Down by the river I sat in silence to pray.
I asked it to carry me away
Curious where it would end
Over and over
I begged it to flood
too scared to willingly get in.

Memphis got real high in the 50's.
Those honeycomb bathroom floors decided to become streets
them city kids got the buy bug knocking at their knees.
Problem is: They never dream.
Teachers just learning to write
using pens filled with interrupting ink
telephone poles gossiping about the trees,
they hated their branches—always loosing their leaves
office administrators on Section 8 Housing
while the vacant houses are out on the streets.
People swarming the sewers
forgetting: a bomb shelter is no home
while drainage floods the alleys.

If you could see this place with your own eyes
and not the ones you bought at the drug store
you would wish you were blind.

So I sat here writing a letter,
trying to recall events like the weather,
why red and blue have been fighting forever,
the kid in the newspaper with some new fever,
or that house that set itself on fire.

I wrote off the lines and on the back of the page
about a mother and father who abandoned their children,
a street that went up in a riot,
the telephone poles and the trees,
pipelines and the sewers, and their eventual decay.

I wrote, “Will you marry me,” one thousand times
Then I wrote, “I don't love you anymore,” one thousand and one.

I sat here
and I wrote a book that wasn't long enough
it couldn't explain the things I wanted to say.
An AK-47 sent through the mail.
The tower that fell with no plane.
Flower sales and drive-by’s,
what really happened to JFK?
Why wasn't it **** Cheney?

But I barely wrote half of what I could think.
A declaration of war, like it's a game.

I sat here, alone with my 90 degree angles
every night is a race to the bottom of the glass.
A prisoner to my own mind
which I cannot escape.

I come with an empty bottle guarantee
Take all of me.
If you're not happy with what you received
send me back empty
no questions asked.
And I'll return all our memories.

Eating hot dogs in D.C.
Late night breaks at truck stops
during our 28 hour round trip to see what made me.

You can play me like a violin
or use me to wipe your tears away.
If I am out of tune
or if I'm not absorbent enough
send me back used.

Treat me like a balloon
I'll be there when your kidneys fail
with a message of hope just for you.
But if that is not enough
send me back deflated.
I'll pay the postage.

Unfortunately, if you order now
I come with nothing else.
Just me, and what you see.
If I don't fill you up
send me back empty
and I'll return all our memories.

It's all about
retaining information
like that elementary school kid
writing
“I will not do drugs, I will not do drugs, I will not do drugs”
for pages.

Later
you see him
strung out on the corner of 28th and Franklin.
preaching his anguish
on a cardboard sign
that he wrote
all by himself.

I hate meeting new people.

No.

I hate meeting new people and wondering if the last thing I said to them was the last thing I will ever say to them.

Here it goes again.
Another poem to describe how useless I am.
How tattered my soul is.
How my brain resembles my hands,
callused, numb, and broken dry skin.
I'm a terrible person.
Self indulgent and full of sin.

And here it goes again.
In the mirror I see nothing.
A big steaming pile of nothing.
Full of wasted dreams, 'what ifs' and 'one days.'
The **** that I write never comes out right.
The **** that I dream is just that:
a big steaming pile of nothing.

Here it goes again.
As if I am something.
But I can't get past how useless I am.
A speck in this cosmic dust cloud.
And here I go again, thinking I am a tornado.
How I will crush your dream home
and leave behind a big steaming pile of debris.

Here I go again,
thinking I am nothing.
When really, I am something.
I am a speck in this cosmic cloud,
without me that tornado wouldn't be.

My big brown beating
heart is head over high-heels for the lady in the red dress who passes by my window
every night while I dream
my dead dark demented eyes are excited by the exhale of her chest in the midst of a midnight's eve
whatever that is
11:59pm and it's time to go, that lady will be waiting in the back of my mind
holding a torch to the candle which I brought along
in case of emergency
I have a rusted shackle around my ankle
and a lazy eye rested on that girl's finger
which she brought along
because of a dream
I say the only words that I know
they pile up like hatches in the back of my throat
collect like dust piles on the tip of my tongue
I moved oceans and
I painted the sky with lilies
leaving the spine in my back in the shape
of an S.

My big brown beating heart is head over high-heels for the lady in the red dress
walking away from me
my dead dark demented eyes are searching for something exciting
my big brown beating heart
is sinking inside of me
my big brown beating heart
this dead black restless heart.

You told me ten stories of concrete would make this street shine like that star in the sky.
You told me how the bricks stacked neatly and piled into rows.
On that hot day
vultures flocked,
looking for my soul.
You said you would be there to celebrate the shade concrete towers would make.
But that star in the sky has been dead for centuries.
Now those concrete towers block my view of its memory.
And gave the vultures a way to corner me into the dark.
That was the only time I saw you celebrate.

I put my butterscotch in the refrigerator
Next to the bananas, three loaves of bread,
tortilla strips
just under the styrofoam cups

In the cupboard, I keep my ground beef.
Don't worry, I put it in freezer bags,
I'm not an idiot.

I challenge everyone I meet to a staring contest
The first time I lost was to a homeless man.
He had a way of staring at something (and nothing)
at the same time.
He told me it's a skill you learn when you are
perishable goods.
Here I was trying to preserve things
I would only use once.
I don't even know what butterscotch looks like.