everyone is tragically in love with someone else,
dancing and pining, returning
to the addiction, a relapse
of what is it, *******? ******? kind words?
and I
I am busy suffocating in my own spit
I am gagging and revolting at these chains of green poison,
cloaking over my airway,
I cannot speak, this atmosphere is
the same way the sky looks just before it collapses,
strained smiles in a strained nation where
strangers do not speak or associate
police **** innocent men
and thousands more are called guilty for
using their first amendment rights,
it is the frustration at belief that since you are
black
or a woman
that you mean nothing, you are good for nothing,
your only goal is surely malice
and there is nothing you can say to change their minds
so they lay these liquid chains atop you and they fill your lungs
you cannot breathe deep enough to force them out, you can only feel yourself slowly sinking through the moist air and pumping your legs uselessly
the fire inside you only serves to boil the chains and settle the burning poison deeper into your wounds.

to pluck out his eyes and
stain the earth with vitreous humor.

to separate the lonely wind from its
counterpart in my soul and its
thickness choking my lungs—

to escape the death grip of
the twisting jaws and
****** talons of the
sharks that rip us raw
hawks that
streak from the sky
harpies
harbingers of

to eat the flesh that
drips like candlewax from our
febrile skin

to hold morality in one hand and
maps in the other

to learn the general principles of cartography
one must commit genocide.