in the hospitals and jails
it's the worst
in madhouses
it's the worst
in penthouses
it's the worst
in skid row flophouses
it's the worst
at poetry readings
at rock concerts
at benefits for the disabled
it's the worst
at funerals
at weddings
it's the worst
at parades
at skating rinks
at ****** ******
it's the worst
at midnight
at 3 a.m.
at 5:45 p.m.
it's the worst
falling through the sky
firing squads
that's the best
thinking of India
looking at popcorn stands
watching the bull get the matador
that's the best
boxed lightbulbs
an old dog scratching
peanuts in a celluloid bag
that's the best
spraying roaches
a clean pair of stockings
natural guts defeating natural talent
that's the best
in front of firing squads
throwing crusts to seagulls
slicing tomatoes
that's the best
rugs with cigarette burns
cracks in sidewalks
waitresses still sane
that's the best

my hands dead
my heart dead
silence
adagio of rocks
the world ablaze
that's the best
for me.

A tired old man groans
As he hand you some
Asian culture cuisine.

Riddled with spices
It tickles the little thing in the back of your throat
As you swallow the substance.

Face now flushed
Like a cluster of fire ants crawling on the hill
Calling it their home.

Home?
Where was it?
Your memory slips.

Glee storms the man’s face
As he studies your expression.

“Seems like you can’t handle such a simple thing."

Clouding your judgement, you bite your tongue
In desperate attempt to knock back the sense
That gone up and left.

However
It fails.

Numb as the lightbulbs turn into bottle-cap suns
Concealing sight
With the light that it shares.

Count as your heart stops
With eyes bloodshot
His crafted words echo
In your failing ears.

He lives in a cold and empty house
Where lightbulbs hang from silver chains
And lonely ghosts live within
The cracking, creaking wooden walls

He leaves out his favorite books for them
And listens to footsteps beneath the floorboards
He plays piano,
a reclusive recital for empty rooms
And they keep each other's soft-spoken secrets

I.
My face resembles your face
less and less each day. When I was young
no one mistook whose child I was.
Features build coloring
alone among my creamy fine-***** sisters
marked me Byron's daughter.

No sun set when you died, but a door
opened onto my mother. After you left
she grieved her crumpled world aloft
an iron fist sweated with business symbols
a printed blotter dwell in the house of Lord's
your hollow voice changing down a hospital corridor
     yea, though I walk through the valley
     of the shadow of death
     I will fear no evil.

II.
I rummage through the deaths you lived
swaying on a bridge of question.
At seven     in Barbados
dropped into your unknown father's life
your courage vault from his tailor's table
back to the sea.
Did the Grenada treeferns sing
your 15th summer as you jumped ship
to seek your mother
finding her     too late
surrounded with new sons?

Who did you bury to become the enforcer of the law
the handsome legend
before whose raised arm even trees wept
a man of deep and wordless passion
who wanted sons and got five girls?
You left the first two scratching in a treefern's shade
the youngest is a renegade poet
searching for your answer in my blood.

My mother's Grenville tales
spin through early summer evenings.
But you refused to speak of home
of stepping proud Black and penniless
into this land where only white men
ruled by money. How you labored
in the docks of the Hotel Astor
your bright wife a chambermaid upstairs
welded love and survival to ambition
as the land of promise withered
crashed the hotel closed
and you peddle dawn-bought apples
from a push-cart on Broadway.

Does an image of return
wealthy and triumphant
warm your chilblained fingers
as you count coins in the Manhattan snow
or is it only Linda
who dreams of home?

When my mother's first-born cries for milk
in the brutal city winter
do the faces of your other daughters dim
like the image of the treeferned yard
where a dark girl first cooked for you
and her ash heap still smells of curry?

III.
Did the secret of my sisters steal your tongue
like I stole money from your midnight pockets
stubborn and quaking
as you threaten to shoot me if I am the one?
The naked lightbulbs in our kitchen ceiling
glint off your service revolver
as you load     whispering.

Did two little dark girls in Grenada
dart like flying fish
between your averted eyes
and my pajamaless body
our last adolescent summer?
Eavesdropped orations
to your shaving mirror
our most intense conversations
were you practicing how to tell me
of my twin sisters     abandoned
as you had been abandoned
by another Black woman seeking
her fortune     Grenada     Barbados
Panama     Grenada.
New York City.

IV.
You bought old books at auctions
for my unlanguaged world
gave me your idols Marcus Garvey Citizen Kane
and morsels from your dinner plate
when I was seven.
I owe you my Dahomeyan jaw
the free high school for gifted girls
no one else thought I should attend
and the darkness that we share.
Our deepest bonds remain
the mirror and the gun.

V.
An elderly Black judge
known for his way with women
visits this island where I live
shakes my hand, smiling.
"I knew your father," he says
"quite a man!" Smiles again.
I flinch at his raised eyebrow.
A long-gone woman's voice
lashes out at me in parting
"You will never be satisfied
until you have the whole world
in your bed!"

Now I am older than you were when you died
overwork and silence exploding your brain.
You are gradually receding from my face.
Who were you outside the 23rd Psalm?
Knowing so little
how did I become so much
like you?

Your hunger for rectitude
blossoms into rage
the hot tears of mourning
never shed for you before
your twisted measurements
the agony of denial
the power of unshared secrets.

Why?
It's a painful memory that appears to be settling in for life rather than preparing to leave,
It's been heard by countless millions, and none of them can understand how it sounds to me,
I haven’t been as happy since hearing it as I was when I heard it,
It's symbolic of the most significant turning point in my life to date,
The lyrics are so perfectly foreshadowing of a problem that I couldn't fathom that I’d have,
It has a stronger connection to memory than any other song,
It represents the perpetual unhappiness that I refuse to believe controls me.
I'm unhappy.

Where?
A car that I haven’t seen in years,
On a street I barely saw enough of,
In a town I wish I could visit again.
A happier place that I can see but can never return to,
Personified by a face that's disappeared from here.
Somewhere I miss, yet somewhere I hate;
Somewhere that needed the version of me that died in that very place;
A cemetery.

When?
Happier times;
A collection of moments which are infinite from within,
Yet minute from without.
A time when I could define myself,
Through the vice of another person;
Albeit vicariously, it was the last time
I was able to define myself.
I was everything; I was the world.
And then the world ended.
Happier times that I can't and won't return to.

What?
A song;
A memory;
A beautiful beat,
In a story that nobody's telling.
A soundtrack to a movie nobody wants to see,
A composition that will fall on deaf ears;
Yet still be heard by the world at large, call it irony.
Something nobody can take away from me;
Despite how tenaciously I've tried to get rid of it.
A succession of noises that would be meaningless to me,
Were it not for the memory.
The memory.

Who?
She, I, and the drivers of some road in Georgia;
Drivers that didn't notice then and don't notice now.
She, driving, demonstrating, performing;
Has driven on, failing to notice.
Me, her, and the songwriter, I suppose;
Me, a person I don't know,
Replaced by a person I can't.
The songwriter, collecting her checks and trophies,
Probably not a **** to give about the troubles
Of some ******* who heard her song.
Us, a concept foreign to me;
Unbeknownst then, well studied now;
Still as foreign as that state,
That city,
That road,
That car,
That place that I can revisit,
But never go back;
Her.

The Song?
Because I'm unhappy;
In a cemetery,
During happier times that I can't and won't return to;
A memory
With her.
I need more words.

Words
Nevermind, I'll find someone like you.
I wish nothing but the best for you.
Don't forget me, I beg.
I remember you said:
Sometimes it lasts in love,
But sometimes it hurts instead.

But that's not right.
I won't find someone like you;
There was no you.
I wish anything but the best for you;
You selfish child.
Please forget me;
I'm nothing worth remembering.
I've forgotten everything you said.
It rarely, if ever, lasts in love.
It always hurts.
Laughable,
The things I tell myself to bandage
A wound that doesn't appear.
The clichés I give meaning to are

******* pitiful.
Just about two years and counting.
Two psychiatrists,
Two half-assed ******* suicide attempts,
Dozens of classes,
Legions of friends,
A handful of people so much like you that they'd failed to notice there is no you,
And you're still talking about this
Pile of ****.
Who's talking about it?
Me? You?
Nobody.
It's white noise;
Habituation at play.
A memory not worth remembering.
Three years of piano lessons,
The lines of my scripts,
The best films throughout history,
Even the Eagles game from last week is

Worth remembering
This,
This moment in time occupied by just another pop song,
Time spent with a person no longer there,
Family member after family member, anecdote after anecdote,
Things not to say or do in front of her hulking ******* of a brother,
Approval of people I wound up discarding.
What now?

I need more words.

Where were we?
Fresh year, fresh start, and the Eagles were still a winning team○;
A dorm, a drunken haze, a bed, a city unparalleled;
Untested grounds for a young idiot
Like me. She certainly did
And wasn't afraid to show it.
Independence, experience, maturity,
And a stunning mutual lack thereof.
Problems, buried like the worst ******* time capsule ever.
Happiness (unsustainable)
Love (attachment)
Future ()
A candle burning down to its last wax can’t relight,
And a pile of wax won't help me see in the dark.

But who needs candles anyway?
I'm better off without candles,
Playing with fire can get me burnt.
And besides, lightbulbs are brighter and more efficient.
I’ll install lightbulbs all over the apartment,
Once I can figure out how to turn the power back on.
Oh, there aren't power lines running to this apartment.
(sure wish I had a candle right about now)
Maybe the light from this cigarette will help.
And I could sure use a cigarette right now
Because they’re playing that song again.
Surely I can find some better music than this.
This station seems nice, let's see what she can offer.
They're playing that song again.
Over and over again.
Is it just me, or are they always playing that song?
It's always that song, no matter what.
It's all I ever hear.
Pop radio sure is terrible these days, right?
Sure is.
Can't walk down the street to class without hearing

That ******* ******* song.*

(
Nobody else is hearing it.
I'm the one singing it.
My life's a ******* joke, isn't it?
)

○The Philadelphia Eagles were 10-6 in 2010, 8-8 in 2011, and 4-12 last year. And during the ‘still friends’ period, we watched the division rival Giants win the Super Bowl together. I ******* hated it.

I walk along a path
I do not know
But falter left nor right,
And, welcoming the light
Of birches, still and white
As sleeping snow,

A raven, coat that shimmers
Soft as coal,
Beside me flutters square
And, drawn like to a snare,
Alights upon the air
As on a knoll.

A ripened chestnut, trapped
Within his maw
And hard as ancient ice,
Is tightened by the vise
And shatters at the slicing
Of his jaw

To crumble into dust,
Which quick cascades
And settles, as it slows,
To carefully compose
The shape of raven toes
Where he parades.

The raven flies ahead
And, with a stamp,
His talons take a grip
Atop a wooden tip
Of birches, dead and stripped
To form a ramp.

I stumble after, fixed
Through field of black
As in a telescope,
And, clawing at the *****,
I climb it with a hope
To touch his back

And ****** a hand ahead
Just as he slumps,
Both limp but stiff, to lie
Upon his side and die.
I meet his cloudy eye
Upon the stump,

Then lift my head to find
A willow sprig,
A tendril hanging free
For me to grip. Indeed,
I climb the strip of tree,
The little twig,

And swivel in the air,
As if by choice.
I hear a humming, low,
Resounding from below—
The raven’s eyes, aglow
With Odin’s voice.

Like lightbulbs flicker, dim
with yellow light,
They sharpen with the tones
That bellow from his bones—
This god and poet moans
His heavy spite:

He damns me to the lifetime
of a bird.
My sin, I do not know
But bear the bitter woe
And close my eyes to focus
On this word:

Saṃsāra. So I feel my
Senses spill
Upon the ground
And flood out all around
And swallow every sound
Till all is still.

You're the kid that asks how the cotton candy skies got that color
except now it's all blood red

"I guess God killed all the angels" he said

and I think:
baby my wrists are rags, ripped up rags,
and needles give you bad memories,
and my minds a black, empty, hole but it's still so ******* heavy
just a weight that no matter how much you want to say you can, you just cannot carry

and you need to stay alive
because there's no spots for angels anymore when they die
but I just can't bring myself to say it

and he knows people only remember things about me
like the fact that I like whiskey, and my suicidal tendencies

a lining of  lightbulbs
infused on the wire in my brain

he says Jesus was like any other psychopath ,
just a normal schizophrenic
and if there's a God
we pray for him to fix the problem he's created

what if heavens just like hell in the form of a maze
golden maps leading you to places you aren't any happier

acid trips into abandon attics,
blonde babes with ******* hair
and yellow teeth
cracked out, veins

complaining that the life they hated ever changed

he says I ruined the calm after the storm that no one lives to see
the ending of the bible
that no one has enough attention in them to read

You always tell me of the
e l e c t r i c i t y
coiled in your bones, and
how I put it there.
But my dear, you are one to talk,
for you've got me
burning like the wire in
lightbulbs.

If I moved a muscle right now a window would break.
If I took a solitary step the tiles beneath me would crack.
Submerged in the oscuridad save for a small pulse of luz called optimism because that’s just how I was raised.

I know I can’t pretend to make an oasis
Because how well did that work out for me last time
The lightbulbs can yell and scream and punch the air
But nothing will make them turn on without a power source.

I can’t be breathing hard or else the candle stub I have left will blow out I have to
Guard it but keep looking for my next step using its meager light trusting
That the beacon I look for is not further than the reaches of my
Light that I will with the remaining shards of my life to keep on
Reining now is uncertainty that is
diametrically opposed to the concept that the sun is gonna rise tomorrow I promise so let me stroke your hair and shroud you until it does.

I exist in this limbo of heeding the hours that come. The ticking of the clock drudges yet I gulp every last second as it arrives.

I voraciously **** the teaspoon of trust I have left that the
Audience is just watching the plot arc to progress and that
The dramatic irony of  some surety is just beyond the radius of the hardly illuminated path beneath my shuddering feet.

Maybe someday I will stumble upon the next candlestick or something.
Maybe someday I’ll find a working light bulb buried in the snow or something.
But here I progress or something.
Un día a la vez or something.
Grappling foot by foot for something.

Something.

Wired like a loaded gun
Waiting for the morning sun
Hello! How are you today

And I wonder
My love
Should I take the sun from you
Put it in a box of darkness
Like setting

I spread the ashes of a love never in love
just a circle venn diagram make believe but not Peter Pan
And love
I love you so
I am the sun
And I shine for no one

So box of darkness
Here I come

Speckled star dust farm eggs
Fresh renewed self conviction
Moon born
Phasing through to a life
Without you

Hedonism blood pulse
Still sentimental soul
Selling out to the lone wolf
Sneaky fox

Flowers tainting memories
Hand holding cheek kissing nostalgia bliss
Don't think
Of the one you will miss

Just kiss
Supernova
Little sunhat at nighttime party
Don't don't listen to the lies you whisper to yourself
You are the one you'll miss
If you don't help yourself

Feast on sin and self-righteousness
Reincarnation is second chance
Listen to the hands with the carnations outstretched
Fellow stranger with star burnt eyes
caring for those self told lies

You cheat
yourself
with handholding cypress knees bending towards
neurons collapsing
into the one who
Binary stars you
Binary stares at you
Holds you in your sleep from far away
Dream meeting past life fleeting into the now
You answer to this highschool crush pop quiz invader of reality
Who questions what color to paint the moon
Never almost drowning
But who has only ever taken a life
that belonged to them alone
relating in fictional patterns of physics
Undeniable wavelengths
colliding crashing consoling
You knew from the first eyes
that seeds of doubt would sprout in what you mislead as love
And you ask
Why not?

Hello,
        today is not tomorrow.