one plus one...

          ...equals one,

two minus one...

          ....equals zero.

Jeez...

        you're always barking a wrong person.

                                        Stop it!
                                                           Enough!

In this country
a black man is only legitimate
as
a musician,
a ball player,
or an actor,
or a small-chance
president.

Other than that,
he's nothing.

Worse than that,
he is sore.

Truthfully,
If you saw
me
walking down the street
towards you,
you wouldn't think
poet
first.

I'm that ugly,
angry
and black-looking.

A perpetual scowl
like
a
scar.

With all these words
     I'm trying to utter right now,
With all these words
     I'm asking deep inside my heart;
With all these words
     I really want you to hear;
With all these words
     that come from
     the highest atmosphere.

I'm missing you,
     do you miss me too?
I need you,
     do you need me too?
I care for you,
     do you care for me too?
I love you...
     and would you hug me
     and say, you do?

'Tis end of the world...

                   ...after ice and fire collide.

...

                         up
                    go       is
               to               to
          way                   go
     best                            down.
The

                                                                        ...

I only smoke
when you're around
or when I'm around you,
I don't know which is which
just that a consumption is going on
within me.

You reach down into your pocket book
and pull out a few killing sticks
hopefully,
I'll die of consumption.

That little creature
inside me,
the pink satyr,
jumps
in between my ribs,
whenever you go rummaging
in that golden shimmer of stripper's purse,
and **** out the Marlboros
with a wet-lipped,
wide-arcing
smile.


The creature,
the real me,
plays with his
satyr ****
all day
and bites his nails
and soft cuticles
until the blood runs
and pools in
little
red
pearls.

I am love-starved,

and the satyr is afraid
when he jumps
because that means you're around.

When I'm around you,
or you're around me
something smells,
possibly the iron
of the ******
left-over finger flakes.

The satyr picks up
the soggy,
spit out nails
and shingles
my heart with them.

The satyr shingles my heart
with the fear that you will leave
and that I will have no one
to consume
or be consumed by.


You are my ******
nails and cuticles.

What a ******* emo
you
make me.

I am uncomfortable,
even,
with the notion
that you have an effect
on me.

That's why I dismiss it,
with that whole
"What a ******* emo" title.

And that whole
"What a ******* emo."
last line.

As long as it doesn't affect me;
as long as it's not immediately relevant
and something I have to immediately worry about;
as long as it doesn't **** up
my credit score
or my
shiny
new
house
then,
**** it.

And
*******,
for bringing it to my attention.

how dare you.

this was promised to me,
it's predestined,
my two-story, three bedroom, two bath; the foreign workmanship and american artifice; the creamy halo of vinyl in the sun; the wrath of windexed windows and their hard missiles of bright, reflected sunlight; the soft lips of my children; my wife's pillowy, warm stomach and scratchy *****; our retriever that eats his own ****, picking apart tiny specks of feces from the sun-pricked tips of our rug of fescue; these are the works of God, this is the land of God. You are marring this flat earth

Walking home,
a girl in an orange
of a shirt and long
bell-bottoms
with a small protuberant
***
turned around to look at me.

Her eyes were large,
and the way she looked at me
was a question almost:

Are you dangerous?

Maybe, she wasn't looking at me,
maybe the breeze kicked up,
and she just wanted to shield herself.

But I don't know,
something in the way
she looked at me,


The quick stoicism
of her large blue eyes,
shocked into a quick
heavy moment of recognition:

black guy.
hoodie.
black baggy pants.
the scowl.


I knew that soon her eyes
would wiggle out of there sockets
and dangle behind her
always looking back
even as she kept moving forward.

The illusion of moving forward.

I felt like the black guy
the news tells you about,
the one that's dangerous
to all lonely white females
at 9:00 at night,
as his tongue lolls
and his head wags.

Maybe,
I'm being too sensitive.

Maybe,
I'm being hypersensitive.

Why is it
that whenever I see a white female
walking towards me at night
I cross the street?

Today there were two
people talking too much
and too loud
in the library.


Guy says,
looking down
nose moving with his eyes
over the Times New Roman legs
of a book.

"He broke up with her because
her ***** smelled like ****."

The girl across from him
has tiny fingers with no knuckles,
fingers that make tacking noises
on her Macbook.

She smiles,
in aquamarine
as the screen dazzles her pale
face.

"She probably had a yeast infection,
or something."

There are too many people talking,
but what rights do I have?

The right to laugh with them,
to be a part of it,
to be a comrade
to be mad because they're talking
while I'm pretending not to listen
and agree?

I broke up with a girl
because her ***** smelled like
an *******.

There are too many people
full of double-entendres
and irony.

The Brooklyn Bridge is
an array of lights
stretching limb to limb
across the water.

It slaps tiny sequins on the east river,
as those give way
on that anything but black and steady
to blinking eyes on the barges
and the flittering stingers of heliccopters
zipping from cloud to cloud.

This orchestra of human expansion
reddens the black walls
of my apartment,
with light.

The scratchy comforter
and starch-hardened pillow
scramble on my bed
in a mess of rifts and fabric mountains.

I love getting up
in the middle of the night
and staring out of this window,
but when I go back to bed,
the voices of the wasps,
mournful barges,
and falsetto of the old springs
give way to thinking
and restlessness.

The very first day we met
     is a boomerang on my mind,
and every time I'm drawn to your pictures
     I remember your angelic face
          which I let myself be enraptured.

We are captured
     by the unexpected love story,
     by the unexpected happiness,
     by the unexpected smiles,
     by the unexpected moments,
     by the unexpected time.

(You make me love you now and then,
your presence means Heaven,
And if I will have to choose one
     from thousands of women,
I'll swear to God to have you again).

We are sharing this valley of love,
whence, I hope us to stay forever
     (continue reigning my heart).
Thank you for filling up the gaps of my fingers;
     if you will be drifted away,
          I'll be drowned from that ocean of tears.

Your sweet little eyes,
     (looking forward for more  memories)
your wide open arms,
     (accepting the way I used to be)
and your red rosy lips
     (touching my heartfelt gratitude).

I found it awkward for these affections to rely,
     but believe me,
          loving you is one of the perfect moments
               in my life.