from a young age I was
manipulating them
making them mine
playing them over and over
letting them use me
but really I was using them
then tossing them out
to move on to the next

more and more and more
ripping them off the page
tearing apart the ignorant ones
making passionate sense to them
and spitting them back out
fingers digging in like quotation marks
burning them into parts of speech
adjectives, nouns, verbs
taking advantage of them all
I'm an equal opportunist

He materializes in white, as though from cloud
out of petals and vines--bright ferns whose arms
flower and wrap as though silken angel's yarn
breathing a sheer and layered freckle-shroud

about the capacious canvas of his back
in an uncharacteristic ceremony of purity or bliss.
So capricious a beloved yet elicits a dual image
in the mind of her who's also seen him black.

There is no catharsis to ease
the knowledge that someone
has been purged from the Earth.
There is no consolation,
no prayer to speak or be heard,
and words only to express
the hopelessness of such a want,
but no words for the want itself.

There are questions to be asked,
but I cannot seem to form them.