Sister

I hear you when I stop
praying and start listening. It's never
about what I wish
would happen. You say
so we are here now and I
got you.

I hear you after
I've tried everything else outside of myself.
You are not my self
but you are in me.

I know your voice and
I hear you when you say here
I am.

It's not about knowing anything, not
a damn thing.
It's about landing well with open eyes and
and open heart. You say that.

I don't listen until
I have no choice.
Sister, you say, I know.

Oh

Like when
I found out I was smarter than you I
was not smug, it did not
feel good. I felt
the floor fall a little,
the wind blow a little and
sound stopped in my ears.
Time went elastic and
I bounced,
I said inside, oh.
If it turns out well
it's up to me.

Maybe
that's why my shoulders
have always been
so strong.
That's not to say
it went well.
You are both buried
and while mine was just
a flesh wound,
I still finger it whenever I
find myself saying, oh.

Twenty five years and
you can still pull
my yarn, I blame
our triangle on every Joe
I'm smarter or stronger
or quicker than.
Or think I am.

I will not
carry them
as I did you.

Hot, twisting, I slam
the Joes who didn't
know you, don't know
they are also
paying for you.

Did your best? Code for:
I had to do the rest.
Can you hear
The acid tapping of
my not-forgiveness?

I pull my own yarn
finger my own wound
until it bleeds again.

If I am smarter, how
can the dead still beat me.
Wake up, the dead say.
We can only speak if
you mouth the words.

And now for something different. Weird photos. Warning: No technical photographic skill involved.

My Condition Says

Don't get too prosy on me
my condition says,
my art, my gut (six a one). That
prosy shit is so gay. Write
a poem, take that prose and
boil it, no
chew first, swallow and boil
and then start over.
Get to the smelly
acid juice of it.
make it stink good,
like an angry white girl,
Plath, Woolf, maybe every
white girl, I don't know.
Angry at who we are and who
we are not, take that birthright
and boil each word.
Boil the prose and sweet
right out. Stink,
sister, stink.

Through Smoke

Walking through smoke like
a crazy dream like
Antietam,
like Custer's last stand,
like Nam and a million other
battles that have not
been mine.

What has been mine, the walk
through cemeteries from
fresh dirt to fresh dirt.
The walk through ICUs and
oxygen tents. The walk through
the fight to remain middle class.
The walk through a million
somethings I didn't ask for,
just like everyone else.

But this is not what I mean.

I can feel the field of war
in my chest, like some
foolish or mistaken foot soldier
taken by a virulent dream.
Confidence is like that. No,
victory is like that. There is
no such thing as safety after,
because you know the loss
in safety.

Walking through smoke,
like walking through the film
of envy, disappointment and
the inheritance of the meek.
The second, false skin
of deserving.

In the human life,
there is only smoke and
walking through smoke.

Word Sexy

Words with many
syllables, seductive
like erotica that
works on the various
compartments of the
brain, unlocking them
to each other. An incantation:
a word with more than
three beats.

Is my prerogative better
than your way? Is it
better to be luminescent
than bright? Yes, and
no. Affirmative and
negative. The music
wants what it wants.

But to call it more than that?
To need it
for more than that?
Roll them on your tongue
awhile, big sexy words,
and tell me it has nothing to do
with sound and heat.

Untitled

There are territories of
the back of my own hand
that I do not know well enough.
Could it be that age does not
deepen me but thin me out
like melted cubes of ice? With
territories should come the linear
paths but all I see
are circles, one outside
the other. What is it
to know the topography
of a ripple? A fantasy.