To be more
than the shame
staining my skin
a pallid shade
of grey,
would be more
than the dreams,
painting the windows
of my mind
with a rosy tint,
of hope
of chance;
it would be
all.

But,
is this pinkish-haze
from the comfort
of reveries,
as I’m enveloped
in velvety corolla?
Or are these
the malignant,
sardonic
barbs,
that foretell
my fate
as a truthless soul
in an honest
reality?

Just know
in the name of greed
as business’s
influence grows
you become
less than a cog.

You are interchangeable
in any job.
You can be discarded
no matter how hard
you worked.

Integrity,
Honesty,
Loyalty,
are just
shiny
but
empty
words.

That is what it means
when the free market
rules the world.

Not here. Not there. Not anywhere. Not anywhy. Not caring pennywise above my lotto-won unslant brow. I simply cannot who this town anymore.

Wut? It's not that i "jus can't;"
it's that.. well, it's that....

---- It all sidepath whirr spins too much, resulting in me being in it too kneedeeply, as my limbs brim over the finely-tuned ledge of what we think we can potentially know, where it grins up at the space stolid, like a thing imagined real - plus my poor machete has (in a torrid blink of the winkers) turned; or, more accurately, transmogrified into sudden feted befridged leftovers, which, aren't exactly untaciturn in their ways.

(understatement of the eon, iknowiknow)..

---- worse still, -forgotten- leftovers, hidden away in the crisper drawer under the rest of the things spoken for: half due to lazy; the other half, to the fact it won't slide nicely anymore :/

it, turning
and smirking.

Oh! the its
and things.

And those three anthropomorphic hands always pushing n prodding the fated its and things. It's all so.. meh.

So, of c, we decorate it w meta imps and wings above them. Methinks the neon signs of the new rind output axon doth protest too much.

Yet, the gray area is nigh.
Autocorrect, be ******.

Me: I, now, know your tricks. Your abstruse, purely theoretical storms which appeal with chartreuse arms elongated into lawnorder - I can see you've been drawn out. I can see around the bend. You don't scare me anymore with your elegant renderings. I am too much in the dying whitehot.

That voice inside: nothing

Me: ...

Chicken, *****.

Don't you see? It's all getting crunched down. God is in the box marked "fragile," sexting n taking dog selfies doing a Miley tongue wag in the ***** bathroom mirror w an awk ttfn postscript n kissy face discursive.

I won't flinch.

my pockets turned inside-out aboutfacedly, knowingly staring that stare right back up at me, reflexively, interrogating and adjudicating, highchaired n bewigged n gavel-swinging n self-righteous spittle-wingin n all - cuffs hugging the curly q sloughed off set-o-symbols once hung like rare priceless lace above that (over)hyped brand new skull muscle (geologically speaking, of c). but the ***** have all been given, and i, finally, with arms reaching forward and backward, am here.

the haste the haste
the grammar head at the wake
let rigormortis do it's worst,
because there is more behind its door

0100111101010000 bars
hug the star's start
stripping them away,

Denuded, they

corrall it
adn things

white-knuckled,
I grip these two
and win back
the abysmal.

I am OK with breaking down,
with being hurt. Vulnerable as ****.
These tears are me
and mine.

it is no longer still and poetic.
it is now a bunch of
unrelated things,
and i am one of those things.

a spider
stuck in its web with its fly
watching its legs go by.

on tuesday,
dylann roof was sentenced to his death.
on tuesday we tried
to make one body feel like nine.
to make one body feel like justice.
on tuesday we said
there has got to be some price to pay
for entering the house of god
with a sinful tongue
and a handgun.

today,
six days later,
we remembered the rev. dr. martin luther king, jr.
we looked at the world,
called it a place with potential for change,
called it that because there has to be some softer way
to look at bloodshed,
for sanity’s sake.
if not then
all that remains is a solitary image of dr. king rolling in his grave because he knows,
knows that breathless black bodies
are a constant,
are transcenders of time,
whether sunken in rivers,
hung from taut ropes,
or bathing in blood on historic church floors,
singing, singing, screaming, shrill
for some messiah bringing mercy, mercy, mercy.

felicia sanders wants mercy:
prays for it, wills it down from up above,
unfolded from the hands of god
so that it might fall upon the head and in the eyes
and within the very being
of the man who killed her son.


it takes a certain grace —
one so foreign to me i can hardly write of it —
to see god in such men who deliberately defy Him,
to ask that heaven’s gates
be so indiscriminate and overt.
i would want him to burn for this.
but it is not my say,
not my life,
not my long, resounding, unflinching “hallelujah!”
not my certain type of grace.

breathless black bodies
are a constant,
are transcenders of time, a recurring motif.
but so too, then, is the black body full
of breath,
that inhales and exhales faith
without ceasing.

such is the black body
that sees a little bit of god in dylann roof,
that prays that he prays for forgiveness,
that thinks there to be but one kingdom,
and he, too,
a worthy subject.

the solitary image of dr. king rolling in his grave
is not a surprise.
the black body has always known
so well
how to die.

but felicia sanders hopes her son’s killer finds mercy.
perhaps the one thing the black body has always known better
is how to love.

(a.m.)