11/30 Dream Reload

11/30

Dream Reload

In the dream

bed affixed to floor

I float above a river

mixed emotions

too many tears to count

she never looked for me

lost me on purpose

a trembling lip

of a lie

then a wave comes

pushes past

no more floating

now the falling begins

a slick steady thing

velocity and hallelujah hands

eyes wide open

seeing nothing

10/30 Double Tap

Double Tap

(written while channeling Lee Child’s Jack Reacher Series)

It was never perfect

or quiet as a library

or loud like a bomb blast

and it could never have been mistaken

for a cool breeze,

that’s for damn sure.

The way they stood there

that look in their eyes

focused on a future

they could see so clearly

if they squinted

a ninety degree angle

just right

nothing obtuse about it

at all,

better believe that.

They were acutely aware

intensely, severe and shrewd

experienced implications

and the feelings they feel justified

to have this  complete finality.

This was no love triangle

but a direct flight

a destination only they knew

and not just locals in the area

no,

they were going far with this

like world travel and cruise ships

floating away in a desire that

could never be called listless

but full of everything

including the rain

and all that lightning

and they just sit there

a house looking smug.

Which is to say it was not lacking energy

they didn’t sit in the traditional ways

and maybe set is better

as in the way a cake sets

a specified state,

meaning it was full of enthusiasm

a weather system

they controlled

and the only warming rests

under their skin

embraced in each others steam

which is different than smoke

in that way that it doesn’t burn your eyes

thick and beautiful

just like the first time

serenity in waves

and they drown inside of each other

the perfect

quiet

bomb blast

they set out to be

the shape of something real,

and that’s for damn sure.

9/30 Strike

(Some of my 30/30 are poems written years ago finally reworked or edited. This is one of those.)

Strike

Wedged against a boulder scraping at flesh and bone.

The pain of getting to know what comes next,

what that look in your eyes actually means,

and what part of that definition will be left with the wreckage.

Wearing silence a halo pierced through with desire with hope.

Little running motions up my spine. Blood filtered through

the promise of forgotten promises.

When our lips first met in that pure place. Wild dogs bayed

at an unseen moon. Our teeth clashed and bit the way we

reached inside of each other. A forgone conclusion an eventual tumult.

We left our innocence wiped it away sweaty intentions.

Pride to proud to mention in that moment.

Clumsy and messy with all the moving parts and I knew I would not survive.

You held me too close, broke me, as if I were a fever.

8/30 Space

the world is not a safe space
never has been
           never will be

ask Afghanistan
ask the homeless
ask the countless missing women
no one is looking for

in thought it makes sense
it has no place in reality
no one person has the answers
so we are stuck in those places
where stuck things live
where memory fails
and history pretends it never happened

i remember a dream
that wasn't a dream
a brown body on a stage
a brown body in my arms
sobbing and confused
how their community
could turn it's back so loudly
shut their voice off
them shaking
my shirt soggy
nothing there was safe
not even the fabric

there was a time i made a statement
it was mine
i born it myself
believing because it was mine
it would hold me
then someone stuck their fingers into my story
made me all about them
said it was OK
said they were right
because even being my own bones
wasn't safe for me
or them
so they drag their neanderthal thoughts
blamed me for their privilege
they felt safe in their convictions until the next time
when they make some other vagina their own

i suppose you could wrap it
surround it with something impenetrable
bomb proof it
bullet proof it
take it away from those who harm
if we all decide who that is
but it has to be the same who
cover it in plastic
make it safe
no longer a problem for anyone
or anything
because everything is safe
when it is dead

7/30 Variations

in the first dream 

i wake naked           wonder the house 

i do not recognize 

i think i know what this means           but not yet 

in each room i find some forgotten thing 

or some lost item of clothing 

or some part of me I've neglected 

on the stairs there are a pair of shoes 

i have never been before 

they accuse me of running off at the mouth 

of counting things i do not own 

they sit there in their shiny blues 

                a sad song 

                i do not know the words to 

in the kitchen 

the ramshackle that is my heart 

leans a soggy mess on the counter 

every other beat it calls her name           in a whisper shout 

that 

i can not hear 

because my ears 

are no longer connected to my head         

                         and i think i know what this means 

                                                                   not yet 

the last room i care to search 

is not a room at all 

it is the hollow of a throat i loved 

it is my right arm atrophied 

missing the form of her gone body 

                   it is the waist deep in memory 

                   and missing all the points 

i have never lived here 

like i thought 

this house has forgotten the shape of me 

if i ever find my eyes 

maybe they will tell me something different 

echo myself back 

                          i think i know what this means

                                                              not yet

6/30 The Difference

The Difference

history is not always on your side

there are tools today not available

some long ago

the rules are no longer

the rules

back then

the peaceful opened arms wide

believing no harm would come

because they meant no harm

over and over again

at some point the peaceful

adapted their thinking

protection their mode of communication

modern day colonizers forget

the memories present in the colonized

because they have no recollection

they couldn’t

they have never been

on the receiving end

of loss of home

by force

being demonized for existing

in their own environments

so moving forward

the mentality of

things will be what I want them to be

is not based in real time thinking

these days the people

know they are being displaced

never trusted your tongue

or

presence in neighborhoods

they’ve inhabited

for decades

and you don’t understand

that you moved into their hoods

you want to claim neighbor

when you do not know them

or care

to

they who are reduced the to thug

because you never read hood life 101

left a laundry list of opportunities to take

the way you took from them

and this is not to condone

but explain

things don’t change because

you showed up

I know your privilege didn’t tell you this part

that yes the native folk will videotape

the crimes against you

the way the cops tape crimes

perpetrated on them

and nothing happens

and nothing will happen

as long as you believe yourself

to be above them

you continue to call them thugs

call the police when you

don’t like the loudness of their music

because it doesn’t have the same

rhythms of your leaf blower

if you want to live in the hood,

you better learn the language

understand that Leroy

been living on that corner

for a decade

and Miss Lillian knows everything

all the time

your presence

doesn’t change

their reality

it changes yours

and you better learn how to adapt

or just like you saw your opportunity and acted on it,

they will do the same

there are all kinds of takers

you no longer hold

the monopoly on that

and that is the difference

5/30 Logophobia

Logophobia

there have always been words

that say what need to be said

exposing to the light

that which loves the dark spaces

in our bodies

in our world

we collect these words

one behind the other

string them along

make them make sense

fill our mouths to the brim

with the texture of them

a collection of thought

figured out

and then

something changes

not the climate of course

we have been told this does not exist

along with all the other thing

we are told does not exist

by way of attaching prefixes

post-

anti-

pre-

a way of resurrecting fears

that never died in the first place

always there lingering in plain sight

we become other words

combinations that did not exist before

a new list of collective nouns

new words to describe

the systematic grooming of a group

to be referred to as one entity

be us person,

place  

thing

state of mind of being

in this new collective

we become a litany of nothing scientific

though fully recognizable

I mean,

just the other day

in what I thought

was a civilized conversation

my unwillingness to agree with false facts

turned me in their eyes

into a battlefield of belligerence

a cacophony of chaos

such a criticism of compromise

a concern of community

the more I refused to bend my tongue

to their will

I watched them become

a clutch of pearls

a bullet of bullies

a boast of orange

shrouded in an agony of shortsightedness

they issued a warrant of warnings

wrapped in an abortion of anger

who would fear a murder of crows

when surrounded by

a disassembly of democracy

a hazard of humanity

a choke of holds

4/30 Beam

Beam

she smiled at me

and I thought

what a nice smile

disarming in it slow reveal

a slide across teeth

beaming crookedly adorable

hand slapped on thigh

because

actually slapping yourself

in public

could be seen

as what it is not

and is at the same time

just a stinging reminder

that’s all

that  is all you want

in that moment

a reminder of how sliding

into a smile like that could     bite

like how good it might feel    all over

you have fallen into too many

the saliva stinging memories

you wish you never had

some you wish you had again

but you have no desire to time travel

to be somewhere you have already been

so you feel the sting

the slap

the tread carefully

you have a habit of running

chambers first

maybe this time

this time maybe

you want to go slow

recognize your own navigation

lead with something other than

what’s been broken a time too many

to count