt place;
the cut umbilical cord;
the roaring in the ears
and
the solitude;
what a person becomes
when
they build something
inside of
themselves;
crying;
thirty miles away
of a thousand miles
plus the moon;
crossing the train tracks
not knowing that there was such a thing
as crossing the train tracks
before
you crossed them;
a swing set
swinging
forever;
9/11
and Ma's
in the living room
bawling
while
Grandma
holds her
knowing
that those two towers
meant something,
more
than
just two pillars
and travelling back with Ma
as she weaves her way
with a tissue
and blotted eyes
to the day
her brother
and father
went to the top
of the trade centers
and stradled the railing
almost flying;
grandad
having a heart attack
because of his daily morning
tonic:
two eggs,
lemon juice
and a cigarette,
before
the umbilical cord
was cut;
Uncle
not being around,
disappearing
right after
Grandad
died;
dad
beating the **** out of
Ma
one night;
is Ma,
Joci,
Grandma
and Me;
getting your *** kicked
by Gary
and Ma
sending you back out
to get some more;
fear
and biting nails;
distant;
thirty miles
away of a thousand miles
plus the moon;
a distance;
being so hot with blood
in an all-white classroom,
while somebody asks you:
"Have you ever been shot?";
isolation;

Home is
hatred,
a slow growing,
well-tuned,
well-constructed
reinforced
aluminum bat
that dings
the ribs.

Home is the sound
of hollowness,
the ability to ding.

Home is a distance.
Home is further.
Home is the hurt place
inside the ribs.

I think I'm suffering from something. This morning I woke up feeling a weight on my chest. I felt like a compass at the core of the earth, it was like all that iron was just throwing me for 360 degrees. And I realized what it was, like, I'm just trying to be successful, you know? And that hunger couples with fear so much for me. I'll wipe my eyes, and lay in bed in a scared stasis. A feeling drops through me *******. First it's a desperate feeling for action, to do something, to be productive. Then this desperate complacency washes against it. A rock, a body, a me.

I be dapping
random *******
in the club.

A ***** walk up to me with a beer,
throws me a hand
and I dap him up.

We smile
and I don't even
know dude.

I swear
I've
signed Peace Treaties
in the club.

It's crazy, because sometimes
the girls
be acting foul
and cold;
even when you try
to grind
handing
them
a beer
as
a
peace-offering
they look back at you
across
demilitarized zones.

"I don't really like sports."

I feel like
you've been mis-advertising
yourself.

On your profile
your likes are:
Soccer.
Basketball.
Football.
And
Rugby.

"That's cool."

I'll say anything to get
a girl
to let me stick my hands
in her pants;
even if it means
sacrificing
morals
and
sports.

I gave her the pill,
her eyes fluttered
into oblivion,
ravens in her face.

Her eyelashes
became
tree fingers
branching
outwards
and covering her body.

When she put her fingers
to her lips,
they were tiny roots
and her mouth
zipped out.

her tongue;
gone.

teeth;
gone.

All there was,
was black soil
in tiny clods
that moved
with earthworms,
the fingers of god
in her mouth,
quietly working.

The pill
made her
earth.

Heartbreak is a crazy monster
that trembles
when it fights.

I hate going
to clubs
where people just stand around
with beers in their hands,
laughing and sleezing
under the revolving eye
of the strobe sun.

I gotta dance on a girl.

I gotta feel her hips
underneath a velvet miniskirt;
her legs
all soft
and microscopically
prickly.

Mysterious
mirrors
in the bathroom,
Those hollywood
lightbulbs
flickering
making
faces
look so young
and old.

"Twice
I've turned my back
on you."

Sometimes you scare
me
with your words.

So scared
I dropped my cigarette
twice
on your balcony;
shivering fingers
letting go.

Strobe lights
make your shoulder blades
look like wings
when you
dance.

Spread all over my chest,
I can feel you flexing,
little dragon
burn me up
with your wings,
leave some of those flaking
scales
behind.

Let the music
drip
like hot metal
in a **** rain.

"Chris just got kicked out of his house."

We rode over to his house,
and I listened to her sing.

Christ sat on the porch railing
dangling
his legs,
biting his fingernails.

I stood on the grass,
as she walked up to him.

He looked
at her neck.

Yukimi
put her hands on his shoulders
and kissed him on the lips.

Something
could have rose
in me.

But it didn't.

We rode back
and Chris slumped into the couch.

I heard him *******
his fingernails
as me and Yukimi lay in bed.

"Lips can do more than talk,
I can tell
he needed that,
I'm sorry if it weirded you out."

"No,
it really didn't."

Your fingers manipulating
her hips.

The way her skirt rides
and rides.

Her moving
with you
waiting for you to show her what's next,
to give direction
with your fingertips.

Laugh all you want,
but when I was a kid
I didn't watch
Thriller after dark.

But I danced.
I danced my *** off in that lit living
room
with Joci.

All night long,
popping
and moonwalking.

Now that I'm old(er)
I know how to build spaceships
and I can put
the popcorn
in the microwave
myself.

I can take the popcorn out of the microwave
and watch Thriller all night long.

But
then
my little woodpecker
came.

When I was
Cynical
with power
now and then,
I became
Raw
and uncarved
again.

We dance over the graves all night long.
Our tombstones are smooth
and we make light
together
with our feet.

Little woodpecker
what are you beginning to etch
in me now?