Confederate Comparison (Elegy for Three)

We are gathered here today
To reflect on the cognitive dissonance
that allowed a flag the benefit of
the doubt not afforded to black lives
The benefit of being judged for the
content of its character and not
the color of its fabric.

Its permutation of red, white, and blue
Is a gross misrepresentation of the subdued
heritage stitched into its cloth.
A legacy of Negro men and women
whose black skin baked like Confederate clay
in the Georgia heat as they picked the cotton
That financed the Southern pride that
That flag clings to.

See what we have here
Is an example of a history
That has been weaponized
A stretching of the truth
A narrative that has been bent
Into a convenient badge of honor
To the deny the horror of its origin.

I can assure you
That the last exhalation of breath
That carried Eric Garner
From this world to the next
Drifted into the wind
That allows that flag to fly
So freely over your
state capitols, your churches,
And in the back of pickup trucks
Like a tacky souvenir
That you should have never
Bought in the first place.

I can assure you
That while Freddie Gray's spine
Was severed from his body
That flag was standing tall and proud
Supported by the stubborn rhetoric
That the war was about the states' right to choose.
How convenient then that that same bullshit rhetoric
Forgets or ignores what the states were choosing
in the first place.
The right to dehumanize and an enslave
An entire race of people.

But I guess
When your skin is the same color
As the skin that baked in that Georgia heat
The same color as the skin whose fingers picked
that cotton.
You are not allowed the luxury of forgetting
or the privilege of ignoring.
Not allowed the benefit of the doubt
to be judged by the content of your character.

Microdream // Marriage

Over the horizon we watch them marching
The white they wear co-mingling into a flaxen flood
Surging off into a sea of progress and equality
Lily petals and dove feathers dance with a frenetic grace
Around their bodies like cosmic confetti

In the distance we stand on the fringe
Arms linked not in matrimony
But in morbid curiosity
Bonded by a different love

Hoping that this ceremony heralds a beginning
And that their love will not be the end of us.

Microdream // Egg

A skilled chef expertly cracks an egg with one hand
With the same hand, he opens the egg
And spills the protean yolk
Onto the sizzling pan

How convenient it would be
To be able to crack, split, and spill
An egg deftly with one hand

So I try

My underdog effort fills in as an ersatz substitute
For the expertise of a trained chef
I crack the egg but as I try to split it open
Shards of ivory shell crunch into my fingernails
And the viscous yellow drips along my sable fingers

This is not the protein I meant to spill on my hand today
Funny how yesterday
I dreaded the birth of this day
As if it were a dark black tongue dripping heavy like tar
Into the back of my throat

Yet today
The only thing I have to worry about
Is this egg I tried to break
For this loser's breakfast

Microdream : Sink

The metal faucet
Drapes over the moonface
Of the white porcelain
Flowing a splash of water
That will need to be scraped off later

It disheartens me to think
That when I heard the word sink
I imagined going to the bathroom
And seeing what needed to be fixed
Yet when you heard the word
It was a feeling lodged deep
In the prison of your chest

The Echoes of Your Leaving

 (For Clay Seymour)

The echoes of your leaving
Bounce off the vaulted walls
of this room.

Shimmering the air
and the atoms between
in existential crescendo.

Like the soundtrack
Of the movies
You told me
We would make
To resound the voice
Of a generation
Even as your voice
Fell in timbre
And turned to sigh

(I remember the first time you introduced me
to your roommates. You told them, while we
sipped whiskey with coffee beans, that I was a lot
like you, but with a resilience of which you
were dispossessed.)

It gets better (right?)

I imagine this thought echoing
Through the spirals of your brain
Mobilizing the grey matter
To perform this darker act.

As the cord tightens
As the pills take hold
As the bullet plants the gift
At the crucible of your consciousness

Your soul ascends
To light's apex
And you are gone
And I am here
Haunted and wondering.

(If you could not make it? How on earth can I?)

Chrysler Dodge Neon

Riding in your car
Our yelling drowns the music
And you raise your hand
Like you do when your angry

Genocide in the Senate

There was a genocide in the Senate

And although no one wants to admit it

It goes by many names

SB 458, ICE, nativism, xenophobia

Many people think you need Germs, Guns, and Gold

For there to be genocide

But genocide can be the hand that steals the pen

From someone who wants to learn how to write

Or the burning of a book in front of someone

Who wishes they could read

Genocide is banning someone from a university because they were born

On the wrong side of a border

As if there was some natural order

That draws the line

Of human rights

At asinine geographic sights

And it disgusts me that we have yet to shake the yoke

Of the manifest destiny encouraged by James K. Polk

So we are stuck in this mentality of give and take

Give them hell and take their heaven as they tremble in our wake

I don’t think it’s such a big deal

That the red, white, and blue

Can be the rojo, blanco, y azul too

This is a war of conflicting interests and cultural suicide

Where pride and dollar signs shine brighter

Than the hopeful eyes

Of first generation undocumented students grasping in the dark

For acceptance and equality

But the gleam of self-destructive bigotry

Steals the light and leaves darkness

Where once was flame

Breaking down onto long, weary knees

And shuddering sighs because that’s the only way dreams

Can die

Not with a bang, but with a desperate cry

Of Dios why?

And the desperate howl

Of What now?

And

Who gave who the right to take mine away?

Is there ever going to be a day

When the same political blowhards that cry parasite

Will realize that the New World was founded

On the parasitic usurpation of murderers

Like Hernan Cortes and Franco Pizarro

And Christopher Columbus 

And With every bill they pass

That prioritizes humanitarian values last

They continue to walk the footsteps

Drenched in blood

Upholding a sordid tradition of disenfranchisement.

Where is the red, white, and blue in this?

Where is the poetry in this?

The world is growing restless America

And your creed is becoming nothing more

Than heedless words.

There is no affirmation of life found within the parchments

Of your Constitution.

There is only evidence of death

This is genocide.

This. Is genocide!

THIS. IS. GENOCIDE!