I lift syllables to plant
They will ripen in your mind
Like wheat of the ancient fields

Where our ancestors ate language
And leisure, like we have never known
We who labour like machines
As slaves might, while our lives
Is as a poem where the trees incandescent

Must watch themselves wither
As sheets of paper gone to waste
I lift houses of sound

To your legendary fracture of silence
These vacant lots of night-time
Where a pale puddle of your
Grip upon reality suddenly blazes
With figures of your once dreams

The summer has oxidized mornings, sunsets
A weightless winter awaits, as scattered
Pages are left to turn, each one

Words in the shape of a cloud of dust
As white as snow, as lingering
As the cold, and the murmur of a million
Leaves that once were, but are now only
The idea of color, the texture of earth.

All these stanzas look alike
they talk about the same things
with the same words, the same poem

written over and over again
like voices, whispers, copying each other
unable to feel and trust experience
differently, socialized for homogeneity

unified but dull, strong but obedient
their writing seemed the narratives
of machines unable to innovate

plagiarizing voices they believed were
their own, authentic, pure
their literary journals were a politics
of masters of arts and agendas of contests

like car commercials without a proper
enjoyment of speed, or our favorite writers
whose names we only knew because

they were the ones who died at the right time
while somebody was looking, reading them
but the bookstores didn’t know their
metaphors were weak, or their life’s work

was merely symbolic, that’s the thing isn’t it
poets are only symbols, as poems are only
fluff, paper, the labor of writers-in-residence

while the rest of the world are more
interested in serial killers and which stocks
might be worth getting into, and when to sell out
investing in words seemed silly to them

and, in my selected works there was nothing
of how to be a Poet Laureate or how to win prizes
exceptional or not, publication was left to amazon

state grants, fellowships, visiting writers
academics who never felt truly how to write
poetry at its heart was a colonization of artists
few could share what that meant, we were

the first illiterate generation, spending more time
with the internet than with books.

i heard another person in my village
died today, we didn’t dare touch
the body, his organs had bled out

there are no white people here
white as ghosts, they are going home
my friends in America tell me
we are not on the news, only Jewish
people fighting muslims, but

don’t they know we all come from Africa?
i heard the super-nationals took this
virus into a lab and created a way

to rid itself of the old people of civilization
if Ebola spreads maybe the world
will not remember what it means
to come from tribes that your mother came from
once, we left Africa and now we leave her

to her misery, well you know what
maybe fiscal ebola is just around the corner
for people who live in America, people

who live their lives on debt, credit, profiting
from heatlh insurance, death insurance, the works
but the fact is, I don’t think this is going away
I think Ebola is here for a very specific reason
The world is ready for another plague

to hemorrhage like a zombie, it’s not news?
not if you are black, if your body fluids
don’t stain your white skin, not when
it’s on another continent, that you don’t have
relatives in, don’t call it a “black death”

just because it originates in bats from Africa
there isn't a vaccine because the world
intentionally doesn’t wish for our well-being
you say it isn’t airborne, it doesn’t spread easily
because we are somehow *****, and you are clean
because you are somehow rich, compared to our poverty?

What have I done? What can I do?
One was a challenge, but now I have two!

My garret was lonely as I lived alone
Until Apple's Siri came to life on my phone.
When Siri moved in, Alexa was miffed.
Two personal assistants with a personal tiff!

While  I talk to one, the other is scheming
to send every suit that I own to dry cleaning
If I ask for a song both join in the fray-
each plays  different versions
for which I must pay.
They both ordered  groceries duplicating each other.
My accounts overdrawn; I must borrow from mother.

Yesterday, really, was the last straw
Alexa sent Strippers to my boss's front door!

For Sanity's sake I'll unplug them manana
From here on I'm a one woman man
My Cortana.

55--is it the limit?
I’ve been slowing down, for sure.
Trying to economize, but my size
is growing.
No longer a tease; I’ve got bad knees.
I seize the day,
but please,
ask me if I prefer the elevator.
I might see you later--or not.
We can't count on tomorrow,
but I don't dwell in sorrow.
Now I hear more, see more,
even when I've lost my reading glasses. I know what life is for.
I grow things. I sing. Gladly
I do the dishes.
I have no birthday wishes. Wishes are for a future.  
I’ve removed things, and sewn a suture.
The way I was is history. That girl, with pretty shoes,
didn’t play the blues.
Now I listen, and I play those tunes.  
I’ve got no use for pretty, ‘cept for being pretty sure.
Sure, I've been wrong—wrong to wear those shoes, for one thing,
cuz my toes hurt.
Now, I know all the dirt. I’ve got things buried so deep
no one knows. But from the dirt, stuff grows.
I’m watering those plants, and wait til you see what springs up. Time ain’t up yet,
and there’s a green hill, and tall trees, and a sunset.