I'm manic, and so is everyone else around me. We are drowning in our self prophesied nadirs; enraptured in the drama of our lives; enamored with the devils we chose to let live.

We reasoned "What harm could come from this spirit which suffered to bring me such joy, which rose from the depths to meet me in the eye and kiss me on the tongue?"

And we know, the floorboards are soon to split, that the world was not meant to drown all at once.

They come marching . . . The night before an exam,  interview,  festival or  celebration.
They call the visit a mere chance
With no crooked intentions.  
In human clothes when they come
They trade on my pains.
A machine  of  exchange they run,
To the netherworlds beyond my gains.
Every pain on my nerve grows their ego-filled pleasures.
Cruel, sadistic stones they are.
Never know a human child!

My chest feels tight as a blindfold
wrapped around my eyes, and
when did it get so hot in here?
Turn down the heat, someone, please
get me a glass of water and a bucket,
my stomach is turning,
I feel like throwing up.
Count: one, two, three, four
my heart races, my breath comes
hitched as the sound of pattering rain
outside, where the wind whistles
like the ringing in my ears.

Am I the only one awake?

I wake up and feel death
in the room, sitting and waiting--
the day-owl that hoots
when the sun blazes to every corner
of my mind, taking away
my senses so that time passes,
circling back around itself, as the cold
serpent taking over my body
and saving my head for last.

Beast nature bellows a fit
out of me, my cold hands throwing
objects in reach and the screaming
pierces through my heated brain
with smooth, sharp talons

until I wake up with a face
over me. Not an angel, but not
a demon because the eyes
have goodness spinning in them--
like a light swaying over above,
telling me to follow it. I do,
across cold plains where dark things
curl up and hide against their own hell,
for evil has fear of itself.

Across smooth ground that lets me fly
until I am at rest with a slow heart
that thumps too hard for every
conviction it cannot say to those
that swirled inside.

The wind
The breeze
The tall tall trees
I need to put my mind at ease
I see you in my memories
                                                                  I watch you move
                                                                       I see you breathe
**If only I could touch your skin
And be with you once again
Before I start to wither away
And my belief starts to decay
My core sets itself aflame
And nothing but a soul remains

The bleeding has no bias
From the Congo to Dallas
The days of waiting, the Fever-soar
The African corpses were out

Of view, from the World’s eyes
If a sneeze can defile
Ebola can ride airplanes
Traverse Seas, all through

Your plastic gloves, your pores
Contagious still with death
Your fear may taste the curse
A thousand dead more, a common ache

The bleeding has no bias
Jesus will not bring you back from the Dead
We have to walk through Hell alone
They say, I have no more words

The bleeding has no bias
No funding, on protocol that works
The virus rages on, splitting old scars
Of what it means to be from the

Old continent, of what it means to be black
And the coughing up of more blood
Where paranoia and fear are conditions
As common as kindness and hospitality here

The panic of believing a silent enemy
Can catch you without you knowing
These are the days of waiting
These are when the numbers soar.