The Bone Yard

I fold my dirty body next to the sun as it falls to sleep across a boneyard.

Our Daughters sleep in there, clinging on to life and on to death.
They strip down to breast and bone for swine,
gnawing on their own skeletons for some Great Man to tame them.

They play in ash playgrounds, burnt down by thieving snakes of virginity.
Our hands can do nothing.
Our Book does nothing.

Our Sons are bound, shackled by veins to elusion.
They strain, barefoot in the desert where demons build their muscles on doubt and hesitation.
Fear is a great interruption to the infant shadows that remain young nuisances
until trepidation grips its claws around their hollow shoulders and carry them away.

And, as the boneyard grows next to me. I lay, with burnt wings, in a chill that never dies.

Without Myself

The music, with sharp tongues and daggers, presses hard against me.
I have been swinging from lyrical ropes
for days. If it wasn’t for guilt!
If it wasn’t for the time I have spent
drinking cups full of guilt, with guilt, for guilt.

Guilt raises dark hands that curve into
the shoulders of undeserving men and women.
My stomach tosses me over myself
for the thirtieth time today!

I can remember all of the first times that
I laid myself down with fire, judging
the length of my hair,
or the color of my skin,
or the shape of my body.
Do you believe me?
Do you believe that I spend time
tying myself up against poisonous walls,
waiting for a soft heart to come walking in,
6 feet tall,
with a blade meant only to save me?
Do you believe that?

No matter!
It is true.
I expected you and you and you!

But, not today.
Today, I fold myself over in two.
Half of me has my hands and my voice.
The other half is walking away with my feet and
my womanhood.
I do not know which half to venture off with,
so I sit here,
on this blue couch that is not, and never will be
something that I can call mine.
I sit, without myself, here.

I have branched out, and, in the same moment,
left myself behind.
Do you believe me?
Do you believe that a girl as leathery as me
could leave without herself, or
let herself go, for that matter?
Do you believe that?

It doesn’t matter.
Not now. Not when I sit on guilt’s lap, flirting
with her for approval. Not when
I tie myself down to her, to her and this soft, blue
couch.
What matters now, is the bacon and eggs that I will make her
for breakfast. What matters now,
is the laundry in the little room,
the showers that need to be scrubbed,
and the fact that
I am still tied up here, to these poisonous walls.

She Snaps Like A

She snaps like a
twig from a
dead oak tree
She snaps
her fingers,
one,
two,

THREE!!!!!!

Standstill! Who will
draw first

Three sisters, count them.
One.
Two.
Three.

Huddled in her meat cleaver,
she leaves them.
Dead meat.

Red, raw
meat for the taking.
Marinated to
manipulated savory.

Three girls with
guilt blonde hair. Three
scared
little witches, fixing burns,
breaking dishes.

That’s what happens when the
flip switches,
she twitches into
rags –
stomping floorboards,
dropping little blonde
hair into body
bags

feeds dirty lies
from her
mothering, smothering hands.

Map To Agony

I made a thick map to agony where
blackbirds fly with molten wings,
cackle over swart prattle;
corrupted gut remains.

But, I cannot go.

I am busy.
I am Feeding on seeds of raw season
ardor.

Piles of sediment – particles soaked in grief – had been
heart raked,
sowed deep down inside hollow ground.
Alone with dark space.
Rooted.

In ten years, never could I have plucked up
as easily.
A sanguine, green gaze lifts rust cakes
from my wrists,
then my ankles,
then my eyes,
then my smile.

Then, I am moral.
There, I am valued.

Agony is an old white pillow that I
spit pneumonia on to.
It is Elvis Presley in fake fever morning.
It is six am deer fly kicks.
It is curled up on hard washroom
floor board.
It is repulsive reassurance;
malnourished.

I made a determined map to agony, where
nothing suffices,
dead things grow more dead
under night’s greasy carnivorous sweats.

But, I cannot go.

I am busy.
I am busy planting luster

with a green gazer,
with flexible wrists,
with fleshy eye-lids in restful reassurance.
I am nourished.
 

Blackball Grumbler

The disease in my brain is against all
this joy! A Blackball Grumbler who sculpts; Brute
hands. I am clay.

Morning. Beauty bows before me as I adapt
to sun luster. My feet go dancing
through crush puddles, smiling
at Emily’s “thing with feathers”.

I have been seized by desire, lacking nothing
of devotion,
trust,
love.
A free life will make nothing of
space for flies….

and the flies are swarming in;
screaming pollutants.

My Air!!
Oh God, My Air!

Inhale. Fly wings. Pinions of
pollution!
I choke on despair. Discouragement
wrapping Brute hands
around my skinny neck.

Last night, I met Concord on
a front porch. We knelt together
as if flies never existed.

But, it is today. Every last
night, on front porch kneeling,
is outlived by the sunlight
that feeds
flies to the Blackball Grumbler.

Paranoid Of A Possible Love

How can I be certain that you are real?
Each day, you are a noble rider; a sterling chain
seeking my affinity.
I want to cover myself in admission
while you are
straight,
natural,
throwing butterflies. At my feet

they become Ackee centers, flying up, up, around me.
Take a bite!, you say, It is only Vanessa and her Red Wings.

Jamaica made her crazy though, and
you present her plague
to me!?
Do you mistake her as beautiful wings
or
is this MY aberration?

Jamaican fruit do not raise her
butterfly appendages and flutter
about a young,
ripe woman.  They don’t!

This is truth or it is fallacy, crossing a frying pan.
And I am preparing to cook either
butterfly
or
poisonous exotic fruit!

This Is What Happens When A Child Raises Itself

a small child has taken camp
in my intestines

she clutches
to my innards
holding on for her
dear little life

my stomach twists
howls at me
begging for relief

but she is afraid
she will not let go

in the morning
I awaken, as I should
I suggest a shower
and dress, as I should
I advise eating
sometimes the little girl
is too afraid
squeezing so loudly
making digestion impossible
some days
I skip that part altogether

I drive
I work
I laugh
I smile

practice courtesy
compliment
understanding
patience

return back to shelter
out of the
distraction of
a
daily life

back to the voice of
a scared little child.