Sleep

Sleep Apr 2020

i want to rip my muscles
upon some worthwhile thing
anything-- give me canvas,
steel, pen, give me the scaffolds
of this rotten world, the hammer
the nail, the blowtorch.

Sleep Apr 2020

Spring

Spare a thought for the drowned world
axis spinning raucous, thrashing for air
in garbage water, in bad dreams
a plague of visions. no oracle sleeps.
Where do you sleep, brother of my sin,
arm of the father that beats this mother
earth and can't remember her name? My name
is as dead as the earth, stuck somewhere
in the impenetrable afterlife of the Atlantic-
wet stomach groaning shale,
rotten bicycles coughed onto the shore
of this new world of fog & lightning.
We will not be greeted as gods again
ours is the weight of dead bees,
a waste of April.

Sleep Apr 2020

I Do Not Worry About the Economy

The flu has pushed the shoppers
away from this litter of bananas
coaxing my tongue for better health.
Strange things play in the air
between the cashier and the customer
wringing alcohol on her hands.
From Kentucky to New York,
we've come to dress like surgeons
and fear the bad blood of a handshake
or dollar bill. I grab my things as night grows
outside the automatic doors. Under the rinsers
& harsh light of the produce aisle,
a truth dies and a myth takes its name.

#coronavirus #capitalism

Sleep Nov 2019

working class

Black foam, our drinking bread,
Walk troubled, we do, hearts sloshing
In tighter and tighter chests. Bray, bark,
a howling of directions and orders--
too many open mouths, too much
of the whip. When will we be released?
They say well past midnight, beyond the sleep of masses, ghosts above the garden
eating weeds.
We cannot touch.

Sleep Aug 2019

ascent

a valley, a valley
for my sleep, inward embracing
a holy moment of silence before
ascents, questions, anxious wing
of a moth, an animal in famine,
the goat that travels the brink
Fall. Rise. Whatever comes first
his brother follows, the sister frowns
behind the veil, aslee,
Asleep.

Sleep May 2019

hotlanta

it won't do, won't be
my song until the words are
gone, stripped of the obscene
leaving only the **** soul,
funked up and gunning out
for the road, reminding the hairs
on our necks and arms of
ancient sensations, long missed--
the long kiss, the thrill of undoing,
stomping grounds so trodden the
fresh pavement tries to forget my feet
i will never forget the honeysuckle &
stuck air, the secret paths that gave me
thin red trails like veins in my young arms
outrunning the cops, yelling at the moon
ah, the a/c is our holy spirit
chilling every atom siphoned off
to our skin, our houses of flesh
soaking anything that matters inside
our rocky pores, cragged from age
& the hot dragging whip of summer,
the earth's work camp, the whole city.

© 2019

#summer #hometown

Sleep May 2019

a bit

kaleidolon the hisser
pink
ragged rose
above an empty jar--
his hair broke like glass
i keep a faucet of his
hisser

tell me what does this evoke in you, reader, if anything

#abstract