AMERICAN SONNET FOR MY PAST AND FUTURE ASSASSIN
For her last birthday I found in a used New Jersey
Toy store, a six inch Amiri Baraka action figure
With three different outfits: an elaborately colored
Dashiki with afro pick; a black linen Leninist getup,
And a sports coat with elbow patches & wool Kangol.
Accessories include an ink pen & his father’s pistol.
If you dip him in bathwater, he will leak
The names of his abandoned children. Pull a string,
He sings “Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note”
Sweeter than the sweetest alto to ever sing
In the Boys Choir of Harlem. The store clerk tried
Selling me the actual twenty volume note LeRoi Jones
Wrote the night before Baraka put a bullet in him.
I would’ve bought it. But I had no room in my suitcase.
AMERICAN SONNET FOR MY PAST AND FUTURE ASSASSIN
A brother versed in ideological & material swagger
Seeks dime ass trill bitch starved enough to hang
Doo-ragged in smoke she can smell & therefore inhale
And therefore feel. Must ride shotgun pouring fountains
Of bass upon the landscape. Must be fat assed, fearless,
And God-fearing, an ancestral insurgent, clean
As new money, a cryptographer, a storyteller,
A glossy sleeve. There will be a jewelry of wooing.
There will be stacks of folded longing. Amid twilight
Verbiage in parking lots smelling of live wire, liquor
Hot air & fire: accompany a brother. Shout outs to vixens
And bitches out there twerking for fucks in Bluff Estates,
Washington Park, Star Light, Shop Road, Joe Frazier,
Harlem Street: this is daddy’s boy. Who want it?
AMERICAN SONNET FOR MY PAST AND FUTURE ASSASSIN
But there never was a black male hysteria:
As if you weren’t the spouse of Toni Morrison,
Forced by love to watch her flower, as well as
Literally expand. The locks of her hair prevented
Your skin from ever touching her skin. You never
Smelled the nape of her neck, though you glimpsed
It when her head cocked to illuminate paper. As if
Everything was a tool or weapon. Often you offered
Your measure, but she preferred her own song.
As if to make your blackness more strange,
More elaborate, more characteristic, fine-tuned
And refined. Soaphead Church, Empire State, Guitar,
Gideon, Son. The hysteria of being multiplied & divided
In your lover’s mind until you go out of your mind.
AMERICAN SONNET FOR MY PAST AND FUTURE ASSASSIN
Our sermon today concerns the dialectic
Blessings in transgression & transcendence.
We’re on the middle floor where the darkness
We bury is equal to the lightness we intend.
We stand in the valley & go to our knees
On the mountain. One rope pulls a body down
And into earth, the other pulls up & after stars.
To be divided is to be multiplied. Let us
Ponder how it is that you & I have remained
Alive. Mississippi & all the seas bound to sky by rain,
The root & reach of all the trees. When the wound
Is deep, the healing is heroic. Suffering and
Ascendance require the same work. Our sermon
Today sets the beauty of sin against the purity of dirt.
AMERICAN SONNET FOR MY PAST AND FUTURE ASSASSIN
Something in the metaphor of the bow
Which is never close enough to see the arrow
Hit its mark. I remain a mystery to my father.
My father remains a mystery to me.
Christianity is a religion built around a father
Who does not rescue his son. It is the story
Of a son whose father is a ghost. No one
Mentions Jesus’ sister. Nothing is written
About her. She had no children, she was in her
Forties the first time she turned water into wine.
A late bloomer, she began a small wine business
And traveled all over the world selling the wine.
Her name was the name of the wine.
I don’t recall the name of the wine.
AMERICAN SONNET FOR MY PAST AND FUTURE ASSASSIN
An old woman looks at the rows of clothes
She will never wear again. Beneath the clothes
Are high & low high heels, office & casual flats,
Sandals, & sneakers covered in dust while above
The rows of clothes is a shelf of tropic, exotic,
Cryptic, elegiac, futuristic Sunday hats amassed
Over many decades shopping wherever a woman
Buys such hats. The feathers stand like flags
In an overpopulated bird country where almost
Every export is covered or stuffed with feathers;
Where birds to survive disguise themselves as hats.
The old woman with a mess of feathers in her care
Is as lovely as she was long ago when she was known
To wear, every night, a different feather behind her ear.
AMERICAN SONNET FOR MY PAST AND FUTURE ASSASSIN
Maybe I was too hard on Derek Walcott.
In preschool while I lay on a nylon cot
In a church basement staring at God knows
What, I was not asleep when the old deacon
Snuck downstairs to let the two sisters
Watching over us lay hands against his advances.
His crown was haloed in gray, but eyebrows
And eyelashes swirled black as calligraphy
Around his gaze. “Cut it out,” I’d hear the girl
With plump, plum lips say. He wore a silver
Bracelet, he spoke with a radiant sway,
Everywhere he was known to pray a prayer
So blood-filled & persuasive some listeners
Were said to fever, kneel, beg, break, levitate.
AMERICAN SONNET FOR MY PAST AND FUTURE ASSASSIN
On some level, I’m always full of Girl Scout cookies
In the land of a failed landlord with a people of color
Complex. On some level every action is an affirmation
Of personality. In the near empty subway car
I watched a brother dance on the ceiling, spin
On the subway pole like a stripper, twirl like an inverted
Ballerina on the parallel bars. I had no money
To give him. I was going to the party as Will Smith
In the first half of the Hancock movie: aloof, gifted,
Fucked up. I saw the shadows of planes gallop
Over buildings. I saw five white girls side by side
On a park bench, almost synchronized taking selfies
Of themselves taking selfies together in the land
Of a failed landlord with a people of color complex.
AMERICAN SONNET FOR MY PAST AND FUTURE ASSASSIN
America, you just wanted change is all, a return
To the kind of awe experienced after beholding a reign
Of gold. A leader whose metallic narcissism is a reflection
Of your own. You share a fantasy with Trinidad
James, who said, “Gold all in my chain, gold all in my ring,
Gold all in my watch” & if you know what I’m talking
About, your
gold is the yellow of “Lemonade” by Gucci
Mane: “Yellow rims, yellow big booty, yellow bones,
Yellow Lambs, yellow MP’s, yellow watch.” Like no
Culture before us, we relate the way the descendants
Of the raped relate to the descendants of their rapists.
May your restlessness come at last to rest, constituents
Of Midas. I wish you the opposite of what Neruda said
Of lemons. May all the gold you touch burn, rot & rust.
AMERICAN SONNET FOR MY PAST AND FUTURE ASSASSIN
You know how when the light you splatter spreads
Across her back like wings tattooed elaborately one evening
In an ink-shop beside a river, how with the raw blood
Settling again into the meat you are you slump backwards
Half thinking it is more falling than slumping, more heartbreak
Than release & how maybe it’s the wings that are real
Or that will become real when you are dust, Money,
When you have slipped again into the black husk
That is not a black husk at all? That’s the feeling
Of her name in my mouth. It is like reaching a town
Bruised by headlights after too long in the darkness,
Like the feeling of one question flush against another,
The feeling of wings clasping the back of the body,
The feeling of wings clapping wind along the spine.
AMERICAN SONNET FOR MY PAST AND FUTURE ASSASSIN
If you have never felt what is fluid
In a woman run warm along your thighs
And testicles, Mister Trumpet if you do not know
The first man was in fact a woman whose clit
Grew so swollen with longing it hung like a finger
Pointing toward the lover stirring her meadows
Mister Trumpet what the fuck do you know
You are lonely because you could never unhitch
Your mother’s terrifying radiant woe
I mean my mother here she the crazy bitch in me
She the way I weep she the way I break she manly
Trumpet I can’t speak for you but men like me
Who have never made love to a man will always be
Somewhere in the folds of our longing ashamed of it
AMERICAN SONNET FOR MY PAST AND FUTURE ASSASSIN
Rilke ends his sonnet “Archaic Torso of Apollo” saying
“You must change your life.” James Wright ends “Lying
In a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island,
Minnesota” saying “I have wasted my life.” Ruth Stone ends
“A Moment” saying “You do not want to repeat my life.”
A minute seed with a giant soul kicking inside it at the end
And beginning of life. After the opening scene where
A car bomb destroys the black detective’s family, there are
Several scenes of our hero at the edge of life. A shootout
In an African American Folk Museum, a shootout
In the middle of an interstate rest stop parking lot,
A barn shootout endangering the farm life. I live a life
That burns a hole through life, that leaves a scar for life,
That makes me weep for another life. Define life.
AMERICAN SONNET FOR MY PAST AND FUTURE ASSASSIN
Goddamn, so this is what it means to have a leader
You despise, the racists said when the president
Was black and I’ll be damned if I ain’t saying it too.
Is this a mandate for whiteness, virility, sovereignty,
Stupidity, an idiot’s threats & gangsta narcissisms threading
Every shabby sentence his trumpet constructs? You
Are not allowed to say shit about Mexicans when you
Ain’t actually got any Mexican friends—I bet you’ve never
Been invited to a family dinner. You ain’t allowed to deride
Women when you’ve never wept in front of a woman
That wasn’t your mother. America’s struggle with itself
Has always had people like me at the heart of it. You can’t
Grasp your own hustle, your blackness, you can’t grasp
Your own pussy, your black pussy dies for touch.
AMERICAN SONNET FOR MY PAST AND FUTURE ASSASSIN
Probably all our encounters are existential
Jambalaya. Which is to say, can a nigga survive?
Would you rather have happiness or freedom,
Pain or boredom? Would you rather hitch
Your rotten rope to a wagon or hitch your rotten
Wagon to a leash? After blackness was invented
People began seeing ghosts. When my father
Told me I was one of God’s chosen ones,
He was only half bullshitting. Probably each twilight
Is as different as a father is from his son.
Something happens everywhere in this country
Every day. Someone is praying, someone is prey.
Probably blindness has a chewed heart
In its belly, or a gate opening upon another gate.
AMERICAN SONNET FOR MY PAST AND FUTURE ASSASSIN
I’m full of more water than a forest
And the adrenaline of a spooked horse.
But I’m a Time Lord. My armor is flesh
And spirit. I carry a flag bearing a different
Nation on each side. I carry money bearing
The face of my assassins. I’m good company
And pretty fun for a little while. A whirlwind,
I tend to repeat my mistakes. I’m a camera
With no cameraman, my own personal
Assistant & assassin. The truth is easy to see
When it’s before you, but it’s deceptive
Otherwise. I am selfish. I am a religion.
You are a religion. Together we are a religion.
My love is oppressive. I’m a Time Lord.
AMERICAN SONNET FOR MY PAST AND FUTURE ASSASSIN
But there never was a black male hysteria:
As if you weren’t the lover of Langston Hughes,
Forced to hold what you knew of his measure
Secret until it drove you mad enough to cruise
The dive bars reciting the poems he wrote
About you but never published or spoke:
Lines covered in bruises & stars, almost
Unhinged lyrics. The man was high yellow
In public, afraid of himself, pretending his music
Was material when in fact, it was the opposite:
Like a breath that comes so quickly you know
You’re breathing ether: either atmospheric
And anonymous as the air against a window,
Or indefinite & mute as a curtain of wind.
AMERICAN SONNET FOR MY PAST AND FUTURE ASSASSIN
Because he cannot distinguish a blackbird
From a crow or raven, it’s all the more
Brazen when the autocrat kisses a cat.
Because he’s a kettle of oil about to boil,
It’s all the more touching when the despot
Pets a pet. The skin breaks so easily, he says,
But he cries it softly. Because he’s someone
Who can’t distinguish a horse from a zebra
Without the stripes, he can’t describe himself
Without looking in a mirror. Baller. Bawler.
Dentures. Makeup. He’s almost too flakey
To be the villain. Because he’s someone
Who cannot distinguish meat from malarkey.<
br />
Anything close to his mouth gets bitten.
AMERICAN SONNET FOR MY PAST AND FUTURE ASSASSIN
Sometimes the father almost sees looking
At the son, how handsome he’d be if half
His own face was made of the woman he loved.
He almost sees in his boy’s face, an openness
Like a wound before it scars, who he was
Long before his name was lost, the trail
To his future on earth long before he arrived.
To be dead & alive at the same time.
A son finds his father handsome because
The son can almost see how he might
Become superb as the scar above a wound.
And because the son can see who he was
Long before he had a name, the trace of
His future on earth long before he arrived.
AMERICAN SONNET FOR MY PAST AND FUTURE ASSASSIN
It feels sadder when a black person says Nigga
Because it sounds like Nigger. It feels sadder
When a brother or sister says Nigga because
It sounds like Nigger. I have never heard either
Word in the mouth of my mother or father.
Once I had a lover who said neither word
Out loud. I used neither word for years.
It feels sadder to hear a nigga say Nigga when
It sounds like Nigger. Nothing saddens me more
Than Nigger, one whose master has no Lord.
No word leaves me more graced by shame.
You will always be my nigga, I say to the mirror
Because it is a dark water the temperature
Of a blade, the yellow flower stalking a dream.
AMERICAN SONNET FOR MY PAST AND FUTURE ASSASSIN
The subject is allowed up to twenty years
After leaving the home of his or her parents
To reconcile all but the darkest of infractions.
The deeper the wound the more heroic
The healing. As the story of Aeneas is The Aeneid
And the story of Odysseus, The Odyssey, the name
Of the subject is as mysterious as the journey.
American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin Page 2
