The apartment hasn’t been cleaned for so long and has housed a depressive in it for the same length of time so that there is a glaze of slime-dirt on the floor, made of dried coffee, hot chocolate, maybe some **** or some spillage from a tube of steroid cream to treat an inflammation that never really goes.  The rate of ooze changes?.  Clean textiles are piled up on the floor, never having been folded, and mix here and there with *****: practical fatpants that make me look like a geologist and white-white cotton blankets that can be washed on HOT with lots of bleach that I purloined from some mentalhealthfacility.  The inbox is full of—is bristling with—remonstrances from Programs for the Nondoer—you haven’t filed, haven’t turnstiled, haven’t had your hologram chip assessed by central CENTRAL intelligence, what is wrong with you.  Upon stepping outside there is a beat during which I think maybe somewonder might swirl and buoy but no, just wethumid and *****, sidewalks cruddy and Haitians and quasi-Haitians muttering “taxitaxitaxi” in front of their Gypsy conveyances with their dubious certifications.  I should go for a ride in one, a dubious passenger for a dubious palanquin.  I tried the library but it was too hot and decrepit and too filled with Books For African-Americans, which always ****** me off; are only African-Americans going to read Wright or Douglass or Brooks?  Everyone is overrated, anyway, movies and theater and the moribund beat of commerce, and as the dangerous autos pass, sometimes not running you over, you can see morechange in the pockets of the shareholders of BeePee and Iacocca Coach-Wirx.  Any friendliness exhibited seems to contain an underovertone of  You’re Not Included Whiteboy White ****** Ghost *****, all archaic names I’ve been almost astounded to be called usually while balancing on tiptoe on some lurching, roaring dieselbus, grinding past off-off-off brand groceries that do a dubious business.  While making my police report I wink at a sevenyearold boy and I get a lustrous wink back butalas this is not enough to beat back those slurrycolored brainfazes.

truck-bedded teens smoke leaves above the tree branch cathedral;
treefort,
& fumes from her lips. her lips/
crush me oh my.
climb down to the street.
snap into a slim jim.
smash into a television.

            skateboard kids:
blackboy bent into dust and old motel.
whiteboy with fireworks spitting modern mallrat jazz.
girls of stuffed tiger and bottles shattered,
by blood
by beer
by now. she dreams
of the coast henceforth
& grips glass to imagine it like good futures.
    /****-hit.
    /swallow the pizza.

into the arcade ******,
like denim jackets and the mohawked-heads of foul foolish boys.
like little sister vanished into the music.
she presents her flesh before needled ink in the neon-rung afterlife.
she tongues flame.
she thumbs for fame and a highway to california.
she speaks in tongues to win enough tickets for the big panda bear.
her boyfriends punch faces in parking lots.

their generations gather at the apricot tree.
they pull at the seams of eachother’s tricky slips,
& watch hyenas tear through the trash
in the lawn across the street.

old factory:
old shrine of sky & night & bottles & bottlerockets
& her hair & us.
take the bus, or
walk the paths of backyards, home.
sneak thru the window,
cracked lip and shower.
to appear,
in a sunday dress.

Black Israelite haters, excused,
led to schoolboys reviled and accused
of white racism, hate.
The reaction was great--
but the whiteboys were merely amused.

Progressives were driven berserk
by a teenager's innocent smirk.
The old shaman tried shaming:
and drumming and blaming,
but none of those strategies work!

Mr. Phillips, the activist drummer
gave Regressives their Indian Summer--
till a teenager's smirk
drove the demons berserk
and made dumbed-down regressives much dumber.

If a smile is a cultural crime
then the criminals need to do time.
Every whiteboy must go
in this cracka-*** show
and I'm guilty for reason of rhyme.