Microculture: Run

The best part
About going for a run
Is that moment when you finish
And you walk so you can cooldown
And you're listening to Mogwai, or Television, or Patti Smith
And you can see the pinkness of the sky
Bruise into purple before going black
Like the closing of a cosmic eye
And no one is fucking with you
And you think about what
You are going to eat when you get home
After you get out of the shower
And you think about six months ago
When he left you
To go cradle someone else
In his arms
And you think about how then
That was all you needed
But then you snap back to reality
And realize that everything you needed
Is cradled in the vault of the sky
Cradled in the arc of your headphones
Cradles in your slowing stride
As you walk to a place
You know you belong

This Black Body Pt. 3

"For this is your home, my friend, do not be driven from it; great men have done great things here, and will again, and we can make America what America must become.  It will be hard, James, but you come from sturdy, peasant stock, men who picked cotton and dammed rivers and built railroads, and in the teeth of the most terrifying odds, achieved and unassailable and monumental dignity.  You come from a long line of poets, some of the greatest poets since Homer.  One of them said, The very time I thought I was lost, My dungeon shook and my chains fell off." -- James Baldwin, My Dungeon Shook


There are times when this body feels like a curse
Like a funeral shroud draped in shadow
Over bones bleached with the fear of being laid to rest too soon.
A doom inherited and passed down from generation to generation.
Gifted to us from a colonial dream.
As migrant ships cut black bodies off from the blood of their tribes.
No Yoruba, Kikuyu, or Ashanti to sustain them.
No Ogun, Mulungu, or Asase to shape their dreams with myth or origin.
Cut off from the source, love amputated from their veins
Chained by the weight of a history frozen in time
A static block sticking them in the back someone else's words
Sticking them so far in the back of someone else's history
Giving way to a tradition of men unable to love their sons
Taught not to love their sons
Lessons learned on trading ships and auction blocks
A cycle of diaspora passed down to a son by his father

Who inherited it from his father
Who inherited it from his father
Who inherited it from his father
Who inherited it from a colonist
Who inherited it from an auctioneer
Who inherited it from a ship captain
Who inherited it from a king

That constructed an economy
To mint my bones into currency
And weave my skin into a curse
This is how the black body is commodified
Itemized and systemized
To become a machine of labor
Designed to build a country and bear its history

But I am no machine
I am a black body that lives and breathes
Sparked by a flame that resides in my soul
To thaw myself out of this frozen history
And dispel the curse that has stuck me in time

Here I stand
With my two black hands
Raised up in personal rebellion
To swear an oath
To deconstruct my past
And shape my own future

traitorcure

When he told me he was leaving me for her
I became a puddle on the floor
I cried for weeks
Didn't eat for longer
Abstained from drugs and sex.

When I could eat again
I made sure it was only food that I could pull out of the ground
With my own two hands
As if trying to uproot a path
Back to The Source.

Life became a trickle
I inched forward, sluggish in time
Fluid, slow, dripping, and liquid
Like cough syrup
I wasn't sure where I was going
I just know that I wanted to be well.

Well.

There is a version of this story I like better.

In this version
I saw all the signs without being told
I just didn't say anything because
When you love someone
You want to give them the chance
To tell the truth
And when he told me
I packed my bags
Shed no tears
Wished him a good, good life
Wished for her to keep her eyes wide, and her mouth open
Because the love he gives moves in circles of convenience.

But this is version not my story.

In my story.

I don't buy chorizo at the supermarket because it brings up too many memories of cooking dinner for him.
In this story, I keep three questions up my sleeve for future lovers:

1. Will you place the bomb of your sex inside of me?
2. Will you be too scared to touch me after?
3. Will you convince me that it is my fault?

In this version I am a chemist trying to cook up a cure for betrayal.
I wonder what it will taste like?

Coming home?
Or closing a door?

Microculture: Hookup

My body.
His body.
You can't make a house become a home.

angerprayer

Dear God,

I come to you a humble queer
Who doesn't visit your house too often
I come to you as Lilith's blood and Adam's clay
Holding a prayer for protection
Between my folded hands
I come to you afraid

I am scared because
There are people who know you well
Liberated by your love
That want to bind people like me in law
They imprison my skin in paper
They pollute my blood with ink

They speak in two tongues
Shifting their words in doublespeak
We are (not) here to punish you
We are here to protect our beliefs
But when it comes time to pay the price
They never offer up their own tithes
They gather their money
From the pockets of our lives

What does their protection look like for me?
How does their protection play out in my community?

I still fall in love with men who are scared to touch me
With men who replace romance with repentance
I am not blood and body when they look at me
I am sermon and hellfire
I am the cold condemnation of a pew on Wednesday night and Sunday morning
I am goat and serpent
I am an empty vessel hollowed out for vicarious atonement

They demonize me for fucking
When honestly
Most of the time
I'm just working up the nerve
To hold a lover's hand
In front of a public
Who celebrates me
Only
When I feel sad and gay enough
To write a poem about it

They don't treat me like a person
They treat me like a lesson
And they pay for their tuition
From the pockets of my life

Dear God,
I didn't bring you offering
I didn't bring you tithes
I come to you angry as hell
With a question tucked within my clenched fists.
Who needs protection from who?
Who needs protection from who?

Amen,
Amen,
Amen.

motherson

We are before and after

On the mirror edge

Of time and space

Of gene and code

And chromosome

We a closed loop

A dragon swallowing

His own tail

A story told

Over and oral

Spiraling

Inside of time

Outside of control

A glitch in the message

Forms a bubble of half-truths

To burst from our vague belief

I am not the son or daughter you wanted

But I am the son or daughter you got

Bred into a lesson to be learned

Raised into a mistake not to be repeated

As I watched you love

So I learned the lesson

As I watched you break

So I learned to piece myself together again

The first time a man broke my heart you told me:

“Your capacity to forgive is far stronger

Than any harm a man could cause you.”

A bubbling half-truth

Mom.

You forgot to tell me that I didn't need to go around

trying to prove that to myself.

But I think you forgot to tell yourself the same thing.

I have never had a man

Stand over me with a knife

In his hand yelling about

How he won't be played

Like a small child

While he throws

A temper tantrum

Like a small child

How you told me

At the core

Of every small child

Is someone who needs to be held

You were never around to hold me

Like Madonna held her child

You just checked in on me

Every now and again

To give me advice

Even as I try to move further from your way of life

I am pulled back closer to you

Like Eve to Adam's rib

We are bound

By genetic purpose

To achieve the same fate

Spiraling into control.

But I am hoping

Through glitch and half-truth

To break the system

Undo our programming

Because further along in the origin

Someone convinced us

That the only thing worth living for in this life

Was the struggle of being loved

I am tired of struggling.

Break my rib. Cough up blood. Gasp for air.

You gave birth to me.

But I will teach you how

To be born

Again.

warlove

When love became a war
Our beds became a battleground
What landmines will I find
In the folds of your sheet
Tonight
Under cover of my endless
Lavender night
I turn my face away
From the pale moonlight
So my face can't betray
My intelligence
While we negotiate
Our treaties
Under cover of bad faith

We construct our contracts
In a language
Inspired not
By the Spirit
Of consolidation
But out of fear
Of being deserted
By our allies

When love became a war
There was no communication
Just espionage
There was strategic truth-telling
Strategic omissions of crucial
Information
Neglecting to tell
Each other what we know
Of our tactical formations
What general assumptions we
Had laid out based on the
Kernels of information
Our scouts had gathered
Under cover of a lavender night
Now the ghosts of our allies
Whisper the truths
We neglected to tell
Like the smell of lavender
Burning softly in the night

When love became a war
We rationed our affections
Treated love like
An exhaustible resource
When we really we
Were the only ones
Who were exhausted
When we took a sip
Of the love we knew
It did not taste
Like water in our mouths
It tasted like wondering
Where we could find
The next oasis
Wandering aimlessly
In the desert ruins
Of a civilization
That a spoke a language
That we used to know

When love became a war
There was no healing
There was just triage
Tying tourniquets
Around old and open wounds
No resolution
Just a sense of urgency
When we needed
Open heart surgery
To show us how
To beat inside
A rib cage softly
Our priority system
was red, yellow, green

Red:
Alleviate this urgency.
Please don't fail me

Yellow:
Take your time
Come back to me
When you have some to spare

Green:
I have to move on
There is nothing here
All patients can't be
Saved.