Civilization

I stand among fading columns

And a crumbling amphitheater

Spectator to the specters of

A time gone by so quickly

It feels like lifetimes ago

Passerbys with inquiring minds

Stop by and wonder

What was this for?

What did they do here?

Who built this monument?

It's such shoddy craftmanship.

How could they think this would ever

stand the test of time?

I am the only one left

With the answers to their questions

With the knowledge to unlock

ancient secrets.

With clenched fist

And heavy heart

I tell them:

This is where we fucked!

This is where we bathed together!

This is where we made promise, after promise,

after promise, after promise, on the premise

that we could love each other in the ways that we needed.

This is where our love fell down!

Where it crumbled to the floor.

Because it was built on the lie

that you could love me the way I needed

And that I could trust you to do so.

Now the history of our civilization

Sits squarely on my shoulders

Gestates in the squirming chasm

Of my gut

And for the first time

I wish I didn't have

The heart of a poet

The heart of someone who can

Spin beauty from horror

There is no beauty in this

I would rather the heart

Of an archaeologist

Or an historian

Someone who can look upon the past

And not be sad that it's over

But glad that it happened.

Microdream // Grey

A black man asks me for money
So he can buy a fish sandwich from Captain D's
With a practiced tone I respond

"I'm sorry dude, but I have no cash on me."

In spite of his hunger
Or because of it
He lashes out
To provide a criticism
Often heard
And never forgotten

"You sound just like one of those white boys."

He walks off
As my beautiful, ugly body
Wilts in the dusky, summer heat
Torn between this world of black and white
With a voice white as snow
And skin as black as ash
I walk back to the bars
Down the grey, forgotten corridor
Between identity and isolation

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?)