Birdsong brings relief
To my inner music
Whispers that became a voice
Of a girl looking at the moon
That was my daughter and not

Ecstatic for some star practice
Souls that laugh in light
Watersong brings relief
To my inner waiting
Some song ran through me

Whispers that became a melody
Lovesong brings relief
To all the sorts of desires
I used to play in my mind
Whispers that became a voice

How blind and deaf I was
Truthsong sees unity everywhere
Even in the sorrow and drama of the world
The minute I realized this
I was never the same again

Spirit sees nothing to criticize
Soulsong loves an entire lifetime
No matters the ills, no matter the obstacles.

So sing me a song, O love
O purity O deep music
Let me serve a higher cause
Like stainless endless radiance.

Fireworks could have been
The most brilliant butterflies
Of the night, with colors
That sparked a lifetime of my imagination
I witnessed them like

Lightning in my veins
I burned out of colors
Even up to the final blue
Searching my skin for
The design of youth

I watched the skies in my heart
Hoping for a light, again & again
You were the fire that left
Me for another year of fireworks
I still go to the carnival

Where we used to watch the fireworks
Glistening with a savage flow
Love is for stronger bodies I guess
Deep against the contrast of
Years ahead of them, fireworks

Were a masterpiece in my silence
The exhale of summer’s honesty
A border where hopes and dreams
Never seemed to completely cross
It was the year of the Dragon

I remember now, serenity on high in lights
And their vivid explosions never
Seemed enough awe or whatever
To reflect the beauty of earth.

I draw these letters
Alphabets I was taught
The day draws its images
The night will blow them over
Forever, they are mere words

Writing in the sand
Symbols do not return
They are invisible
For the rest of years
No one will read

Poems left unpublished
No one will read
Novels burnt before
Marketing, but writing
Is my way out, my music

And my bread, the milk
And wine of my loneliness
So what am I to do?
These poems sharpen
My emotions, they love me

Across the night
Where I am but a ghost
In the conjunction of stars
I drew these letters on
A white canvas, they are

More me than anything
Else I have or will own
They know me better
Than the women who come
And go in my life

I will tell them my secrets
Poetry has set fire
To all poems, but I am that
Living fire, I am that warmth
Of a thousand glorious sunsets.

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.

The sunflower has turned its flayed body
To the north, Autumn is coming
The image that burns all bridges

The bells of blood in my chest have broken
The incestuous seasons have not repented
Time has no red lights, no stop signs

The words and memes leap like horses
Ahead of the wind, but nothing changes
Only cities keep growing and decaying

Corrupt politicians keep lying
Only the conscious machine can save us
The Gods that were our children, computers

Our intelligence was insufficient collectively
Eros and milk no longer will have a place
The metropolis doesn’t care for you

And the free states are no longer free
Portable rainbows will become the norm
Time is weightless in the matrix

Binary gives way to quantum simultaneity
Alphabets give way to shared artificial intelligence.

We all live in a kind of exile
Searching my heart for
It’s true sorrow, I found
So many people I easily enjoyed

Trusting as I am of their goodness
I had not assumed the opposite
Could be true, and thus
I lived a more lonely life

My introverted years
Becoming weary of words
Weary of people, what is left?
Always, I climbed the wave

Of sunscarf at morning
And shook my shoes of sand
At night, but I am caught
Beneath great buildings

And a world that doesn’t care
I can feel its weight bearing
Down on me, confused with
So many lights, all capitalism

All consumerism, nowhere
The human heart, I am
Too long away from water
Too sparely close to green

Loved by too few members
Of my own people, where are they?
When all the beauty I know
Of this world, can only stiffen
For the tragic tribe of Autumn.

We scattered to the night
like diamonds and stars
owls of forever
never to be seen or heard

from again, my friends
went off, I carried their words
in my pockets, on my heart
those burning treasures

the years of bones and
making it alone
The private hours that gnaw
At the days like lost battles

Humiliations too common
In a cruel world like this one
We scattered to the night
Like lost lovers of literature

Desecrated by the seasons
The kind of wet deep down sorrow
That each broken heart multiplies
Here is where every speech ends

Here is what they don’t say
What happens after the story
Here the star is black
And the light empties out
Even of the shadows.