LOVE BATTLES

**busybodies made the sign center mass of imperceptible crosses over themselves and swore we were jane and joe for the umpteenth time.. God as their witness the re-embodiment of negro slaves evident by the way we run.. instinctively and sometimes in dissimilar directions afraid to feel since their intercession i'd straighten up against the wall so you could measure if the nervous system was my major or some simpler thing to interpret or i could make gravity forget and you would see that i'm taller than my dreams there's no make pretend at the roots of my poems as honest as a kiss as fair as the day you fell from a door in the sky wearing a cloud for a parachute singing something about giving good love these applications were hardly suspect before the mistrustful mouths of boys and girls without enhanced halves of their own for whatever reason they need to see us segregated and claim to have "the goods" on my ghost but can uncover no more than what i've written the world was unsightly before i met you i was a thief and a liar and peddled too many types of toxins so even uglier and was irresponsible in love and life but this season'll be brighter than former editions even without the ginger and gold that made the trees attractive or the banks you made angels in what more can they tell you who i was is the bogeyman beneath the bed that will steal your eyes if you let em and because love battles.. i've since removed it's overweight tongue buried it's spirit alive and kept no past account so sacred as to raise any uncertainties from the dead what you've seen is all there is to me but i'm almost sure beauty can't be taught and you must care for some secret all your own in the silver locket maybe you wear around your wrist is why they'll rumor about its contents as well and unapologetically so if history or the natural order of things is any indication until you swear you're no root woman because someone had to have convinced the village "it would take a drop of his blood and an unholy spell..." for you to have me but we're only imperfect apart so our music makes more sense mean in the throat of a hummingbird or on old vinyl records static is a metaphor for the arduous nights and only makes us stronger if it doesn't kill us in our sleep we were predestined and earlier than this life i committed your profile to memory in a carolina rice field beneath a haze as warm as hellfire more than a decade after the emancipation of the grind when you bet everything on your wedding ring and was taught there ain't nothing complementary about (free)dom they couldn't break us they never will this thing we've comprised is a gift from the Gods who gave us mary and mahalia and stars like vanilla chips embedded in a dark chocolate sky even before we could read and i could write you poetry about ordinary things as soft as your smile there are no plantations in heaven though death is some thing less than a formality when true love is as relentless for the umpteenth time if we come back without our papers i'll wait for you, barefoot in the churchyard ready to run**

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derickgibbs

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