Chorus

by Saul Williams

  hooked

  on what I have been promised by the TV

  by that saccharine ache Anita Baker

  moans from a mass-produced CD

  The game of happily ever after in love

  is a cruel farce

  the lonely wish of a gullible asshole

  who somebody done told

  a whole lot of silly lies to

  love is nothing

  but the by-product of a teenager

  wagering hormonal changes

  against the smell of his own diluted sperm

  spilling innocent into his awkward palm

  Love is the alms

  given to the poor to divert

  focus from the difference

  between the shacks that teachers live in

  in Brooklyn

  and the mansions that senators fuck young interns

  in Washington DC

  I am just about ready to give up

  on man/woman

  dog and tree

  the whole romantic tic is hogwash

  The idiots

  who look like they might still be in love

  have only been together

  for three weeks

  and those lucky enough to have lasted more than a year

  are rapidly shifting gears

  towards chopping the shared

  now dysfunctional cat

  in two equal parts

  so they can cart the rest of their shit

  to the new apartment

  they cannot afford by themselves

  I am tired of searching for Ms. Right

  always something wrong

  with the one girl who likes me

  too smart/too skinny

  too much of a ninny

  too short/too tall

  too-much-of-a-mall-girl for my liking

  too free/too taken/too I’m sorry I was mistaken

  in my initial assessment of your sexuality

  sometimes

  I think I hang my hat too high

  for my own arms to reach

  which brings me back

  to my original hypothesis

  of love being somewhat like the perfect orgasm

  the trip there

  is infinitely better than the letdown

  of having already experienced it

  After the first

  actualization of intercourse

  there’s no up to go from there

  what is one to do with the sticky wet

  of saliva

  and vaginal fluid

  and sweat

  not drying fast enough

  in the center of a lumpy futon

  you are desperately trying to fall asleep in

  Love

  as I have understood it

  is primarily disappointment

  and hard work and very little return

  so now I’m canvassing for volunteers

  to go tar the cupid who conjured

  the stupid concept

  feather the fucker and leave the body to burn

  28

  we are the cunt|fused. hour vaginas tighten to virginity over and over. each time. ti|me up, in|to what dicks think|are entrances to a 4th dimension. excuse me! call me miss mister; pussy, this pen|is – my own.

  eye ink. jizm.

  sum do knot no how two take me? i nor eye can be red. sea me wave hy|men to sea|men, swim backward thru (hys)teria and untangle o|varies: oh my, oh my god, oh my God|damn, She is not a He, but hem is.

  scissors in hand, they run up on me. cut in front of me|in me|from behind. when one’s perception is globalized to one|size fits all, sodomy ensues; belief systems blare in bass. traditions tweet on tips of thwarted tongues – spoke|in sounds the unconscious can’t turn down. they peddle hidden ace under sleeve. trick-deal drawn from unzipped pants. rod and staff got balls|banging loud beats against thighs. the eyes. the eyes, yes! unravel.

  bend for|ward, grab toes, brace|your psyche. there is no room for sanity in the inn. dawn of (r)age – New|Or|Eve’s could never trust A|dam. women know, the patriarchal world been yelling since birth – “FEE|MA; you can’t afford liberty, just|ice. we will send prayers instead of help|better yet, we will send our summer son. all liquids evaporate to heaven!” melt. submit. be pass(I’ve) heard them say|in corridors of cocked legs|for cuntrol of categorization. cauterization? eye burn and can only re| member – lobotomies sever things.

  i am too|spirited. Berdache. native. eye nor i, need make-up. keep your shadow, it saddens. to hell with a|Mary|K|K|K’s ass. Amerikkkaz mine too. squeezed this whole land through head cock-tip. cocked head as drill bit, and dug out through the universe’s nappy dugout. I can b/earth a baby. male? female? trans|rendered.

  you’ve come to me before, in fact, with these same late-term papers on fiction: phrenology, eugenics! how many times must i bash skull, break bone and dismember ignorance? abort you overboard a slave ship? drown you in an Atlantic vision? give in|sight to your blind-spot; four-eye can reflect on degrees of dualities – keep dividing me like you do, and I’ll compound, cell your memory away to c|ancers of questions never thought to be asked. dislodge you from the dis|ease of forgetfulness.

  a rainbow can comprehend the spectrum of sex, its combination of shades, potentiality. eye bet all the colors of my life.

  put this in blood red on my wombstone; “He grew bigger, longer and harder than our soft, limp understanding could withstand – She opened a wet canal that swallowed us stillborn.”

  you are dead in me|my intuition: a bellyful of beasts.

  29

  Not that there’s anything wrong with that is the same chickenshit

  side step as no disrespect intended or I swear not to come in your mouth, no homo.

  Hip hop just has the balls to drop

  onto the palm of the modern lexicon, no homo.

  At some point every man learns you

  gotta be the biggest dick in the room to not get fucked, no homo.

  Gentlemen, you cannot let a sound run over your lips

  that does affirm the rock hard nature of your identity, no homo.

  Erect a panopticon in your throat

  as if the world had a flashlight up your ass, no homo.

  I am the last person to tell you

  that it is safe in a man’s skin, no homo.

  30

  his lighter drowns in the river so we practice kissing

  instead of smoking. he talks as if

  he is starving but i’m not sure what he’s starving for,

  food or words, water or my touch. i eat meat

  with every meal, he says,

  & i say, i’m vegetarian. he laughs.

  he understands the need to move, the way i spit

  on anxiety by walking until 3 in the morning,

  when the full sky & my heartbeat are finally calm,

  even if he doesn’t understand my gender

  or the tiny hairs on my chin & between my eyebrows.

  the moon is bright the way my sister looked

  after she started taking meds, glowing,

  her eyes don’t jitter anymore, & they don’t cry either. he takes off

  all his clothes, trips on the ankles of his pants,

  & i almost laugh at his cock, not because the last time i touched one

  my hair was down to my waist & my name belonged to a girl,

  but because of how smooth it is compared to the wet sand

  clumping between my toes. i say

  i hope you know this makes you a fag. he says nothing

  & keeps kissing my neck.

  there are bubbles of hard cider in our stomachs.

  flat chests confuse me. i am looking

  for something to cup & hold on to with my hands but his body

  is like the river & it is slipping away

  through my fingers.

  i didn’t sleep very well last night.

  he is drunk on my cum & in the morning

  he will
forget that i am a boi.

  tomorrow i will sigh & my friend will ask,

  why are you having trouble sleeping?

  & i will shrug as if my shoulders are mountains

  & say i don’t know & start talking about the weather.

  it feels so strange to fuck someone but never hold their hand.

  i can hold his hand with my breasts or my cunt

  but not with my fingers.

  fingers woven together are too fragile & intimate.

  fucking is easy. fucking is easy?

  i pick at my skin when i am anxious.

  31

  You call me a fruit,

  and I agree,

  say

  a fruit is ripe,

  promising seeds,

  bursting with juice.

  You call me a fruit,

  as though a vegetable

  and I recite a litany

  of fresh attributes:

  a fruit is rich,

  remembers its roots,

  nourishes, quenches,

  makes a display of any table.

  I say,

  I am the apple

  that announces the gravity

  of a given situation;

  I am the pomegranate

  whose gemstones teach

  of the burden of possession;

  I am the fig

  our ancestors couldn’t resist.

  You call me a fruit

  and I agree:

  soft, round and sweet.

  I dare you to peel back my layers,

  take a look at my pips.

  Full as a melon,

  sharp as a lime,

  come over here

  and bite me.

  32

  My mother always asks if I’m eating well.

  I don’t worry her. I say

  work late, soup for dinner, normal.

  I tell her you’re visiting and she asks

  about the soup.

  Sex is the unsaid thing, lone animal against the wall.

  A silence passed down like heirlooms and knotted-up gold chains.

  Valuable, I wasn’t made from lust, but from necessity.

  A secret: the place between my mother’s legs

  where absence bred and clung

  to the hairs on me as I descended.

  What do you tell a woman who defines passion by security?

  How do I dare measure against her life, fingers full of water,

  flour-creased, a child on her hip when she stood before

  the man she loved and said choose,

  and he chose.

  Can I show her the bowl of fruit on my floor where you sit

  naked and hungry, pear juice dripping down your chin

  and puddling in my own mouth?

  Or ask if she has ever followed salt sweet lines

  down her back with a lover’s tongue?

  Can I give her the handful of cherries, thick-fleshed,

  like the first moment I tasted my own sex?

  Imagine the smell of that kitchen; my mother

  sucking pits like small wet songs on her dry tongue.

  Leek rounds, rainbow chard, coriander, broth

  slow-cooked, I don’t mention the room

  in the house of me where you live,

  desire and devastation sleeping curled

  together like dogs at the doorway.

  We came from each other, and then we began to eat

  from separate plates, elbows off

  the table. She gives me her borsht recipe

  without measurements,

  says: do it to taste,

  and I do

  33

  i am not beautiful

  i am an elegant beast

  a well-mannered monster

  a charming barbarian

  that will pillage your heart

  with language

  so lavishly violent

  that you will curse me for coming

  yet curse me for going

  your crying and your moaning

  will share the same sound

  i am the storm

  that will make your sunny days unbearable

  but when the clouds begin to hug and swell

  and push black kisses into each other

  when the white and airy

  becomes dark and full

  you will know im in the mouth of the horizon

  and she will breathe me thundering across your heaven

  all good reason

  says seek shelter

  but you will invariably find yourself

  running into a open field

  the wind

  shooting under your skirt

  a furious sky in your hair

  goosebumps on your thighs

  your mouth open to catch the rain

  that smacks your face

  your tear ing eyes

  towards heaven

  waiting for me to send down

  my most gorgeous disaster

  my most frightening lovely

  for which you have spent your sunny days supplicating

  woe to you, God has answered your prayer

  34

  “We need a doctor in the ICU, description elderly couple, 1 suffering from a shivering equinox

  The other bad case of eclipse”

  Momma “We didn’t hang their ghost out long enough to dry” washboard, clothes line

  It’s always hard wringing the bones out of a spirit

  Some days, I fold my throat; pack it in the truck of a black hearse cramped

  Middle passage cruise liner, hopscotch down

  Route 81, countryside hums like midnight, the air thick with the history of me

  Here I’m all white picket fence and picket sign

  “Check their vitals”

  My great-grandparents used to bathe in onyx, bore last names delicate as cotton

  “Garner” with an ER like sirens, gurneys or an

  Eerie house sculpted from the pulse of one womb

  The smell of a praying skillet playing jacks with a pot of grits

  Back burner like welts, Church on Sunday morning, in a town

  That tastes like nooses, winters fever porch swing backyard hammock

  Fist full of rice, jumped the broom, segregated blood waiting on the other side

  “Let’s put him over here, lift”

  “Boy this contraption can’t hold me long, what’s my superhero name iron lung”

  Marlboro lights and silence is all I know of my great grandfather

  Worked the coal mines, called him big O for Otis, godly hands, grip

  Like a bear trap shake Christ out of you,

  Earthly man, never able to crack the husk of him

  Crucified footprints, dirt roads burning U-Hauls

  The clan moved in next door

  “We’re going to have to run more tests”

  “Come rub gram grams feet, massage a few decades from my steps”

  My great-grandmother’s name was Esther

  All apron and foxhound had a bite like boycott, smiled like pistol whips

  2 green thumbs patch of land, her eyes two dilating ashtrays

  Ribcage furnished like a western salon, bar fight laughter

  Protest the moonshine, this is a sit-in

  “Not to be the bearer of bad news, but we found something, no cause for alarm with treatment

  You can see 6 more months”

  I’m a shade of flatline

  (cough)

  “Don’t smoke cigarettes, son “

  Otis died crying crickets in his chest, crooked cops place a handcuff

  Over a heartbeat this is what you call cardiac arrest

  Cells were never meant to split this way

  “I know this is hard, one by one you can go in and say your last words”

  Poppa, hold me in your arms like a rigid mountain peak

  “Shhhhh don’t tear, boy, I’ve been breathing like a steel mill all
my days, ’bout time I retire”

  Momma, don’t leave, “Child, watch my crops, scare the Jim crows”

  see their souls rising; I take my palms to try shoving their childhoods back into their bones

  This is my defibrillator to the sky all that

  Thunder clap!!

  “No more bullets on hotel balconies

  No fire hose baptisms

  “They’re not responding”

  Pink ribbons, crumbling Saint Jude, heart-shaped obituaries

  “I told you about my Jesus

  Look heaven, freedom’s waltzing across that labyrinth dance floor

  Million cloud March boots laced, silver lining stride to redemption”

  “Baby we’ll see you on the other side of the colored line”

  I turn to the doctor and ask him when will we have a cure for this?

  35

  Not all errors are mistakes

  Brutal images often evoke emotion but

  offer no hope against this harsh landscape

  Let us open wide the doors less fortunate

  so that the heavy wind, rain and snow can rush in and

  save us from the black clouds lurking over the blood red horizon

  Old incandescent lightbulbs flicker in dimly lit corridors

  Let’s listen to the tragically beautiful silence of the morning after

  There is no escape from the time and place where fiction occurs

  36

  Of the sunken barge in the water where life has taken root,

  we know the moral.

  We know where there is waste something can be profited.

  We know for nature there is no waste.

  Only opportunity. That is the charge you granted us,

  early in the garden, before we ducked behind the elephant ear

  to hide our nakedness. That was the first charge, at least.

  The second: that we’d never forget.

  We know that all we realize is derivative of your love.

  That everything we know will not eliminate what we don’t:

  why parade this beauty in our faces? Why make desirable

  the bones of the men who must have embraced

  the night the barge slipped under? Forgive me, Father.

  I am human. That means I have an ego.

  That means I can’t find solace in the tree that now commands

  this ship, the branches stretched and twisted as your love,

  although they also, like the bones,

  make me choke.