For give me mothers if I take another son away
The ***** shouldn't a tested if my ****** wouldn't spray the K
2 the face
2 the point
Hollows in yo temple *****
Leave 2 dents in yo face like some dimples *****
+
Ugh
+
The devil told me that I'm coldblooded
Semi stoic look on my face n these hoes love it
Ain't got it on me when they shoot imma road run it
Never put trust n no ***** cuz these hoes covet
+
Ugh
+
Im like the black mclovin
Wit a wrap sheet 4 days
Tell yo mans cuz he shovin
N if low keep pushing imma have 2 start bussin
'Nother dumb ***** dead in the streets over nothing
Agh
+
My mama say that idk about the struggle but she don't know half if the **** a ***** toggle wit
+
She only know about a 5th of the **** I did
+
N if she knew me she would call me the apocalypse
+
Cuz I done did mo dirt then a Lil bit
+
N if this rapping don't crack imma cop a brick
+
These ****** say they were its at but the fulla ****
+
Cuz we the only mfs really taking risk
+
When I was 17 I ****** a ***** n she was 30
+
They call it statutory **** but I was hella flirty
+
I know some ****** out south that'll do u *****
+
Razor blade 2 yo face like that ***** birdie
+
Ugh
+
I gotcho sis on my lap
N yo fix in a sack
Text books on my back
Imma lowlife pirate I ain't even gotta act
N my ****** on attack
Lowlife just relax
Ugh
1+2

N I mean that ****
I was blind 2 it all now I c that ****
Imma show u mufuckaz that u can get rich
If yo friends turn 2 opps n yo main chick flip
Ugh
+

Sherry , amber shoulder length locks of hair
Passing ****** on the rail line
Beside abandoned tracks north of Ola
Sharing youth with bamboo pipes
Period hovels belonging to 'the State' collect
until a sleepy town is manifest before red
eyes , against laughter and regret tinged
with melancholia , ten seconds of concern
entangled with indifference
The crunch of gravel beneath our feet
Winter breath , *** hole lakes , dying streets
Beautiful , personal , discreet sundowns smattered with drug induced catatonia , 'Walnut guardians' and cherry trees*...

Winter dies
Spring comes alive
There is no Autumn in Chicago
And Spring leaves as quickly as it arrives
Jolting us to what is always an uncertain Summer
That’s my city
Just like my heart
My love life
Chicago
I don’t have one without the other
Mashed up together
Yet separated
Segregated
Deep Love on the Northside
Lover on the Southside
Sidekick on the Westside
And when it’s all too much to handle
The East is my escape
Sitting on the rocks letting my legs dangle and toes dip in the icy cold greenish lake
I feel comfort in it
Immense and wide spread, like me sometimes
Clear but *****
Supposedly the cleanest water you can drink
After the city purifies it of course
Just like me, just like mine
My vessel pours clear and *****
But the city purifies me through cleansing nights
Through raised glasses of wine and music that harmonizes my heart
Kisses that clean and absorb
Tongue that licks off the saltiness I’ve accumulated
A thin layer
Its washed off and cleared from one moment to the next
Like the city skyline
And I’m ready for a new day
A new love
Or lover
I reincarnate in the Spring from what seems a slow death but was only a tormenting hibernation
Led into another uncertain Summer
Returning with scorching tenderness through cool breezes and radiating heart
Radiating sun
That’s how it feels in Chicago
That’s my City
Just like my Heart
I don’t have one without the other

“I won't drink the tap water, its poison here”
and when she declared that,
I couldn't decipher if she meant here
as in Northside, or here as in America.

We ate sushi at 2am in the city
I was trying not to show my drunkenness
but I was stumbling into an accent
my grandparents carried with them

tucked in the backs of their mouths,
now peering out of mine.
testing the hydrogen
in the beer
in the back of my throat.

I need sleep,
I'm hungover
This poem can wait.

My mind seems to move itself,
spinning somewhat
while I remain stationed
to soft and tattered cushions

At times, not sure who's moving
Mind or body
like parking next to someone
who's leaving the lot

for a moment
you're caught in the standstill
Where nothing really stands,
Still.

I need sleep
My head feels fuzzy
This poems not great.

Its much later now,
the world seems
more capacious somehow
When my eyes are fully open.

The last of my confounding
half light musings
dissipate like tendrils,
mist in the rising sun  

and I, I am left behind
in the residue,
The hardened truth
that cannot move.

“This water is poison”
Her words echo through my day
and I wonder if this poison
will ever evaporate from our veins.

C.e.M. 12.15.2016

I hid behind long locks of dark hair back then.
And sang of places I would not visit for another three to five years.
Some places had real names but were fiction in my brain.
I gave myself an alias among others' real names.
Why was I so secretive?
"You are young," they'd tell me.
I didn't want to hear that.
The room was a relief from the Ohio cold in mid-January,
that was always when the air was the most brutal.
The community we built was short-lived but lovely
it was where I tucked myself away for the winter
before climbing out on my two hands
and not ever thinking to look back.

We  do not have to know the man who  walks
three hours northside to southside  of town
past green bluegrass lawns, over white
picket fences, around chains of
snapping curs and through
vegetable patches to his
home willed him by
his dead mama;

knowing him is not necessary,
helping him is our responsibility.

night covers all;
as critters crawl crosstown
casting graffiti shadows over
walls and huddled mounds
of despair

I encountered one
wrong-turned
down a cul-de-sac
off northside

a weathered boot
caught my eye

I swerved and sweared
sparing bones
and medicaid

but for the moon
and rearview magic,
my conscience would've been stained
in homeless blood

~ P

Love, please tell me
where to cast my life -  

The ivoried downtown
and sleeted piers

of Washington,
where the Potomac

sleeps itself blue,
& the rows of museums

pull coffee teeth
in a closed afternoon?

Or the northside quay
& green garden walls

of Dublin, where I walked
in your hand, eyes to brim,

out to Phoenix Park
to search for the fallow deer,

but finding instead
only a debris of wind?

I'm owned by neither:
I wake each day

into a dead space
without color or shape,

only these memories -
do you remember

leaving yoga on
Connecticut Avenue,

the petrichor winding
out the night's full flower,

the nuzzling shine
of the walk?

I don't care
where it happens,

but that's what I want,
every day,

those steps home with you;
every ******* day.

On the Northside of a very private Southside-
where a Midwestern Daguerreotype
of Some Kind

[ Eastbound ]

On Pure
West
Business.

Had mine eyes fallen
upon worlds
between
wheels.

Having learned much from toil-
and extravagant galas
my appetites subvert
the meringue
as an infinite feast
unfurls.

breaking bread in an alcove
of cinnamon stars
in a pitch black white
that goes with everything
you’ll never Know.

like a flawless gauze
wrapped around
an itch.

II

In the telling of Sunfish Fables
one must contort the bend
to render a skeleton key
to a locked Rune.
Ya gotta foil the fates fancy
with turbulent renditions
of inner hurricanes
that cast such spells
as to weather you.

even at the bottom
of the sea.

you gotta burn rocks with your teeth
because your tongue is busy .
sleep after death
because Now is too soon
to forget how to be
Alive.

And too brief to
believe
Until it's
True.