Tuesday, July 24, 2018

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 (     )