I Saw I Dreamt Two Men

I saw I dreamt

Two men hoisted hung up not American the rope

Not closed on their breathing

But this rope tied them spine to spine somehow

Suspended

From the mood of a tree not American they were

African Ugandan Nigerian

Without a license a right to touch

The sin their touching incites

And I heard their names called out Revision

Or Die and You Must Repent

And Forget the Lie you Lily-Boys you Faggots

Called up from the mob

Of their mothers their fathers

With Christ in the blood who had Christ in the blood

Who sung out “Abide with Me”

This was my eyes’ closed-eyed vision

This is what a darkness makes

And how did I move from that distance to intimacy

So close I could see

The four soles of their feet so close I was kneeled

Could lick

Those feet as if I was because I became

The fire who abided

I saw that I dreamt

Their black skin made blacker by my feeding

I thought Christ

Why did I think

Their black skin tipped blacker by this American

Feeding but just one shot up

A cry African it was

American O Lord abide with me

It was human lusty flat

You had to be in the hollow of it to taste it

You had to see how in such lack

Invention takes hold

They say some dreams come in the moment

Of waking

Stitched because daylight likes a story

That some dreams are extensions

Of an itch

Thief-walking the coral of the brain

I say

But I did feel that one blue mouth blow out

As I felt

The mood of that tree

As I saw the other turn away apart stay with silence

I stayed with southern silence