the joke
pretty much my first career: to take
Friday’s horror & make it Wednesday humor
the swelling had ended & so the laughter could bloat
on the porch, only kin of bloodlock & marriage-bed
James, you just drunk
just like her, akimbo & decades tired in her tone
just drunk! i don’t understand!
do grandma again, nezzy!
just drunk!
what made me weep & hide & fist-in-his-back weekends
now was my currency of cute, a requested delight
Go to hell, Barbara! Just go to hell!
& how papa be lookin, neno?
stumble & cuss king, batter god, weekend dragon
punished if not friendly & in love with him on Monday
after the sabbath’s purple eyed theatrics
wait! wait! wait! what grandma say again?
& again it goes: the joke, the laugh, the good days’ end
the weekend, the liquor, the cuss, the blood or not,
the fist or not or fist, the saving or not or rescue & stay
the lines perfected & hook on time
& the cheeks well-rehearsed in impact & smile
his own mama beat bloody & quiet down on that farm
he hated his father as he studied him
i hated him from the stop of the stairs
memorized both parts, preparing myself
to love like a husband, take it like a wife.
not complicit, i was charged
to make it gold, sugar it.
i was the smallest, it was my precious duty
to turn the lip’s blood & dusky eye’s puss
into tears soft as giggles on our faces.
less hope
apologies. i was part of the joy
industrial complex: told them their bodies were
miracles & they ate it up, sold someday,
made money off soon & now, snuck an ode into the elegy,
forced the dead to smile & juke,
implied America, said destroy, but offered nary step nor tool.
paid taxes knowing where the funds go.
in April, offerings to my mother’s slow murder. by May
my sister filled with the bullets i bought. June & my father’s life
locked in a box i built. my brother’s end plotted as i spend.
idk why i told you it would be ok. not. won’t. when they aren’t
killing you, they’re killing someone else. sometimes their hands
at the ends of your wrist. you (you & me) are agent & enemy.
there i was, writing anthems in a nation whose victory was my blood
made visible, mama too sugared to weep without melting, my rage
fed their comfort foaming from my racial mouth, singing
gospel for a god they beat me into loving. lord
your tomorrow holds no sway, your heavens too late.
i abandon you as you did me. c’est la vie.
but sweet Satan – OG-dark kicked out the sky
first fallen & niggered thing – what’s good?
who owns it? where it come from?
Satan, first segregation, mother of exile
what you promise in your fire? for a real freedom,
i offer over their souls. theirs. mines
is mines. i refuse any Hell again. i’ve known
nearer devils. the audience & the mirror. they make you look weak.
they clapped at my eulogies. they said encore, encore.
we wanted to stop being killed & they thanked me for beauty
&, pitifully, i loved them. i thanked them.
i took the awards & cashed the checks.
i did the one about the boy when requested, traded their names
for followers. in lieu of action, i wrote a book,
edited my war cries down to prayers. oh, devil.
they gave me God & gave me clout.
they took my poems & took my blades.
Satan, like you did for God, i sang.
i sang for my enemy, who was my God.
i gave it my best. i bowed &, worse, smiled.
teach me to never bend again.