upon arriving at the bingo hall on a Tuesday evening in Nowhere

“Sheeit”, she says to me, “you better give me a muthafuckin winner tonight, or I’ll take ya’ outside, y’hear? Take ya out to the lot and shank you with a Swiss Army Knife–put a little hole in your kidney, yo, cuz’ I NEED that money, dawg, you know? I NEED that muthafuckin money”…And I do know b/c I actually work and sheeit’ I cain’t hardly pay no bills or feed no baby by my own damn self and I cain’t hardly feel nothing or see nothing but the red in my eyes and the fridge is empty and the boys in the yard they fightin’ over a mayonnaise sandwich, and I’d like to see her win some muthafuckin money, I’d like to see her smile like she used to back before towelhead mania, before Jethro Tull put down the flute–back when we was rolling in it, dirty dozens, and staring shamelessly into the sun; taunting it to shine, or not to shine…and I’d like to give her a winner, tonight, I’d like to call her a goddamn number but integrity is all we got in this place now, one of the few places we got it and one of many where we gets to lose it and I just cain’t bear to get cut again…not by her that used to shine like Old Miss Argenia’s Golden Lucky Buddha–not in here, where the pain is too great and the reward is too mighty and the sun don’t shine for us to mock…But I tell her, “I got you, sis, I got you” because lie is just a three-letter word and I cain’t hardly bear to watch her saunter away like that, shuffle off with her damn self and her lucky trolls and her damn numbers that don’t make no patterns no more no how anyhow, off into the middle of the fray, at her usual spot under the vast lingering spirit of a smoke cloud that eats hope for breakfast and drinks angry like a monk’s pen…

a barbershop on flatbush

it was if I had walked
into a coup d’état
a tribe of elders
a cri de coeur
old men sabotaged
by blue baseball caps
money green windbreakers
thick creole accents
old men
eyes welling up with distrust
checkerboard fingertips
developed lips
disapora line running across
their forehead
libations are given
for the earthquake dead
offered veneration
to Shango and Damballah
oranges and mangoes
called on Aya
transformed this barbershop
into a meeting house
looked around the room
for Christophe
a young Touissant
with muscle tank skill
shave my skull
saved my soul
this mea culpa
with rubbing alcohol and aloe
washed away the residue
looked around the room
and saw Mandela
Martin Obama
Malcolm Desalline
Aristide
a chair available
I knew I would succeed
not downtown
but the underground
missed an ambush
in this shop on flatbush

War Crimes

Their faces distorted,
Masks contorted to fit the shrunken bones.
The final humiliation to be so alone
And trapped in a cell of arrogance.
The senseless deaths occuring
From bravely spurning questions
Asked not from curiosity,
But animosity.
How did these doctors not bleed
From their believed stigmata,
Surely they bartered with the devil
For their consciences to be destroyed.
Betrayers of their trade,
The Pontius Pilots with their blades
And their ideals of perfection.
Correction of heritage should never be a suggestion,
What sacrilige!
To be hated for your skin, your kin,
Your face, your race,
Your mind.
To be made blind to turn eyes blue.
A hue so common, yet why so desired?
Are we not all wired differently
So why force us into a box?
It shocks us to remember the Reich,
To think bigotry is rife,
Yet we may control our lives,
So why,
Do we not stand up for what is right?

The Grim Parade

This man slowly marches among men
And they march in single file
He is greeted by his homeland in great cheers
But he is cheered only for what hes defiled
They love him because he bore the mark of their nation
Because he is part of the warriors creed
But as he is cheered by his comrades, he sighs
He is loved for making people bleed
There was ceremony and he was given a medal
for being a hero so brave
And he is applauded and respected but he wondered
Where the medals are for his friends in graves
And as he stood at attention with the men in his division
He tried to look proud and play his part in the charade
And he is pelted with glory and honor for being savage
As he stands in the ranks of the Grim Parade.

In Passing

All the wisdom culled from passing freight
Cars was a pastiche of countries
Dreamed of as they slid away.
Portable gang graffiti and hobo mumblings
From distant villages in the hinterlands.
Does Jill really blow and is Ned a freak?
Half a journey’s stories subtracted,
Placate the mind’s conjuring additions.
I’m walking the tracks over you,
Can’t sleep its true. Waiting
To get my due as the locomotive
Comes on through.

Part of the problem is the lack
Of faith in rhyme and reason. Look
What it has brought us in this
Smog-ridden century, convolutions lusting
After the rightly unattainable.
Passing the container ships and
Their now undesired conundrums
Makes us a little less anxious
After all is said and unfinished.
The porters packing it in,
A last look to the sinking light
On the water. We nibble a dry sandwich,
Wait for cost analysis, etc.
You are more gargle than gargoyle
When you quietly go on.

Bring It On for Ron Padgett

The different ways music comes on
Is suddenly here holding sway
In tiny sponge earphones trying to keep
The roar of a airplane’s engine at bay.
And, the late evening quiet broken by
The rumble of a car
With thunderous bass ebbing, flowing
Away. Here Sibelius is washing
The walls of the room with
Subtle, forest depth. At work
The tired, repetitive songs from
Bygone years are lost in a glow
In amber on an oldies radio show.
But, still Miles Davis takes
Seven Steps to Heaven in elegant strides,
And I really want a ride.

Everything but, Anything shown

Can you explain? Washed away in a legacy, never cleansed in lakes. Baptized or Bastardized? Never no mind. Either, I was sent on my way

Can the bear minimum be cultivated into infinity? Or can something I don’t remember really take a part of me? And if this really is just a game, can they take that, and make that for keeps?

Mellow yellow, by way of green. Moods can be tranquilized or glossed over but they will not be released, if history tells the story. This is my call to the orator: please, stop using these words that you’ve already heard. The only true relief comes from simply witnessing the scenery.

The surroundings bound or liberate. The memories murder and resuscitate. And the kill buries slash levitates. Pick a side. Often now, those who laugh, do so in vain. And the ones that try will have many poems with many lines, pushing worth by trying to quantitate

I breathe in darkness. That has not changed. Light up in sparks and think that that, is the only shame – that I can cannot lay in that instant and no longer recollect the minutes that proceeded it

…And that assumption keeps being made. My downfall lights up the trail for every one of my days. The choice. Have to substitute the one being made with its counterpart. With it, this thing we call the world can stop resembling an avalanche and be the portrait of the fall. It can begin, return, remember its place as workable cinematography. Its place, as art

I begin, to return, and remember,
once more

Doubt

Suspended above my body, I watch and await
Counting the seconds till I make my great escape
Late since birth I haven’t arrived for my own scene
Criticizing my own rights, I’ve ambushed my dreams
So quick to doubt when my gift needs no holiday
Recognized religiously, daily no matter how they pray
On their knees, on their feet, they see what I ignore
Focused on the crack when it’ll lead to an open door
Locusts plague my back and I fear they’ll be hungry for more
Envisioning a bottomless soul with out a core
Sometimes I don’t even know what I am fighting for…

Thought of the Day

You waste your time QUESTIONING “why” for [+] & [–] THINGS! TAKE what is GIVEN or EARN what WILL be! BE the G.O.A.T.*!

*G.O.A.T. = Greatest Of All Time!