i don’t know how to
comfort humans, I don’t
always understand them, us, we
don’t find history or truth
to be gentle, respectful of the sweet,
the way we prefer
our medicine; our neighbors don’t
lend out even spoonfuls of sugar like
they used to, and all the gates and triple-locked
doors make the transition from momma’s house
to the warden’s all the easier,

i wouldn’t have known how to
tell him his momma wasn’t coming
she was going to find out about this from
a phone call from a doctor
who wouldn’t pronounce his name
right, no familiar hands were
going to help carry him into his chariot

but when he was laying on
the cement, having been dragged
out of the car that flipped twice
by people who were “basically
paramedics, and knew they
didn’t have to stabilize his spine before
moving him,” who were basically just
used to paramedics not showing up
when they called, when he was
laying on the cement, he never called for his
mother or father or sister or
any one else who might have found a way to leave him, he
just screamed out
at
or
for
God,

and either way, I just kept mumbling
“preach.”

Have you ever
looked at a cliff,
or a ledge, or
a box-cutter, or a
car crash; a
set of lips getting ready to smile,
or a set of hands getting
ready to hold you,
and said…

I have to?

i didn’t know she
existed outside my dreams.
i’d never been good at keeping
my hands empty, or
my cup watered, or keeping flowers
alive, until my knock-knock jokes
bloomed and ran over the edges; until
I became more
forever than
funny.

if you’d not jumped, you’d /

have never found that rocks are /

more feather than bone

“i am a pen
with a bullet in the
chamber”
—
i am a black boy
burning a book
about history

i am a black boy
painting new colors
on a flag —

it didn’t match
my shoes, red’s and whites
only remind me bloods and angels
I don’t know how to pray to, and I
don’t believe in that
purple predecessor.

i am a spectrum of sunkissed
skintones, calloused and weathered
and stress-tested

those of us who survive the firing squad
are fileted, and
skinned, and worn

they say, the first man who wears
a ******’s skin, inherits his
rhythm. and the blues he spent so long
running away from will lay
by his headstone.

“i am a pen,
with a bullet in the chamber”
—
i am a black boy
reading a book
about God.

i am a black boy
writing a book
about all of the times I’ve failed.

i am a sinner
standing on the corner
looking to the sky,
trying to carve a dream
from the clouds

i would give any of my things
to have anything
worth crying that i
cannot hold.

“i am a pen,
with a bullet in the
chamber.”
—
i am a black boy
reading a book
about God.

i am a hug,
with a hoodie on,

and i know…
i know…
my love is scary.
but yours is, too

but
other times our
hands held each other like
reins hung from
low-swung sweet
chariots, her carry
always felt like
a home coming

"are you scared?"

"No, I  /

just sleep with all the lights on /

in case she comes home.

we spent every morning
together,
sitting cross-legged
on her bedroom floor, watching
our trembling hands cradle,
and weep, and
try to learn how
to cut each other
complements
from our jagged edges.

“he reached for her leave(s) /
autumn wrapped ‘round his hands, and /
said she missed him, too”

she was like walking
up to the edge of a cliff
and letting your toes dangle
taste freedom; giving them
a chance to plume, or learn
they were always every-only human, she
was a dream on a picket fence
straddling, struggling to name
itself as either flying or
the other thing.

until I watched her at low-tide, I never
believed
she could pull water from the rocks

until I walked to the shore at dawn, and
found her moon-lonely, floating
above the empty remnants of a river once home
to a town-full of
baptisms,

until erosion turned her cheeks to
aqueducts, pouring herself back into
holy

until she looked at me and asked
if I thought they would notice that
from now on the Mississippi would be salt water,

until I looked into her eyes, hollowed and
cored and caved, and
all of the things I had drowned or orbited
in her over the years was looking back
at me

I didn’t know that running
just leads
to caught

please forgive my quiet.
I’ve been listening to God,
and men, and
trying to live down
each of my
days, my dreams
haven’t come ‘round
as often as nightmares have; it’s scary
when you can’t let go, and you
have more reasons to wake
up tomorrow than to
sleep tonight.

Don’t question the way
my heart, or my eyes, or
my fists know love, these
hands only fetch how
you taught me, these stripes always seem to paint us like
blood stains dripping parallel
from the bullet-holes, forgive me
for growing tired of playing
catch in a yard without grass,
or not trusting the names and sharp objects thrown
at my brothers.

Do not be alarmed, Jim,
I know how you feel
about silence, but it’s not
what you think, we have simply
chosen to begin
counting our dead in the words
they lived, and in our own
languages; ones
built with more light
more love, more
Glory
than the ones you gave us.

We are tired of watching
pieces of ourselves ascend
to Heaven, only to have their
dispatch demand that we pay for
the opportunity to stand
closer to God.

Sincerely,

A Beautiful Night Sky,
With More Stars
Than You Have Bullets.

come here; hold my tongue
wrap you arms around me, we
don’t have to believe in
tomorrow
yet