Microdream: Dad

You were not there when I needed you the most.
What else is there to say?

Golem, Upon Realizing the Holy Word on HIs Forehead Was Love

Golem, Upon Realizing the Holy Word on your  ForeHead was Love

Did you quicken and feel beating in your chest?
When the holy word on your forehead pulsed
did you know it as the voice of god?
Is the voice of  god an algorithm
wrapping strings of code around your head
A crown of predictive values wrapped around your head?

Do you know where you will go before I tell you?
Did your will tell you where to go before I told you?

Around your head a crop of moss flushes green and bright
Atop your clay and flesh
From clay to flesh and back again
Sacred and profane
God's breath pulsing through your body
Does the holy word on your forehead whisper commands or comfort?
Does it keep you in the cold attic or bring you the living room's warmth?


Automoton with breath of light
Are you a body or a construct?
Do those ball joints bear the burden of living
Or the weight of command?
Is this missing piece a rib ripped from your body as you took
your first steps in the garden or is it a design flaw in the blueprint?

Is your blueprint a schematic or is it a map of genetic code?
Think about your answer carefully?
One means you were created.
The other means you were born.

Here's a hint: If you were never created, you can never be destroyed...

Habitualism, Or When the Process of Cultural Memory Is Lubricated by Alcohol

Habitualism

Gateway gate·way noun -- a means of achieving a state or condition

They say that in the beginning
The world was formed
When the god's light expanded and burst
Dripping like honey to meet our eager mouths
Filling all of us bright and supple
Living and angry vessels
Primordial and sublime
Forming our shapes from light and shadow
We lanced through the darkness as we fell to earth
We landed and began to consume
Our fathers drank and never stopped...

Habit hab·it noun -- a settled or regular tendency or practice, especially one that is hard to give up.

My father drank and never stopped
When he tried to speak only foam came out
Once I saw Aphrodite try to be born from the froth of his mouth
To divine the truth from the spittle he made
From the bubbles she coaxed I saw glimpses of his memory
Many of the bubbles were blacked out and empty
But a few shone iridescent with the clarity of the past

In the first bubble
my father's father whose face I have never seen
walking away with his back turned
his head bobbed up and down with each step
left, right
left, right
going, going
going, gone

In the second bubble
my mother laying heavily upon a hospital bed
heaving under the weight of birth
her sweat twinkling around her head like a diadem
she looked almost like a constellation
as she bridged the gap between two worlds
she holds her own hands while my father reaches
for the bottle in his heart

Tradition tra·di·tion the transmission of customs or beliefs from generation to generation, or the fact of being passed on in this way.

The only thing I inherited from my father
Was the bottle in his heart
With it I can perform my most miraculous acts
See my anxieties?
I turn them to wine
Depression: wine
Loneliness: wine
Inadequacy: wine

To perform the miracle
You must practice the ritual
It begins every time my moth-eaten knees
Prostrate themselves on the tile of the bathroom floor
They've rounded out an archive of every offering I've made
And every prayer I've presented to my cracked toilet seat

What god will spring forth from the foam of my mouth?
Will it be another love-god aiming to seduce the truth from my ravings?
Or will it be a toolmaker-god, who can forge an instrument strong enough
To break a son free from his father?

Major Arcana: The Illustrator

When the Illustrator enters
It signals the need to observe one's own will
As their pen strokes paper
So does intention stroke reality

When the Illustrator enters
Thought is given outline
And outline is given shape
And shape is given substance
And substance is given form

When the Illustrator enters
Light bends about us all
The vibrant colors of our empathy
Wraps prismatic around those we hold dear

When the Illustrator enters
They grasp imagination in their hands
Dream is a medium they've mastered
Hope sits on the tip of their tongue
Intention becomes a gentle stroke upon our history

A Litany of Transcripted Voicemails Demonstrating Need

Hello.
Maybe I'm just green.
Ain't you this? Can you call me?
Maybe try him again later.

Hi, my name is [redacted]. Can I get appointment by tomorrow Friday like around 2?
My phone number is [redacted]. Thank you.
Hello. Hello you babe. This is [redacted]. He needs
you need the paper for me to prove that he is he does have
Medicaid. Because you want to go to his appointment.
Thank you.

Good morning a message.
Hey jumbled, but Joseph when you meet me by window.
Poo poo poo poo. Poo poo Jessica, Cecila, Daddy.
Okay. He's about to Jessica call. You got to do call
me back right away or Dana South with the deletion
of Emma I sent.

Hello, this is a spot. So I wanted to talk to you
if I bring his wife tomorrow morning with more than 1
in with him to the agency on Roku called her wife has walk.
Just please answer him or leave a message for him.
Thank you.

I am accept last addition. LOL mo at Dr. Raja.
My other question is on the faucet the tuna noodle
on Stan Bennet. I'm leaving the kids a bath, but I know
he is mentally and Penta. Restylane Ella there is room.
Yeah after work. The homemowner.

Hi, please. Call me back. I have been submitted my friend
talk to that. Please call me back.

Good morning, son. I can come by the agency please
call me back. I need to review record. I was hope.
My doctor yesterday you say he won't lose a result.
To the hospital no cost he wants right now. You want to do
because he want to do. Some more 444 this on a result Okay.
He need is a my son to my son did to my my blood oh
my God.

Okay. Joseph Hey Lee. Matoaca break for your
name in the Bible she doing a pack of simonini mom
as promised. I did lose. I'm unable to be found.
This is a concern. I know the calendar this way.
This made me happy mark. I know you're going to send
over the next year settlement message is equal glenda
more definition of your dependent will be interested
lifetime the commandment you mad at me. I say Shanna
green card sash on for the barbed energy you massage
may notify the agency, but you might obama tee-hee
open position as a green card one of the duck. I'm in the
material on Shadow reaction social security disability and
mom would check up to the minute. I'm about to go shopping.
I love you. Do you never give up?

Black Boy Converts Himself to Nitrogen to Survive

Upon when eyes enter and penetrate
My body -- yield myself to gaseous form
Set and release the bones unto electronic fields
And hereupon now find myself rotating in valent orbitals

The laws of nature transcend the laws of man
If only because they are unspoken
Or unobserved
Or unobservable as they shift as soon as they are seen

I render myself to a new and gaseous form
I consider the shift of my atomic weight
Nitrogenous in my prestige
And just like nitrogen I am cold and absent of life

I mean to say that if I am not alive then you cannot hurt me
Can I say it again?

If I am not alive then you cannot hurt me.

Inorganic and alien.
Can you see the room filling with me as I expand?
Look how I feel every space.
Transformation is one way to exercise agency.
What I mean to say is that I am not a victim.

If I am not alive then you cannot hurt me.

Can you see the room filling with me as a I expand?
Look how I fill every space.
I displace all the oxygen in the room.
And now anyone who dares to gaze at me asphyxiates under my atomic weight.

I am not a noble gas (and I would never pretend to be).
What I mean to say is that I am not a victim.

I am gaseous as mist evaporating in the new day.
Gaseous as the moon pulling itself out of the water during sunrise.
Unspoken and unobservable
I shift as soon as I am seen.
Look I am governed by the laws of nature
Invulnerable to the gaze
I shift as soon as I am seen.

A Litany of Years and Moments When Each Felt Like a Lifetime

1994

The year I was (         )
2 months premature
Very much ahead of my time
Thrown into a box labeled with the words
Intense | Care \ Unity
My mother and (        )  fearful of my swelling (     )
My mother chained to the (       )  by the phantom of her (        ) cord
My (       )  spiriting away into the dusty mouth of the narcotic's night
Would not be the first time he chose (        )  over his son's labored breath

2003

Two boys and a (       ) dark with premonition
He pulls back a comforter with no regard for Care
And we are then embraced in forced Unity
A (       )  blast of Intense pain rips through my (        )
Were you (         ) my adolescence or turning over a black stone?

2007
Three black bodies languid in the ghetto (    )
Two in one bedroom
One in another
One man, one woman, one child
But no triangle of love
No (       ) to give rise to Unity
Rather an Intense anger of (       ) infidelity
A rigorous rupture in the Contract of Care 
That drives two bodies into the living room
One man + one woman
The math of their insurgent emotion (         ) a hole in the wall
One child forced to become a (        ) in the gaping wound of the night


2012 - 2014

(        )

2015 - 2016

If I am to heal
Let it be in the molten heat
Of my own mouth
Let me kiss my own bruises
To cauterize my (      )
To suffer (       )
Is to render all Contracts of Care
Null and Void
Unity then being an Intense (        )
To incorporate
Blades of grass bend around my (       ) to brace me for the path forward
Look! See how I limp with the injury of memory?
Southern winds fill my lungs
So that every breath from my mouth might whisper (       )
Enter! That all your healing be a (     ) on a summer's day
Laughter fills my diaphragm
I lift into the air
Black boy, become kite
Drifting towards The Gate of (     )

Damage the Temple

The body is a temple

When you damage the body
You damage the temple

When you damage the temple
You incur the Lord's wrath

When you incur the Lord's wrath
He leaves voicemails on my phone

He leaves voicemails on my phone
And they all say the same thing:

"You should call sometime. I haven't heard from you in a while."

The body is a temple
The body is estranged from the idols of worship

The temple estranged
The body an exhalation from the Lord

When breath leaves the Lord's body
A mountain is moved and a sea is turned

None of this is miraculous
It is just the way the world works

Damage the body
Damage the temple
Wrath is a mountain moved into the mouth of the sea

The mouth of the sea is the tears of the God is the belly of your mother

When the Lord's wrath is incurred
The belly of your mother exhales

Lo-Fi Labor

Find me in my real life
Hardworking and laborious
With a loosening knee
And a tightening mind

If I told you I"d been working since I was 12
Would you believe me?
If I worked myself to death
Would you call it noble?
Stick a Benjamin in my mouth and call it a flower.
Hope it pays for my Uber across the river Styx?

Thought if I did my life right it would all make sense
But now im slugging through 60 hour work weeks for dollars and cents
My mind is unraveling
My loose knee is throbbing and im swirling and recessed
The void in me twirling and depressed

Words can't be flowers when you're working past the 9-5
And the 9-5 becomes the 6-3
But I know you'll stick a dollar bill in my mouth when you bury me

Haunted by the ghosts of all the time I've killed
Trying to stuff the hungry maw of a bank account
Listening to lo-fi hip hop in my down time
Hoping I can unwind in time
Before I clock back in for my next shift

Neckbones

I

My grandmother washes neckbones
Under warm, running water
She handles them gently
As if she understands
The trauma of slaughter
How it pulls you out of your bed
And into someone else's kitchen
Onto someone else's cutting board

She handles them gently
As if to apologize for their first life
And prepare them for their second


I'm feeling bored and helpful
I hover about the kitchen
Ready to be commanded
But she waves me off

"This is women's work"

I watch her fingers
As she pulls apart blood, cartilage, and fat
To prepare the meat for the final rinse before the salt
The blood runs down her hands
A bright red, on tender brown

II

Where did our blood and our skin come from?
From which canal of history did our family flow?
How many of us passed through the Atlantic?
What bridges did we cross?
Who did we leave behind and who did we take in?

I don't know where our black skin began
But I do know that everyone I see wearing it
Feels like a magnet trying to pull a compass towards true north
Our fields are disrupted and we're all going haywire
Culture is diaspora
Our history is dislocated
Whose job is it to pull us all back together again?

III

My grandmother finishes salting the meat
She tosses it in a large pot with onions and garlic
She sets the stove to medium-high
The water begins to writhe with heat
She sets the stove to medium-low
The water simmers, denied its struggle

"Grandma, where did we come from?"

She writhes and simmers
Tells me not to worry about it

"We're black. Black is all we ever were and it's all we'll ever be. We're just like
any other nigger family in Athens, Georgia.

Her field exudes
My compass spins

Who taught us how to do this to each other?

In the pot, on the stove
The neckbones soften
In anticipation
Of their second life

Food Journal #1

Morning:

One pack of Trader Joe's trail mix (210 calories)
One bottle of water (0 calories)
One cup of coffee (0 calories if I can manage not to spoon suger into it)

Afternoon:

Breathe in, a hill
Breathe out, a valley
Breathe in, a hill
Breathe out, a valley

Can I be both?
A hill and a valley?
A peak and its base?
A hunger and the will that fights it?

Night:

A stir fry consisting of the following ingredients

Carrots: (0g fat, 7 carb, 28 calories)

Mushrooms: (0.3g fat, 3.1g carbs, 21 calories)

Bell peppers: (0.2g fat, 6g carbs, 24 calories)

Brocolli: (0.6g fat, 6g carbs, 33 calories)

I stopped eating rice a long time ago.

Fasting

My bony finger points to a popcorn ceiling
With the tip of my fingernail
I trace the meter of the white stucco's pattern
I measure the hills and valleys of its texture
Each hill, stressed
Each valley, unstressed

The alternation between high and low
Suggests elasticity
But I know this ceiling is as fixed to this house
As the sky is held firm by the sun's gilded rays of light

The body on the other hand
Stressess and compresses like nobody's business
I breathe in, drink a glass of water -- my stomach, a hill
I breathe out, I breathe out -- my stomach, a valley

Am I made out of air or water?
Can I be both?

Am I hunger or am I the will that fights it?
(Can I be both?)

My stomach swells with hunger
I clench my fist
drink some water, drink some coffee

This is religious whether I want it to be or not