Do you find it hard to live?
I mean to really live? Kick a spook in the stomach and commit to yourself and not be committed. Sit through another because I got it like that yoga class where a Coldplay soundtrack competes with the upbeat white chick reminding you to be present, to thank yourself for making it to your mat. Point to any place on the map and blow it up. Blow up spots. Why you gotta blow up spots? I loved Lebanon, never quite made it. I spit out the sudden ash with Don Cherry in Marrakech. I lifted one chiseled leg so high over my head Magic City had called and the ATL was ready to blow me up and I said, please. Do I do. What you do. Sing with me. Another shooter made it first and the ACLU was a petty bunch of pseudo-saviors but they blew up spots that one day. So many sad stories you start laughing at the wrong time and you thought yours was one ’til the time working at Ailey with the girl whose mom was killed by her very own daddy in front of the just-say-no rainbow she drew him in class. She wears heavy aquamarine eyeshadow and closes the gap between feeling and being. I’m glad you’re Dorothy Dandridge. Ban on that word, daddy. Banksy sees the zoo in you and cages hisself in bluer notes. I go wild and will, and will. Myth is a special kind of killer and I love her atonal smile. Without her we’d all go bye-bye, point to a place in the rap and make it a black hole, let it suck us in hug the cuckolded sucker emcees and let it hold us against our certain demolition. Without her you would find it hard to live. All the opiates would shrivel into sickle cell and all the blood running through the streets would keep on believing in bodies — what obsolete machines, the only ones worth saving. Thank yourself for making it for being present for the cold ache you sit with and rock into situations for the way you exploded in nuclear winter and thought you had dreamed it and made a new world bent as your denial reached forth to caress it all and it shocked your fingertips this is the bravest numbness
Source: Poetry (October 2017)