home simply

i’ve fallen back in love
with fitted sheets and
coffee tables
they give way to the best conversations
between me and i
she and i
we and the sky
just on the other side
of one wall or another

they seem to keep their word
better than most things
and we are at least surprised
when they falter
like they said
they wood

undercover
in my little room
the world is so big
the fantastic figures
find their footing on
transparent platforms
hovering over the middle of undulating oceans
wrapped around the inner firmament
in the mind of a mixed kid
whose thoughts value freedom
more than hurt feelings

what promise could compete
with memories
with dreams that bud
on the cue of a moment
like the forgotten seeds
they were meant to be?

in the instances where
now kisses then
i meet a red skinned man
with shaggy hair
a shuffle and smokers cough
who cannot hear
but sees the dynamics of sound
in a cloud of color
sharper than the blind hear it
the hues of intent
the shades of intensity

god
is a skinny
rugged twelve year old girl
trekking the Congo basin
with deep brown skin
large golden eyes
two black braids hang at her waist
tipped with purple flowers
a purple smell always behind her
she smiles often and speaks little

her backpack houses a solar system
where stick figures live on the planet
closest to their sun
honing good ideas and
once in awhile
they leave her bag to deliver innovation
to artists the world around
through cartoons on cereal boxes
graffiti under overpasses
to imply them with cloud shapes
in the dark blue of summer nights
the path taken by veins of a leaf
or the peculiar way fruit falls
from a tree at sunrise

every night
the stars get stuck on the horizon
like workers at a bus stop
as the earth and the sky wrestle for dominance
in a timeless struggle for favor with gravity
and a tribe of ancient toads
with goatees and powerful talismans
embedded into their chests
are the only thing keeping the world
in one piece
since the moon is too biased
and the sun too busy
to lend a hand

in my corner with a piece of solitude
i’m channeled
more than i channel
by those in other worlds
the poets admonish that
the morals of their stories matter less
than whether or not i tell them right
they don’t care
whether or not they’re believed in
or if their physics can be explained
they just want to be felt
wherever you are

I Remember Love

Black Bubblegum (excerpt) pg.44

i remember loving you with my good foot

with my masculine smiles

i loved you truly

i adored you from the same place i abhorred pendants of my past

i loved you perfectly

as the hope filled foolishness of children

i gave you friendship with no plans of covenant

i gave you infatuation that crept to the edge of love

i gave you an outstretched and abused heart

its honest knew no bounds

i gave it in purity

i remember loving you with six months of seven hour conversations

that saw the sun rise on our stubborn hearts

persistent laughs

intimate tears

naive simplicity

i loved you as a boy wishes his toy car to be real

as he wants to fly without wings

or to hold the sun

as he wants to be fifty things at once

spiced orange

the drink

warm and slightly citrus,
sweet and mildly spiced,
a mocha diva
in love with country ballads
picked from a large tree
in an open field near Senatobia
and given immortality,
being turned into a drink

but how sweet was she
in her former life?
there was a smokey tinge:
did she roll her own cigars?
was her father a coal miner?
left with the same questions
as a kid too hungry
to fully enjoy the film
her friend’s mom took her to;
too modest to do anything
but eat when she gets home

El Shiitake

Bryon Boi

some say
i am a melinated god
house of the stardust dressing the cosmos
hailing from an alien domain
that i am the seed of earth lovers
with peace pipes
and frybread
that my kind was nasty
loving neanderthals
created in ancient labs
born of cave shadows
that i am a byproduct of rape
as a partner of genocide
babylonian captivity
i say
i could be part treefrog
mixed with sugar
and a little styrofoam
by any other name
i’d still be the shit

city boy

in this city
i was sun blinded
for cursing the clouds

in contempt of the rain
i died of thirst
never seeing the sea
make love to the shore

bad words

love
race
love
god
love
justice
even love
bad words
in the hands of the most clever
with pedestals and no earth to be down to

dirty mirror

i didn’t know i was
cold
until i touched you
you didn’t know you were still
until i held you
and told you to breathe
we had been looking at ourselves
through a dirty mirror
this whole time

stay black

brotha told me about the beauty
and atrocity
living in Nigeria
dapped me up like
“stay black”
kept it pushin
i’m left with the back of his taper fade walking way

…what does that mean…

let me superglue some midnight to the
front side of my backhand
so the black land and the black light
hold hands with no stage fright
of being shown it’s wrong or right