….with guitar
cocked
at superbowled crowds
you swivel off
the stage –
raspberryberet
doffd
hair perfectly
coiffed
you exit
just like you
steppd
rightoutta
boxed sets
and locked closets
and all the worlds
straight jackets
you
queered identity
constantly
walking away casually
devastatingly
especially from your name
here’s to you
my fuckalicious
omnisexual
purpleraining
and dovecrying
intertwining now
in a postmortal threesome
with
michael david and whitney
i know
youre still seductively
whispering
something formerly known as poetry

…..on this
the second to last
i ask
can i
finally sign off
on that past
slam
the door
on slammers and slamming
and find
movement
instead in
your eyes tracking
and your fingers
handjobbing on emojis
and emoticonning
can i
claw back
the im from the pure
and the virus from the viral
can i
twitterize this revolution
so you at least
read till the end
and end
all your readings
seriously
can i
lasso back
the future
from the futurist
and replace
the italian
with the afro
dreaming in
duboisian utopia
downloadable on that app
in your antisocial media
can i
love the words i
swallow
and hate the words i
spit
because
in this penultimate
facial
i just might be
finally free
of the old
position
can i
on this
364th
i wonder
do anythingeverything
to wring that last drop
from the 365th
so on the 366th
i wake up
and say to On
again
like you
i’m still here
and
like you
i too
am done

….listen – we were the
futurists –
throwin down
night after night
on stages from
jazz
to rockabilly
hustling
words and
slammin lyrics
till
every smokefilled
corner of speakeasin
backrooms
swirled
with tonguetwisted
possibilities.
stepping out
to catch a
quick drag
of the present
we’d
jump right back
on that ride
straddling
mics and
jiving
wi da
ones anda twos
adding up always
to
infinity
hellyamothafucka
we took poetry
right
out of its verse
and crammed
it down the
throats of
frontrow critics
spittin
and frenchkissin
until every inch
of the stage
frothed with
blood
and saliva
and rhythm.
so whatthefuck
happened?
whenthefuck
did the future
become the past
and howthefuck
did we get
grandfathered in?

….if i tap the keys
do i type right
or does this
type of write
cross borders
without visas
waiting for
marcel
to grant it asylum
by bordering
it in a museum

….can the spoken
be resurrected
by the written still?
and can the frontin
and the jivin
and the steppin
that moved words
and worlds
still punch
through the
sponsored slammin
of an hbo special?
or do these words
now need to ink
back to the future
burning through
rhythms by
tap dancing
on typewriters
acidrefluxing
back through time
to discover
futurism
in the murky past?
words forced out
letterforletterforletterforletter
until period
and punctuation
become uncompleted
gasps
for air
sucked in by
lungs drowning
in
print

……when you realized
that your alphabets
stopped at el
this morning
did you remember
the letters that got you here?
grades that never
graduated
and
long letters of longing
never mailed-
but written.
always.
letters wrapped in
ivies
under leagues
that were almost
always
out of reach
letters knocked
out of typewriters
by
11 student ghosts
who had stared
down that
train before you
did you remember
the a for admission
and the
a for anticipation
and the
a for aspiration
and the
a for the a team
and the
a for the a face.
always.
did you?
was that you
in my ear laughing
today
when the
vice provost forthis
and the
associate dean forthat
showed us the new paint
on their blackfaces
and was it you
dying hysterically
in my head
when they said
they
knew all about
stopping the dead
erase those letters
their committee advised
and replace with numbers –
11 ghosts
will statistically fade
eventually
little did
they
realize that
you wrote
in visibly ink
letters rising up later
to haunt
every one of their
shiny
concretes and steals

….memories now
are like the shifting borders
on your maps
shimmering descending
frozen fractals
blurring the sharp edges
dividing
whats past and whats not
whats here and whatneverwas
still
when i walk through
those unremembered lanes
the snow crunches
deafeningly
under jackboots
while pandits
antinationalize
and decide
that today
life and
family and
sweets and
toys
will only exist
on this side

and yet….

 

Listening to Kashmir

….scared of strippd down bars
and trumpd up bards
i sign up
to vote.
again.
funny how
your song
about
freedom riders
left out
the part about
how
my freedom
has riders
that scare
me into
your
false
choices.
again. 

…..its a foreign policy
really
slapping fences
around borders and
borders around minds
barring dissent
and barriering entry
and barricading exits
its a housing intervention
too
making everyhouse
an everydayprison
and everycitizen
an everydayjailor
and before you
tell me what its not
remember
also
that its a
communicable disease
an epidemic
epicentered in
communities
held incommunicado
in solitary confinement
for lifetimes
so when you ask
what it means
ima tellya
carceral
like cancer
is now
a society

and yet…

….these punctuations
are foreignaccentedwords
my fingers hurt
like tired tongue
licking overstretched
smiling lips