Smiles are deceitful my eyes tell the truth, what more do you need my face is the proof!

Look closer than that I am but a shell, brimming with Rage, my own personal hell.

believe nothing you see, not even me, for I am the demon and the demon is me.

Summer morning.
Recrossing the borderline from the afterlife,
the dreamer is expelled from sleep, the dream lost.
I am a dream’s shadow,
heavy with transition, jagged from sleep.
Light gathers me from every room I have ever slept in
onto the shrinking island of the bed.

Someone cues the poetry. Unquiet lines.
The past was worse than you thought,
voices say.  Your life is a weighted skin.
Stop swimming against the tide of loss.
Sink.

Yet gloom is porous.
From the sky’s cracked mosaic,
Daybreak seeps in.
The light reassembles familiar objects,
which replace mere longing in ordinary darkness.

The things of the world resist but return
to radiance, resume the work of existing.
We are all day laborers.
It's my shift. Summon the coffee.
The world yawns before me.
And I am, therefore (I think).

i will never know the black mother’s ache,
but i imagine that if the phrase “adding insult to injury” had a feeling,
that would be it.

i will never know the black mother’s ache,
but i imagine that it sounds like “hands up, don’t shoot,” like “i can’t breathe,”
like blood hitting a pavement that seems as though it was built
to catch those droplets.

i will never know the black mother’s ache,
but i imagine that it tastes like skittles and arizona tea,
four years old but still carrying the fresh sting of a wound just opened.
i imagine that it tastes 
like history repeating itself,
like seeing your son or daughter recycled each week
on every news report, on every tv station.
each time it is a different body, 
but it is always the same hand pulling the trigger,
the same black blood being spilled,
the same cries left unheard;
we shout “black lives matter”
and yet, still,
they cut them too short.

i will never know the black mother’s ache,
but i imagine that it looks like a web of lies too thick to cut through — 
every strand another weapon that he did or did not have,
another order that he did or did not follow,
another sin that he did or did not commit;
the only black they care about
is the color of the ink they use
to draw your angel-headed boy
a set of horns.
i imagine that it looks like evidence hidden,
like sparknotes-type skim-throughs labeled “thorough investigations,”
like another unindicted officer walking freely atop the cries of those 
who charged into a battle they knew they would, but hoped they would not, lose.
a battle they have fought too many times before.
i imagine that it looks
like an empty chair at the dinner table,
like cold-blooded ****** disguised as justice
with the help of a blue hat and a badge.

i will never know the black mother’s ache,
but if you listen closely enough,
you can hear it
in every cautious goodbye she says to her children whenever they leave the house,
or in the silence that those goodbyes used to fill.

can you hear it?
you will have to push past the shouts
of the big bold letters that they want you to believe.

somewhere,
somewhere in there,
a black mother’s heart is crying.
it is a gentle, hushed cry 
that the world does not want to hear.

but the tears are still just as wet.

(a.m.)

he only thinks you're
pretty when you cry
when the aching
vulnerabilities sting
like red welts along
cheeks that are
white as teeth
only then are you pretty,
when the red blood
tears fall like soldiers in
the war of peace and
he kisses the place the
bullet exits
he promises he will
still love you as the lion
that murders the lamb
when the sky bleeds,
crimson echoes down
mountains of death
his viper hands
snake round your
hips and you just
don't mind, you just
don't mind anymore

i raised her
with a violent birth
my vocal cords tangled
like a drunk couple
making love
with her name.

she emerged from
the slit in men's throats,
a grown woman,
her sister followed,
from suffocated coughs,
glowing like streetlamps
from mouth to mouth,
never happy,
never settled.

girls like her,
they don't enter this
world easy,
they leave it in a mess,
exit it like a highway,
move on to the
next place.

there's a stain they
always leave,
yellow on the teeth,
marks on bed-sheets,
empty rings on
bedsides with last
nights drink
gone cold just like
their feelings.

just a girl they say,
harmless,
girls have endless love
in their hearts,
and endless hate.

The table was set.
The morning was fine.
The world lay reflected
in two glasses of wine.

An empty plate
reflected sunshine,
The morning compressed
in two glasses of wine.

What did she see
in undulations of wine?
Were the shapes a portent?
Was there a design?

Were the glasses a mirror
or shadowy sign?
Perhaps they were more
than just glasses of wine.

She and a friend
sat down to dine.
Their reflections drank deeply
from two glasses of wine.