The rattle in your lung
says the choice is no longer yours

Pause

For thought or effect,
the end’s the same

Played your hands in the game like always

But

The rattle in your lung
says the choice is no longer yours

And where did the vitriol get you,
old man?

To a better place?
Where fat white women sing your praise?

While at home your carbon copies
bust their lips
when the home team loses?

The rattle in your lung
says the choice is no longer yours

You waiting for something?
Applause for working a nine to five
and allowing a fraction
of your take home to be spent on living,
raising?

The rattle in your lung
says the choice is no longer yours

I’ll stand over you now
As you stood over me
Instead of raining blows
I’ll let the misery of your truth
Catch in your chest
and fight for the cause

The rattle in your lung
says the choice is no longer yours

Remember when we burned
down the federal fences
and let a black family in
a white house built by slaves -

man, the fire was hot
and the smoke smelled like freedom -

but that was then, and here we are
not so much later, the rails are made
of iron like the fists of a dictator -

the smoke burns my eyes, man -
and now - I can’t breathe.

You and I are different now.
What could be said last night,
Or earlier today, has left
Its meaning far behind, so
We continue, starved for company
On sheets or under words
That might or might not celebrate
The ritual
Of acts that won't return,
Or if they do will not be recognized
As yours or mine, no fast
Or fascinating gesture having caught
A breaking second or a moving hand.
I say this knowing it has not been
Long enough for bitterness to pass
Into the future, or your eyes--
Blue as heaven's door--
To once again meet mine.

The last time I left her house
(She was  not there)
Her things followed behind me in a line. All of them
I said: “where”?
“How big do you think my heart is?”
There was a watch among them
with a brown leather strap, so kind, but stunned, with hanging hands
I picked her up
(The only thing I could do)
It was five-thirty then and still, it is.
Today, however, most of those houses are destroyed
That alley has no longer the magic in its long and twisting sleeve
No doorbell, no window, and no eyes who would shine through it
I say to myself
I wish I could have stolen the time

On my grandfather's deathbed,
The one I sleep in now,
Which he shipped back from Detroit City, on a freight train in the
Nineteen thirties, when his father died
From typhus and he became head of the family here in Western Kentucky,
I remember his wavering lucidity
Through a past midnight thunderstorm,
How he asked us to sing
Rock of Ages and
When we had finished said
That was terrible, which it was.
Who could sing,
At a time like that--
His son, my father's bass voice
Quavering as it never did
In church, but there we were,
And then the last words I ever
Heard him say--
How do they count the time?

i feel fragile
amidst the sea
of my unwavering thoughts

as though
to trance freely
around the world

outside these four walls
would be much,
much safer

than to linger upon
the voices
within it