Lullaby (Motherless, Nameless Young Torturer Torturing A Fellow Young African To Sleep)

a derider you say i am. i am

but a ridiculous riddance of

my gods, and a lad at that

with sumptuous filaments of

sinews and prejudices, sample

burr—my courtesy, my infamy.

a fiduciary inquirer you say

i am. and so i would, as usual,

summon gumptions of, bitter

still, hacks and better kisses

of bort. a derider, you say?

i’m but a kitten, with an ax.

on your bloodied face i blurt

out a laugh and loud lisping

for comedy / chancery blues,

and whether seams erupt on

the robe of my lost mama i’d

still laugh, secret whimperer.

a defiler, you seem to know

me to be. i hate your beauty

o hanky panky of a luxuriant

black aberrance. how can you

wondrously, crimson and fine,

still look precocious, dead gazer?

die now, please! close your eyes.

Losing Her Religion

Cram, cram, let the breeders be infidels,

as they always are, anyway. Forever, amen—

In seventeen days Noah shall pass, and boats

big as sunglasses for the Sun won’t moat up

kings’ palaces like cantons insecure from

Wrath. Dust curlicues, unseen, fornicate

with the desert winds devoid of chance, no

one contesting Patriarch Kirill’s samovars.

I was absent for a while, cantankerous as

Mary of Magdala upon lyuelye faythe, the

time passed presenting crocks with myrrh

in Jesus’ tomb. Only to be sacked, shocked

by ambulant quarrels ‘bout an impure womb.

Devotions, lies! Seventeenth day of Passover

month. Cram, cram! The breeders still infidels.

As they always are, now and forever, all men.

The Gentleman from San Francisco’s 401(K)

Action, action, action,

Armchair factions? Lottery

ethos insisted that I note down

wallets, pomegranates, and youth,

the speaker of my house demanded

“sift through and sow magnifying lenses,

devour defenses, battery power insurance”

Being a gook, I wasn’t allowed solemnity.

I asked for indemnities but He was absent,

I called for anti-poet Parra, he was laughing,

I ingrained my thoughts on bra, ob-la-daing,

And I’ve been truant, now like an old hit song,

I was dying for a bathtub, aching for lost loves

Our cellophane bag lunches swallowed the oceans,

but that is not our concern but God’s, always, forever,

so let’s just live, live, live til we die, die, die, die slowly,

in a gooey death refusing to—retired—believe that the

consumerist blame is not on the veiled abundant plastic

fishes murderous in reefs, but on the leeches in a forest

of a capital city’s rivers and old houses and banks and . . .

 

I was happy to see you but you were not so happy

to be born, and though there was the TV, sure,

“I know I can’t hunger or clamor for more,”

throwing your arms round ‘n’ round

in desperation, asking for respite,

for salutations, while I sighed

in my own incarceration

In twelve years

I will be

free,

see

4 160-Character Poems

1. MRT NIGHTS. Such train o thot gts u nwhr. Salary in celery pickld lyk a trying tickle irks u, angers u: pushn & shovn til u, alone, gt yr way. Pray nt bad loan.

2. LAF. Ghost glaciers, far’s i cd c. But in ‘tween, th sea warm lyk a sneez gave th loudst breez. I’m such a wiz? Half o Manila drowned by the sound. Half? A laf.

3. COMA. ‘Twas a comma. Saw her & a karma, calmly car-crashn ovr & ovr til th nytmare woke her 2 a daymare. Rmembers a mate, wreckd lyk a neck downwards. Was wine?

4. HER JAM. And so it did, casually intriguing at first, horribly intimidating at day’s end. Undone, came it did. Then slid, or vice versa, joyous as m’ marmalade.

2008