“advancing like an unstoppable monster, she
descended upon the son.”—officer’s report
dear delmore,
i am engaged by your mutant stare which follows
me everywhere in this perfect judeochristian jabberwocky
where i am impurely woman you were impurely man.
what’s wanted is an extended romantic narrative
climaxing with the sociopsychological simplistic resonant
with gnostic implications of western rape/ropeology
and all of that, but what should count is that at given
moments during coupling there’s conception at nexus
vis-à-vis artist as outlaw, expression an act of
lawlessness. happy endings are the propagation and
perpetuation of The Lie. nappy endings are, of course,
less straight; and, as we know, some majas are born
more naked than others blah blah blah, blahbity blah
(i see my native land thru
the iron bars of my inflamed skin)
hebben—a port city, located in the extreme southwestern
region of the 31st state of the union. where all lotus eaters
and navel surfers are board certified
§
ghoul’s grapevine
so did you hear about the west Hollywood cemetery where they keep the ashes of only the hottestofhot celebrities and public figures. and SHE’s buried there. and you know Tiresias used to make late day visits and plant the rose of a big fire-engine red lipstick kiss on her crypt. it seemed a grand gesture. but Ti stopped because it became The Rage, all this strange crypt-kissing going on, expensive graffiti to remove, you know, and besides they kept moving HER around. like some rich old schmuck would drop dead and put in his will that he wanted to be buried next to HER and so they charge the estate King Tut’s ransom. and the old fart gets the next crypt over for a few licks of eternity. then some other old deceased prick makes the same bequest and they move HER again. whattta drag. they pimped the poor sex goddess when SHE was alive. now she’s dead and they’re still making HER work the block. so much for R.I.P. or dignity
from lockup the view so blistering so
clear. better i exorcise him myself than let
them do it. they always leave black and blue
marks all over the spirit and a little red
where the heart ruptures thru
to love and not act is to not know love
ballad of you, bleak starlight in matrix
the death-exit ensemble solemnly enacts
its stagy ruined romance-in-progress
intermission is the horror prance of hooves
the wasting sinew, a wraith’s whimper
my birth memory is savored torment
o oceansong of you/cold wind that fills
your absence, eldest. you are the missing
and i miss you years before the fact, have
longago prepared my mourning black
nightstains and the moonlight’s killer kissrays
you
where the spirit converges on summer’s coast
to the muted platter patter of heavy djs
ripped on a cocktail of faith and hallucinogens
resulting in atrial fibrillation
pulse discovery of contagious titubations
studied over and protected against by ebony men doing
red-wat rituals to rid themselves of the eruptions
emesis egestion and other redolent effluences
accompanying the deadly viral strain of eurocynicism
belief being fact. smoke signals
calling captain zero . . . calling captain zero . . .
i am sending out incendiaries all
over the nation i am igniting cities
i am setting blaze to unattainables
looting and sacking the complacent
doing the inner sanctum purification burn
firefirefire
you were not in
my heart when my
son called to tell me
he was beyond
reach of my sacrifice
§
but dear cousin,
don’t you agree that one’s pending mortality or the
loss of one’s health is not near so great a rend as
the loss of a child? since the child is all of history,
the loss being an indictment of one’s failure to parent
adequately even if one’s done one’s best? isn’t it the uttermost
hell believing that one did not prepare oneself well enough
for battle. and that the wage of war is the child?
§
child. get in here and whisk up this
here life. lord don’t like dirty. get all
them cobwebs down and child
don’t forget to take out the trash
else the vermin will find and dine and
piss on thine. lord don’t like no
tomfoolin’ and no horseplay
child. shake out the sheets
and turn down the quilt. fluff the pillows and
pour the milk, lord don’t like lazy
child. wash your face and stand
tall. gots to be ready when lord pays a call
fathafathafatha
morning stretches to encourage bloodflow a little
aspirin because flight causes clots. i miss those mornings
of clear wakings when brain central kicks in and it’s
all there. and i’m up for it. i miss seeing the shape
i’m taking. stepping from shadow into lamplight. i miss
breathing unawares and unwarned. i miss certainty and
sassiness. more than that, i crave the turn of his
satisfied back after release, the slippings soundlessly
off together. rare now, those seconds of what being what
§
(lone ride cross purple sage. lame horse. no water. no bullets)
§
at the whim of high transience
an essence trapped in corner life—thwarting
the sleepers below
i—black phantasm rising from the ink
no sleep without terror. waking to the quiet prowl
of the dog. its absent growl. the din of greed. no sleep
without terror. my body covered in brown wheals like
blackbrown pearls strung neck to crotch. my lover seeks
to lull me but i’m crazed in the mirror crazed by this
foreign flesh and the bizarre heat of my thots
on the yard i plant good seed. i water it with tears
but only dull gray cement squares grow
implacable to life-giving yellow and blue
you
the terror wakes me and i prowl the muzzled screams
of fear. these rags i wear like spent togas
washed to exhaustion, clinging limp outer skins
concealing the rages beneath. the medicine i take
for these bleatings only works if it numbs my thots
if it brings sleep without terror. if only i could
stopper this vesuvius
(someone called. used your name and hung up.)
duty will allow me to accomplish what
love does not. duty is a woman. duty says
i am the mother duty says. give as you’ve
never . . . be the muthur nutter duty says.
you are a wife. duty makes it possible to
stand over the carpenter and point out his
mistakes. duty endows me with the will of
early hours difficult work done endlessly
sans appreciation sans thanks. duty allows
the resentment of the children to roll off
my heart like water off a drake. duty keeps
me moist enough to receive the demands of
marriage. duty stems the flow/entombs angst
and ange
r. done duty. duty will grind me
gracefully until i fill the urn with the
sardonic dust of bone. duty’ll prevent this
bomb of you from exploding inside me.
§
he selfbardic . . . such jittersweetness . . .the
parting troubles . . . but the symptoms are beyond dispute . . .
to extrude is to extinguish
§
orisons
deterge me of the poison that elevates
my blood and dims memory
divest me of the ugliness that wears my
face and distorts my form
devoid me of the bile that robs food
of flavor and spoils the wine
divest me of the lard that clogs my
judgment and slows my step
deterge me of the loathing that obscures my vision
and starves my ambitions
devoid me of the meanness that wounds
all i hold most tender
deterge me of the evil that assigns all
evil to my birthskin
devoid my mad ears of scatophony that
i might hear other songs
divest me of the weight of my yearnings
that this self is not crushed
deliver me from the romance of deceit
that i may embrace justice
divest me of the cloying dead that i may
live unfettered
deterge me of false guilts
let my grief be pure
divest me of the shackles of my hands
Late Broadcast News
—after Elizabeth Bishop
black gooseneck lamp six black men were killed and more than a hundred blacks were arrested when rioting started following the death of a 16-year-old mentally retarded black detainee in the county prison. more than a billion dollars in damage resulted from fires that raged through the city. the dead were all shot in the back. thousands of law enforcement officers, state troopers and national guardsmen were dispatched to the trouble spot. armed with handguns, automatic weapons and tanks, they were given shoot-to-kill orders by the governor. a dusk-to-dawn curfew was imposed and hundreds of black men, women and children were arrested. the disturbance erupted after a demonstration had taken place and demands were made for information about the youth who was slain while in police detention.
word processor a new government study indicates two-thirds of all the firstborns to American black women are conceived out of wedlock. many of these children do not escape the stigma of illegitimacy and are doomed to be raised in poverty. the survey states that single white females are more likely to find fathers for their babies than females of other races.
reams of scrap paper “birth control a plan to kill negro” warned crudely painted graffiti. inside otherwise pristine walls, a small circle of blacks formed an anti- genocide black caucus at the convention on world population control. some delegates proposed that youths should be encouraged paper to participate in homosexual affairs to prevent births. it is a widely held suspicion that the true purpose of such conventions is to further decimate global populations-of-color already ravaged by poverty, disease and social upheavals.
acid free white bond one young man in the audience fainted and another rushed out clutching his stomach. nothing like it has been seen on-stage in that small, unsophisticated country—two hours of blood, sex, rape, cannibalism. the production of “Titus Andronicus” by a visiting Shakespearean company, exploded like a bombstink. arts supporters and government officials are purportedly unhappy about the Elizabethan gore which included ten gallons of imported fake blood. state censors were displeased with the play’s sensualism.
hours of uninterrupted music she arrived with a court order granting her permission to remove furnishings from their apartment. his twelve-year collection of rare vinyl records, tapes, and cassettes was his whole world. he stood watching, unperturbed until she went first for the stereo and then his collection. he went to the bedroom, got his revolver and shot her in the back as she fled. hidden in a neighbor’s closet until police could arrive, she finally staggered out, screaming, “i’m dying, i can’t breathe.”
micro floppy disk some passengers find black flight attendants distasteful. no other profession so tenaciously heralds a woman’s beauty and femininity. black stewardesses are visibly absent from certain flights, though airline officials claim there is no discrimination in assignments. some passengers request service by white hostesses only. many black hostesses com- plain of fewer incidents with customers than with pilots.
two pots of French roast don’t argue with your lover, be sure you and your family stay healthy, stay out of court, don’t lose your job, and don’t add any new persons or unusually expensive items to your household. such stress-filled life events are most likely to cause someone to kill him or herself, especially if three or more of these events occur within six months.
aspirin with codeine social scientists began hunting the monster Tuesday, using a love potion concocted of eel, newt, powdered horn of rhinoceros, the ground entrails of elephant, sea cow and other creatures. large doses of sex essence were laid out in strategic areas surrounding its suspected lair, said a spokeswoman for the enthusiastic group. “our combinations of talent and intellect are formidable. i don’t know how any so-called monster could fail to be subdued by such a magnitude of force.”
Etheridge
he slept thru his ascension of the northern latitudes
to be rudely awakened by the stink of burning cash
heat. stinging July heat and firecrackers went off
in his mouth
in the elevator up his brain swelled,
threatened to explode—as did his lungs
spiraling upwards,
he came alone but knew they could hear him too well through
those sheet-rock tar-paper chicken wire walls
like speedballs moving upstream, stray thoughts howled and
screeched with feline lust under moonlight
the unfettered snores of dreamers tore at his ears
seducers in ancient postures and blood-red getups hugged the curbs
and toyed with stop signs and the hunger pangs of children
what lover of melodrama had condemned him to
this month of Saturday nights?
whizzing bullets pierced naked calm leaving cracks &
expelled casings
best leave now best leave now
a jagged shuffling of feet housed in synthetic leather came from
behind him to suggest he travel faster
he kissed the reefer burning his thief’s fingers
leaned against that bitchin’ hood and blimped the itch
his blaze interrupted the sermon and singed the robes
Jazz Whine
—for Sascha Feinstein
i was reborn in a massive trunk cascading forward
toward the falls
while the endless scrollings of octaves tranced
me into hummings
unheard before the roar. nevertheless, twice baptized in
the shine, i could
survive anything in those days maybe even my own mouth,
a known dancer on
the blade. now, i have troubled sleeps, bad circulation
and feet bruised
on the insteps. the last time i saw the only grandmother
i have ever known
she was crying away that 1952 Sooner summer afternoon
perhaps recalling her
mother taken decades before by Mississippi fever perhaps
sensing the shade
under which she would one day recline. i imagine her hands,
now a kindness
across my shoulders, slim long naked yellow fingers tease
my sunbleached locks
“you’ve got your daddy’s hair but my melancholy soul,”
as though we weren’t
strangers as though t
he banjo player in bibbed coveralls
still strummed
his bluesy walk and white lemonade sweetened the heat and
her six daughters in
their homemade dresses tittered as our men tested their
prowess barnside
with strong cords and a mighty axe while i forever stand
in that doorway gone
farm dust, “grandma, what’s wrong?” sings off my lips
and into this
California dawn where coffee customarily calls down
comfort. because
i once dared think i was immune to rhythms past and
had all damage
under the mute, solo and jazzed for the new sounds the
new croons and in my
arrogance had no need for those old licks and tricks for
hicks in the sticks
till my eyes began to bleed and i could no longer find my ears
Life as a Cartoon 2
(penned in a multicultural rainbow—
someone’s gettin’ globs off the concept)
ink peepo
in the mean mean Santa Claus, his voluminous rosy
cheeks, his “gotcha coon” gray-eyes shooting sparks,
with large well-manicured hands, sets giant 3-layered
red-white-and-blue cake on the table before a modern-day
ink spot, MIZ stick figure in her triangle skirt and
Wicked Enchantment Page 13
