Valley of Things
Hang your head when you walk
yesterday’s news is greener
to survive ham with ideas
of a common holiness
decisions to make about
what’s going to siphon
off your thoughts
fuse giddiness to
the citizen elective
creature by creature
when a very young child
throws down an object
it’s beautiful to watch
they don’t know about
the value of thingification
hanging over the riverbanks
a good poet prays to nature
I brush out tangles during
graceful animal hunting season
sometimes we hear a crush
figure out a daily schedule
read tortured philosophers
listen to James Booker on repeat
Black Woman on a Plane, Twenty-First Century
Minutiae in a bowl,
jury-rigged hand
in need of a drink.
The flight attendant
said, “It’s on me,”
I must’ve looked
like I needed one.
Such a rough climb,
wobbly as the sun
during Leo season.
Come to find out
a brand new plane
is hot to handle.
The first breath,
crucial, coughs.
My favorite path
of looking winds up
when I’m in the air.
There’s no way
to vacuum-seal death
up here I suppose,
even though I’ve never
felt the urge to buy
a traveling pillow.
If something develops,
if our machine defects,
I’ll ask if I can hold
the hand of the woman
who gave me a drink.
Then it’s time to land
like nothing happened,
the captain standing
at the door with his crew.
He’s younger than I am,
a baby-faced white boy.
We don’t know his name,
or where he came from.
Prayer Sonnet
Sewn up again in a data harvest meadow
moving through me as pelvic bowl thunder
to learn how to laugh at their indifference
Revenge of the Chattel is not being shown in
the popular gendarme art houses
blood heavy as the iron binding us together
Public wordplay is called getting dragged
Violences of daily metaphor
in our very real world
These solvent metaphors are true
Hell investigates life with great opportunity
My lil candle mouth kindling for the wounded
when the stars are committed to the worst timing
& no one wants to get out of bed in the morning
Airport Security Playlist
1. Losing My Religion R.E.M.
2. Somebody Blew Up America Amiri Baraka
3. Jonesed Wanda Coleman
4. Without a Face Rage Against the Machine
5. Crazy Nigger Julius Eastman
6. Ghetto Bird Ice Cube
7. Thoughts Green Velvet
8. Everybody Knows Leonard Cohen
9. Everybody Hurts R.E.M.
10. Nobody Cares Deborah Cox
11. Let’s Go Get Stoned Big Mama Thornton
Jamais Vu State of Mind
When you keep repeating a lie
people will accept it as truth.
But underneath that feeling is a
merciful border that never existed,
splitting the familiar stone tablets
when we grind our teeth at night
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