FLEX

Hear me

Neglect turned everything to gold

Midas touch     I turn the comfortable

To the dead     an anti-elegy tho     I’m

Learning not to mourn what I make

It’s a complex     this gravity I birth unknowing

Not my complex     yours     say it

I am owned by several things     all of  them

Inherited from a horizon claimed before

I was languaged     Invoke the historical

Somethingsomethingsomething Chains

Somethingsomethingsomething Unworthy

I’m citizen of a clumsy imperative

Belonging     is a concern of a self   I deaded

Past participle implies the historical is a mob

Try again     I mobbed my own lonely and was legion

Play some offense then     Gold the impossible wound

Citizen of  betrayal     Citizen of the going going going —

Recursion     this fugitive state as native to me as my father’s

Eyes     chestnut of a tree felled before we were languaged

See   Inheritance is a hell of a drug     We Black and highly valued

For our Flex     I said what I said     and became citizen

Of  this petty excuse for forever     Flex on ’em then

Invocation of the bicep I have and the bicep throttling me

I live here now     Mississippi     and everywhere is everywhere

That someone may have escaped from     Fugitive

A sad motivation for river     It’s a strange thing

That belief you are beautiful be a subversion of the water

But here I am     winter gasping at the conditions

Too weak to even strangle the grass to soil     No instead

Trees feathered with their hollowed offspring

Here the wind don’t howl just blooms a militia

Of castanets     seven people were lynched here

I looked it up and nobody will tell me which tree

You are not as tired of the image as I am of uncertainty

Every day the rain threatens     Every day my same imperious lonely

Hear me     the sun ran like a punk     the sun ran like it owed

Not even the gold     is trustworthy     why gold?

Because it was the color of my love     and by extension

The life I buried here     Gold the genesis of one lonely

My ancestors were traded mere miles from here     Gold the genesis

Of  another     I know they are not the same in anything but geography

Still it is an act of   Flex just to stand anywhere     gravity being what it is

Attempt the volta toward impossible     Midas the lonely into a radif

Dreams of living life like a gilded garrote

                                                                                     Flex

The crown of scar tissue still the crown

                                                                                     Flex

Go to therapy if  you scared

                                                                                     Flex

Shuck the fear out of  the opposition

                                                                                     Flex

Every day gold for the sake of your attention

                                                                                     Flex

Your hereness a mountain plumed with trees

Branches hemmed like unplayed notes

A history can be undone with less than an alphabet

Amend the scandal of the time that brought you here

Fled to Flex     Ex. My family fled from Mississippi

My family Flexed from Mississippi     and you become

The muscle driving you forward     See     you were ugly

Once     because you believed it     Dire invocation

I am some kind of unkillable and don’t know how to act

Everything I said I couldn’t live without

                                                                                     Gone

Lucky me     to be born into a language of mistakes

I leave the violent on Seen and watch them wither

Turns out I was their gravity     their forgetful sovereign

I Flex     they flinch     the sonics of the words     cousins

By virtue of a pistol     This is how I was taught to bridle

Sadness like an American     Run with a band of  kids

With silver caps     so you know we bad     waiting for the bone

Eviction     Flex like value native to your mouth     Tooth out

A tiny moon     a second grin shimmering in your palm     Flex

The loss     the cost is secondary   Hear me     a life I had ended

While I was trying to pursue the life I wanted     by pursuing

A loss cobwebbed as a bride     All of this true the calcium winnowing

Under the gold     I widowed my own comfort     I am in danger

My squad an echo     my squad a promise you get dead someday

If you touch me     thus I’m untouched     Neglect killed the grass

The dead turn to gold before they resurrect     I am framed

By a pastoral I might have escaped once     O the history

O the lineage     the renowned Flex of survivors     I’m here

I’m back     muscled like a creek          or the whisper

That threads a storm miles later     Maybe not     Stick to the facts

I’m alive despite a growing and planetary grief     I wear a chain

Somedays     and a sweatshirt that translates to     I Am Coming

Back For What Is Mine     Gaudy surprise on the faces of children

Of owners     They think I am impossible     They think I am a ghost

I Medusa like my daddy taught me     their eyes wilt and are

Ill-tended grapes consumed by the skull     I’m metaphoring

I told you     I don’t know how to act     but I know how to anthem

My lyric loose and I got time today     I’m the type of  bad

No synonym alive can hold