In Praise of Bark Too
“When dogs bark,” they simply surrender to the inevitability of their natures. Charles Harvey understands, even in form, that humanity too, is broken--these line and stanza breaks parallel the places where people struggle to put themselves back together again. Reading him, I am always confronted with how crude, if true, we too surrender to the inevitability of our natures: like the poetry in these pages, we breathe, we break, we breathe again.
Tim’m T West
Author of
Red Dirt Revival, BARE, and Flirting
Harvey’s work is an “oops upside your head” because his pen is a blunt object, but every breath of this book blends vernacular and imagination to present stories we like to pretend aren’t true. But they are. Harvey’s book has made these stories real.
Avery Young,
Poet, Spoken Word Artist
****
Bark Too
by
Charles W. Harvey
* * * * *
PUBLISHED BY:
Bark Too
Copyright © 2011 by Charles W. Harvey
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Author’s Website www.charlesharveyauthor.com
Epigraph
America I’ve given you all and now I’m nothing.
From “America”
By Allen Ginsberg
****
Dedication
To my friends and friends to be
And to....
All of the pretty young men
Who have lived to tell about themselves
****
Table of Contents
Mother’s Advice
S’up, Dawg...My Boi...My Nigga...My Dawg...My Jigga...My Shorty
Woe’men Are Dogs
Dreams’N Blues
Our Stuff
About The Author
****
Mother’s Advice
The normal people
who rattle on about
sports about the weather
their kids their lovely toxic wives—
they won’t understand you
won’t understand that in your silence
you’re writing them into poems, songs,
folding them into pages
of psalms and novels
giving their banal chatter
titles and life long after
their graves are paved over
and under Piggly Wiggly’s.
‘S UP, DAWG...MY BOI...MY NIGGA...MY DAWG...MY JIGGA...MY SHORTY
****
Young Nigga I
The young niggas
you know what i’m sayin’
the young niggas
slappin hands
pow pow pow
slappin hot hands
together
you know what i’m sayin
slappin hot hands
then pullin gats
and blowin holes
in each other’s manhood
you know what i’m sayin
pow pow pow
guts runneth over
south side chi--town
eastside philly
oakland, Kinsasha, Luanda
you know what i’m sayin
my ass drowns cause
niggas slap hands
then blow holes in each other’s manhood.
Maybe just maybe we oughta
greet each other by shakin dicks
you know what i’m sayin
instead of this hand slappin bullshit
it ain’t a love jones thang
you know what i’m sayin
it’s an intimacy thang
just maybe we gotta feel each other
get close to the thang that created us
to know us to survive us.
This ain’t bout no back door action
it’s about us surviving
‘til the trilenium
you don’t feel me yet
but one day you will be conscious
one day nigga, it will be our day.
Young Nigga II
Caressing me in alcoholic fog
loving me through clouds of poppers
then in your blue sky clarity
acting like i’m a storm cloud...
Nigga Nigga
I’m not your Daddy.
True I’ve seen decades
You’ve only dreamed.
I saluted with John John his
daddy’s flag draped box of bones,
danced in my Mama’s pink pillbox hats
seen Watts and Detroit
baptized by fire.
I’ve witnessed young black panthers
with mouths soft and tender like yours
spit venom at honky honky honky
then secretly go play Pin the tail on the donkey donkey
using their white girl’s ass as the ass’s ass.
I wrote a poem about that
while you were pissing in kindergarten toilets
Nigga, did you ever read, “Before the Big Chill, There was the 60’s”
and i said, “Made sex with plump chicken-fat colored blondes.”
Have you forgotten what I was talking about?
Me, I was nourished by the blood
of King and I too have dreamed
all kinds of shit like
flying suburbs, walking on Mars,
blondes sucking my dick
and of my children your age now
not knowing what the hell I’m jaw jacking about
like you don’t.
You know Lauryn Hill
and Lauryn Hill knows her shit from the history books
so logic leads to the theory that you know history
But it’s a flawed theory because all you know is
Abercrombie and Fitch, Banana Republic
Nigga don’t even know that Banana Republic
is a slur is a slur
Hell no nigga nigga I’m not your Daddy
I’m your lover and I’m your hater
Because so much love is bottled as hate.
You know that, You know that in your heart.
That’s why you brutalize the air between us
hate love hate love it’s the same fucking thing.
I am not full of wisdom. I eat and shit bullshit too.
Sometimes I forget Banana Republic is a slur
and despair because my toilet is not made of stained glass
I am flesh, hair, and Madison Avenue.
So accept me nigga, guilt free or die frying
in the dreams of your lies.
Young Nigga III
young nigga, you think
muscle is power and your
dick can split mountains
but I’ve got a tongue
that can make your bones rattle
After the Club
Empty handed, empty hearted, empty pocketed you go home
Where is the love Where is the love your heart sings a sad sad song
You drank and acted a fool, laughed when you wanted to cry
Kept up appearances in the Ed Hardy rags you procured from Costco
You flashed change, chain and eyes. One paid attention then
Discounted your pennies and cheap gold filled dreams
You didn’t matter naked or clothed in his eyes
Your change and chains ain’t enough
To warm your bed.
The Type
You know the type
they never grow up,
baseball cap backwards
arms that once held
bricks and babies
now holding a forty ounce to
fifty year old lips. They just
Been doing the same shit
for years and eons
only this time their new agenda
doesn’t have tits
“I’m all about your ass, boy”
They love loving you
like you the last man
then leaving your ass or
dumping you unceremoniously
out the front door as they
put out the garbage,
the garbage you smell like.
You knew it was coming
but the bourbon, baby, on his breath
was an aphrodisiac. You knew where you were going
before you got there.
All you wanted to do was borrow those arms
for just a few minutes to cradle your weary ass.
And aren’t you the type yourself
that’s been getting dumped for years?
You know the body language so well
after the “ooh, ooh, oh shit nigga!”
and before the Elmer’s glue cum
dries on your belly, you feel his hand slip away
from your shoulder like a falling silk garment
and you are more naked at that moment
than you were at birth.
You watch him glance at his watch
that he never pulled off and his eyes
bright and alert with afterlust
tell you he’s got to get up early
got to get up early before his
cat, dog, wife, roommate wakes up
got to get up early before
his dick wakes up and he gets
horny for your ass and don’t make it to work
on time.
And then you hear this:
“You cute, but you ain’t quite the one
to settle me down.
You almost there though, dawg.
Yeah you can be my road dog.
You see I like a nigga who...”
You shrug it off
You never been anybody’s “one.”
So you roll out of his bed
and walk out his door his life
A notions hits you on the way home
You stop by the Handy Dan
for some Elmer’s glue and a wooden plunger.
On top of your soiled satin sheets
you spread the glue over your belly and nipples
you take the head of the plunger up your ass
and you don’t stop until you taste wood and shit.
Young Bones
maybe it’s because you
haven’t traveled the path littered
with broken glass and stepped over
carcasses of despair, maybe it’s
because your eyes shine bright with moon dreams
and maybe it’s the silly things
like running naked through parks and mooning
old farmers riding ancient mechanical mules,
dancing until your skin turns liquid,
or doing that “flip” thing with your hair curled like fingers...
I don’t know...
maybe it’s just you calling me “poppi” that makes me
love you, young bones.
To Marvin
The way you wear your white cap, sideways,
Makes me want to hug
Your smooth blue thighs, makes me
Want to suck your boyhood dry
To the bone. I love you so,
I even want your friends. I want
Anything you have touched. Your underwear
Is my sacrament. Your tennis shoes I sit
Upon an altar next to your torn picture.
Every night on my knees, I pray and feel
Your moist hands on the back of my neck.
I do not mind sitting next to you
In your pal’s creaking red Chevy Impala
On our way to the woods--their taunts
Songs of praise that make me
Kiss each and every mouth that spits on me.
I do not mind the jostling in that car, the
Slaps from those soft hands stinging me, those
Rose and blackberry lips spitting
“Punk!” at me. I want all of
Them because they are you.
At every lash of their belts, I call
your name.
Marvin rushes to my lips and echoes
All over those black woods. And before
The black veil covers my eyes
I see you, your white cap sideways,
Your boot heel coming closer to my skull.
Wha’s Up
“Yo yo, wha’s up
Yo yo, wha’s up,”
boys chant--
gawky limbed, but
steeped in rhythm
feet going
tick tock tick tock
like a jazz clock
down my hall.
Levi’s seat don’t
hit the ass nowhere
except dragging
around the knees.
Pimples dot a smooth
oval face
eyes, bright black
and furtive
slender hands
stroke the Glock
nestled between
their thighs.
They spy me
on my knees
hands clasped
in furious prayer
to my all mighty father
maker of heaven
and black black dirt
my mouth is open
my tongue beats
a tune:
“Jesus, Jesus, Jesus!”
suddenly cold steel
touches my throat.
a trigger clicks,
rough hands squeeze
the back of my head.
I clutch thin hips,
look up and there
be Jesus, skinny
shaved head,
robed in gold.
My lord whispers,
“Yo, yo, wha’s up.”
To Daddy
Suicide
Genocide
Patricide
We all die.
Crack, AIDS-
Take crack to
Cope with AIDS.
Get AIDS dealing
In lust.
“Can you jack off
With me over
Your red laminated
Plastic telephone?”
“Yeah, Baby my blue
underwear is a
Rope Bracelet
Around my ankles.
I’m your slave,
Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!”
All boys scream,
‘‘Please be my daddy!”
Scream it from their
Broken hearts.
Send kisses over
Their red laminated
Plastic telephones.
War in their hearts
Death in their bones-
¬AIDS, AIDS, AIDS
Never killed any SOB
It was their search for
Daddy that did them in.
Daddy Daddy Daddy, Come back!
Lead us Not
(For Gerald when he was…)
Temptation--Nineteen little gold bracelets
On his thin wrists. A halo hovers
Above him, pulls my eyes to his eyes.
His feet, dainty and bound
In black canvas. My eyes
On his chest and the foolish
Cartoon character with big ears and snout.
My temptation has a thin neck and a mouth
Rich in white ivory. Young ivory
Young bones, young blood.
He say his name is Johnny Youngblood
And he live with his daddy in a yella
Shotgun house. He say he don’t
Like to give his phone number out and then
Folks not call him. I fold the paper
Into a
square, place it in my
Breast pocket, drive on past
A yella shotgun house and an old man
On the porch carving an ivory phallus
With a butcher’s knife.
Business
His dick invaded my mouth
like a rude foot. It sought refuge
in the back of my throat.
My guts heaved but hung on for the ride.
His hands rough and weary with two decades
of hard life
stroked my head tentatively,
then with brutal authority when he felt me resisting.
A man talks with his dick then regrets with his heart.
And right now Junior, this business is all talk
Daniel in the Lion’s Den
Standing up in Heaven,
A place of whirling blue
And pink stars, sepia boy
Angels with wings and black hair,
Where skinny St. Peter at the door
Charges five dollars for me to enter,
(All can enter saint/sinner),
And where God is a fat DJ
Playing an electric harp--
Standing in that place,
Daniel fresh from the lion’s den--
¬Blood on his throat,
Touched my bony shoulder,
Whispered a prayer into
My earshell. I answered him.
Selling Short
He say, “Hey Nigguh,
Brown clay, red wine for blood--
Come here. Let me look at you.
Let me kiss yo’ lips.”
I say, “Hey man,
Alabaster skin, flax hair
Red wine for blood--
Ain’t you talkin’ about my Mama?”
He say, “Oh no.
It’s you, man. It’s you.
I say, “A fag live down the street
With his daddy ma yellow shotgun house.”
He say, “I don’t like no fag.
They got too much of their Mama’s soft ways.
I like muscles, the hard edge of a man
His dark solitude, closed mouth.”
I say, “Let me close my door.”
He say, “Please, please, please!
I can do the James Brown.”
I say, “I don’t like James Brown.
Do you know William Burroughs?”
He say, “He’s a fag writer, no I do not know him.
But I know Little Richard. I know Angel Face.”
I say, “I know William Shakespeare
And what the Ides of March mean.
I ain’t no nigguh.”
He say, “Oh you one alright.
And you swallow men’s babies.”
I say, “Take your foot outa my dark door.
Ima call the police!”
He say, “I like police.
They so blue, cool, crisp and kind.”
I say, “Man, where you get your fantasies--
from the back end of Venus?
He say, “I get my fantasies
from looking at you, boy--
Your sleeping eyes, your hair soft
and black like the baby Jesus’s,
Your mother-of-pearl teeth, hard thighs,
heaving rib cage--
The smooth back of your adolescent neck,
Bark Too Page 1
