Cardigan in Raintime

You and Me
Walking in the rain
Taking refuge under
My blue cardigan
And I am
Proud for this
Momentary Victory I
Could protect Us
From the weather
But I couldn't
Protect us from
You and Me

Call and Response

In the tradition of

African-American gospel songs

There is a musical element

Known as call and response

Shout out and shout back

We shall overcome

A song that never ends

But only echoes

Louder and louder

Reverberating the call

Like a hymn within the vaulted walls

Of a church long burned down to the ground

The same ground watered by the blood

Of bodies deemed too black

To have ever known light

So we skirt over the issue

Until the uprising ensues

And we are screaming

Discordant and dismal

Over the sound of our

Common Humanity

Because when you water the ground with blood

The only thing that grows is blame

The only thing that grows is media coverage

That has hijacked our call

And engineered our response

The call: We shall overcome

The response: Black Lives Matter

Blue Lives Matter

All Lives Matter

As if we can give away meanings to lives

Like their gifts on one of Oprah's fucking talk shows

Your life gets to matter!

Your life gets to matter!

Your life gets to matter!

But no lives matter when we're

Beating each other black and blue

Missing the point

Missing the all-encompassing point

That we can't all be encompassed by

the politics of respectability

Because respectability says

If you just follow the law

You'll have nothing to worry about

If you just heed Jim Crow circling above your head

You won't have to worry about the noose circling around your neck

Have you ever seen a lynched body hanging from a tree

The way his legs sway and his mortality echoes

Such a heavy piece of strange fruit that the bow

Threatens to break

And how it doesn't

It just listens

Because it knows the sound of a lifeless body

Isn't a gospel song

The sound of a group of people

Telling you that they're being killed

Isn't a gospel song

There may be a call

But they don't need a response

Sometimes they just need you to shut up and listen.

Bed (No Longer a Battleground, But a Resting Place)

"They call it night.
They call it night.
And I know it well." -- Beirut, Gulag Orkestar

I am grinding down the bones of my hands into salt
I am spreading them around the frame of my bed
Watching them drift slowly
With the feathers of my pillow
In the light of the pale winter moon
Invoking angels and night-whisperers
To weave protection songs around the frame of
my bed and reinforce the lattices of my fragile hopes
To ward off the threats that pervade in the night hours
When it's so dark that even God
(or the suggestion of God)
must strain his eye to see
Me a pillar of salt at his bronze feet

Give me a sign
That the sky
Will not open up to swallow me hole
That tomorrow is not just a bridge
To another tomorrow that is not just
a bridge to another tomorrow that is
not just a bridge to another tomorrow.....

The marrow in my bones
Is rich with the anticipation
Of the ritual burn
Of the clairvoyant candle
Darting out like a serpentine tongue
of flame to lap up some ripple of the future
With me epicentral to this extrasensory event
Shaking anxious and aware like a conscientious earthquake
Regretting its own aftershock

Give me a sign
That the Earth is not a jealous lover
Waiting to take me back under
And turn my bones into fountain fodder
So I can enjoy this affair with life
For what it is, as long as possible
With no specter perched on my shoulder
Whispering doom disguised as pessimist's truth
So that every victory feels like someone let me win

I am grinding down my bones into salt
My feather pillows into angel appeal
For a breath of fresh air
And a hope that is fragile and enduring.

Dual Heart

May your feet march to the war cry of your impending victory
Ambition thrust up like trees lancing through the sky
Like arboreal spears planted into the ground
As seeds were they, so you are too
For as they try to bury you
You grow and thrive, not to be denied

The red, ravaged heart
Beats for peace, beats for healing
Sanguine and hopeful

My mother once told me
That you will meet many a man
Who thinks himself Colossus
Who will want to tower over you like you are Rhodes
But you are not
You are Olympus, and gods dwell indelibly in you

As all stones wither
So Colossus will crumble
He must yield to time

We all yield to:

Time   and space
       and
Light  and darkness
       and
summer and  winter

We all yield to the oppositional forces
That reflect the all-encompassing duality of our nature
To remind us that we, in our imperfect nature, know nothing of love and hate
Yet designate our places on these spectrums as either good or evil

Playing angels' advocate even when angels look down on us with pointed toes
asking: "what are their hearts?"
Playing devils' advocate even when devils sneer up to us with pointed tails
asking: "what are their hearts?"

What are their hearts that their souls shrink
In the presence of information that can expand their minds?

Who, in the span of their short lifetimes, imagine they can understand
what it means to deserve to go to Heaven
And stand in the presence of those iridescent gates
To join that sanctimonious fan club

Who, in the span of their short lifetimes, imagine they can understand
what it means to deserve not to go to Hell
And stand pitiful over that pit of incandescent flame
To join that iconoclastic fan club

Angels flap their wings
Devils whet and hone their forks
We stand inbetween
Knowing nothing of either
We imagine all.

A Mundane Pride (Clarification of Terms)

You woke up this morning
And even though your body
Felt like it had suffered a small death
In the dark, sleeping hours
You got out of bed.*

*(Bed: A location to sleep or relax. A resting place that is no longer a resting place, but a battle ground. No truce or treaty tethers the ghosts that pace around the perimeter of its frame. Just the suggestion of a threat straining for closure and resolution to a too-long siege on memory.)

You took a shower
And even though the pounding water
Echoed panic, panic, panic
Can't you see the world is flooding*
Go back to bed
You stepped out, shook yourself dry
And were clean.

*(Flooding: Present participle of flood where present particles of water surge in a seeking wave. A wave searching for the presence of landmines left behind as reminders that your land will never be mine and my land will never be yours. No common ground. No soil to foster a peace.)

You got dressed
And even though your reading hands
Said there was too much here
Or too little here
Or this stretch of skin just won't do*
You put your clothes on with
A mundane pride.

*(Do: Past tense: Do not give in. Present tense: Do not give out. Future tense: Do not give up)


You made breakfast
And even though your appetite
Felt like a loss of control*
You ate.
You felt your food hit the bottom of your stomach
And took comfort in the solid sound of the reverberation.
You are not the dark center of the universe
You think you are.

(Control: Synonym: Denial)

You went to work
And even though
The frantic sound of typing fingers
Sounded like the lurid language
Of frenzied dragonflies whose
Vocabulary consisted only of the words
Not good enough*
You made it through.
You were good enough.
Even if it was just for today.

*(Not good enough - direct translation: Giving up all hope for a better future)

You went home.
Undeservingly exhausted
You crawled back into bed
Pulled the covers over your head
Made no promises for tomorrow.
You measure your lifetime in days now
And there are still hours* left in this one.
There are still minutes left in this one.
There are still seconds left in this one.
And every tick of the clock is a step forward
On the lifelong road to recovery.*


*(Hour: How I measure the moments when your stretch of presence doesn't stalk my memory)
*(Recovery: A mundane pride in re-establishing a routine to increase the amount of hours that I feel good enough; in redefining control; in doing more than saying; in not becoming overwhelmed by the flood; in brokering a ceasefire with the ghosts in my bed -- ending the too-long siege on memory)

This Black Body Pt. II

Black body an assumption
Black body an expectation
Black body a projection
Black body in the media
Black body violent
Black body a problem before it walks through
the door.

80% of black bodies graduate high school.
Record breaking
Still can't break stereotypes.

Black body collateral.
Black body disturbed the peace.
Black body gunned down in the street.
Black body a weapon.
Black body brokers peace treaty with blood.
Black body scapegoat sacrificed on the altar of racial pedagogy.

One black body killed every 28 hours
by people sworn to protect all bodies.

Black body unknown.
Black body featureless.
Black body homogeneous.
Black body blasphemous.
Black body never nuanced.
Black body seen in its entirety in one glance.
Black body doesn't measure up to Eurocentric standards of beauty.
Black body feels worthless.

Unnoticed black bodies develop eating disorders.
Black body can never starve itself of its color.

Black body alone.
Black body afraid.
Black body looking, looking.
Black body never found.
Black body lost.
Black body drowning in pools of shadow.

Black body absorber of light
Solar panel - Unpredictable, inconsistent, an unstable energy source at best
Black body absorber of light
Black hole - Collapsing, unescapable, kept at a cosmic distance
Black body absorber of light
Weeded out - Photosynthetic, artificial, fibrous, invasive species.

Black body blood-borne.
Black body tainted.
Black body carrier of biracial bug.
Black body transmits shame.
Black body inherits blame.
Black body a legacy of chains.

This black body trying to break free.
This black body a destroyer.
This black body trying to destroy assumptions.
This black body trying to defy expectations.
This black body trying to demystify projections.

This black body is trying.
This black body is trying.

3 Ways to Use School as a Coping Mechanism (draft)

1. Establish a routine
   Get back into the swing of things
   Wake up Brush your teeth Take a shower Skip breakfast
   Get in your car
   Drive to campus
   Go to class
   Go to class
   GO TO CLASS
   Be late to class and hope your professor
   is only looking at you weird because
   you are late and not because
   she can smell the scent of
   undeserved tragedy wafting from you
   like a failed attempt at aromatherapy.

2. Read your textbooks out loud
   Practice drowning out the lo-fi
   Buzz of your self-deprecating self-talk
   By reading in a clear, even tone even
   While panic is pressing against the back
   Of your throat like a detonator
   Take pride in the fact that you can read
   About survivors of abuse and trauma
   As clinically as a doctor reading an MRI
   And preparing to relay a terminal prognosis of disease.

3. Go to lunch with your friends.
   Even if you're not actually going to eat lunch.
   Even if they're not actually friends.
   Even if they're just long-term acquaintances you've met
   From having so many classes with them
   Go to lunch.
   Listen to the things they talk about.
   Pay attention to the way they eat their food.
   Think about how there are seven billion people in the world
   All eating differently
   Talking differently
   Having lunch
   And realize how ridiculous it is for you to rationalize qualitatively
   That one person is greater than seven billion.