Category: Uncategorized

Do you remember this Rooftop?
when we would sit
right here
on this ledge watching
the world going
‘round the circle below?

Do you remember
playing that card game?
when you threw
the cards off the roof
in anger? as if I
were the one cheating?
Oh! The irony!
*snicker*
we call this

foreshadowing

in my discipline.

Do you remember
when I realized
the window to
that little vacant rooftop
apartment
had been unlocked the whole time?

I remember.

Do you remember?

that one night
in that little rooftop apartment
it was cold and you were
straddling my trembles
in the bed
of that little apartment?
to warm up you
buried your head
into my chest and said
“Cozy! Cozy! Cozy!”
and I’d never felt
more loved.

Do you remember that?

I do.

Right now, I am here
on this Rooftop looking
through the locked window
of that little rooftop apartment

I see two little ghosts playing
with each other

I see me
I see you

I see what was

I see what could’ve.

I smile.

I’m leaving this Rooftop.

Two weeks before you died-
You were joking, laughing, and seemed alright.
I thought you would be fine.

We talked and joked and watched the skyline-
From your hospital bed at half-light
Two weeks before you died.

As the day wound down, I saw no sign-
And when we finally said goodbye-
I thought you would be fine.

When we left, it seemed to be benign,
I knew you would put up a fight
Two weeks before you died.

I believed it wasn’t your time
Oh, how I wish I knew your plight,
I thought you would be fine.

I got a text on the phone of mine-
That it would be your last day and night;
Two weeks before you died-
I thought you would be fine.

Death comes swift,
Death takes fast;
At your doorstep,
Death doesn’t knock.

Instead,
it seeps through the cracks and in the windows left ajar.
it bleeds into the words of those around us.
it keeps over our loved ones when they take their last breath—

Death is a friend,
Death is an ally;
At your side,

Death doesn’t wait.

But,
it sings in a chorus of whispers.
it showers those hurting with eternal mercy.
it strengthens those in grief.

Death doesn’t knock.
Death walks in.

Mrs Tom to Ground Control
Mrs Tom to Ground Control
He’s left his packed lunch on the draining board

Mrs Tom to Ground Control
I was watching Countdown when you rang
What’s our position if you don’t bring him back?

J, I, H, G, F, E, D, C, B, Alpha Bets off

This is Mrs Tom to Ground Control
I’ve had the papers on the phone
They seem to think he’s been wearing my blouses
Have you reminded him it’s time to take his capsule

This is Mrs Tom again, to Ground Control
Reporters at the door
No weight to their peculiar accusations
What do you mean he’s stepped out of the office

Here’s me
Sitting in our parkland trailer
on top of the hill
feeling very blue
now I’m earth bound without you

I’ve thought through one hundred thousand times
words that we exchanged
and I think my instinct knows which way to go
I know you love me but do I still love you

Ground Control to Mrs Tom
Have you told him yet, that you can’t go on
Can you hear me Mrs Tom
Can you want me Mrs Tom
Can you love me Mrs Tom
Can you

Here I lie in our parkland trailer
on top of the hill
Ground Control’s here too
and there’s nothing we can’t do!

the winds of depression billow within my rib-cage,
freezing my heart and tainting my mind with cold darkness.

the frostbite around my heart eats away pieces of me, bit by bit,
making me less of a person than i was the day before.

my days are as gloomy as the ferocious rains bathing the amazon rainforest,
hoping to remove its history embedded in the drowned roots and stems.

my nights are as erratic as the waves on a stormy sea,
and in my mind, i sail on a punctured, rickety boat,

listening to whispers of voices that i now find intimidating to ignore.
there is a jury in my head debating how best to seize my presence from this hollow earth,

and i harken to them with razor chains around my wrists
and a crown of thistles atop my head.

though my heart burns with the freezing of this cold, dark depression,
i lay awake every night, staring at a wall,

wondering if my mind will ever win this battle before i am saved.

I watched as the flesh ripped.
I watched as one frantically tore through ligament and bone.
I watched as one meticulously cut through the layers of skin, peeling them back to expose pulsing veins.
I watched as the insides became exposed to the outside.
I watched as they picked the rib meat delicately off the bone.
A flimsy fleshy noodle, they held layers of me with childish delight.
Opening their monstrously wide mouths, catching the tentacle end, with the tips of their
flickering tongues.
I watched as they salivated.

One maliciously quiet, her eyes granite, fair knuckles and cherry red nails.
One viscerally drooling, unable to contain his hunger, clammy blond strands, slick.
One sitting in relief, in fat grotesque pleasure, he was gluttonous and gorged and swollen.

Silently I grieved my story.

I watched the one who I knew so well, pull the organs out.
Wild dilated glances, I saw my own thick molasses blood reflecting off blue eyes.
The blue eyes that remind me of nightfall. Not daylight blue, yet not quite the night.
Blue, but once bringing relief to the day, knowing tomorrow was near.
I watched and I said nothing.

Primal screams bulbous in my throat, caught in a razor lined maze of anxiety.
Humid air drifting its way through the crevasses of my body. Whispering to my nerve endings.
Filled with hopelessness, I turned my head.
I couldn’t watch anymore of this feast.
My body, my being, a quick relief for them.
I knew these creatures who found themselves delighting at their fleshy trough would satiate.
The feeding frenzy was ending.

I pressed my fingertips into the packed dirt.
I felt rage. I felt animalistic. I felt empty, like them.
My nails lifting off the beds. Keratin shards, breaking and cracking.
The ending was near.

Dreaded dark, constricted vision.
My breathing, more and more hollow. Gulping.
Instead of screaming and thrashing to an ambivalent God I never believed in, I gently looked at the
horizon.
How beautiful she was.
That space, where the earth meets sky.
A place never fully present, as there is always more.
The moment between the then and the now.
Horizons never change, never settle, never bargain in beauty,
my sunset.

Escaping my body, floating through the untold.
I stared at the line between unknown and the known.
And in that moment, in that shift was elastic elation.
Because what was now, will not always be.
And who I am, is not what they see.
And what I love,
will always.

I can’t cry to you.
There’s no space in the ocean
you’re drowning us in.

Another word for Great
Long mother
Stretching her arms across three generations
I ask, how many greats go in front of your name granny
And i hear her
At the same time, an obituary rewinds
Her picture is erased
In loving memory ignores that it ever existed
And the mourning never quite begins
And i see her
Like i had never seen her before

“If my grandma says she’s old, like a elder
What that make you? Ancient, royal, arrived”
There are still too many words tucked into her throat chakra
The weeping receded
effortless , unnoticeable overtime
Like a bald head that has no memory of a weighted skull

She was always all of that
Hand in full conversation to hip
Moving about the kitchen
Listen, there aint nothing like her cookin’
Head cocked, a layer of sass breaks the scale
her smirk, a full prayer
Line of aunties and God’s leading ladies
Her voice erupts the room
Into a full soprano ansemple
Singing
This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine
This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine
[i mean vocally running alllll over the place]
This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine
Let it shine, Let it shine, all the time oh yes

And they asked her
If she was a choir
And if she was a choir
If she were a revival
And if she was a revival
If she were holy

And if she was holy
If she transcends an earthly body
And if she transcends an earthly body
She were God
And if she was God
She was me, my mama, sisters, aunties
All Black/ All womb
And if she were this lineage
She must have been mad connected to the spirit
Have you ever seen a Black woman

surmise the summoning of sinners
Her blood/ mouth open wide
We know how to devour the body and pouring of Christ
On a sunday morning
Right before collection plates clatter for a second time in the same service
Don’t you dare deny an offering
A portion of your riches
That really belong to God anyway
Cause He can pick you up right now,
if you wanna get foolish

Grandma, your daughter, always gave me a $5 bill to drop in the collection plate
And i would be mad cause like i could only give once

Of somebody else’s money

But i was raised in a mantra
Of God is good all the time
& all the time, God is good

And grandma
Great grand, long mother
i don’t mind breaking the 4th wall for you
to say
I love you
I wish i got to spend eternity wide eyes bouncing on your lap
Memorizing your recipes
Holding your heart
With my laughter
& even though i never ever got to meet you
I just wanna say
Thank you
For visiting me in all these poems

For dancing your way into the present
So the future knows exactly what is coming
I am your choir
A full lipped scripture
Inscribed on this black girls tongue
“Life is tough, yes baby but I’m waaay tougher”

Asè

I want to tell a story
But when I open my mouth
Cobwebs and spiders come flying out
I cough up a dead rat, eventually
Who knows how long he’s been in there
But even you can see
The beast start to awaken
You don’t know when it’s coming
But you know that it’s arrived
The second you hear my voice
I speak and cannot stop myself
I don’t close my mouth until they tape it shut again
I become like the dust covered attic
Filled with old memories
But the place where you put the things you don’t want to think about
Or otherwise don’t want to see

I see the exiled poet
standing at the edge
of a roman city
waiting for hungry lions
eastern dragons
or dagger-carrying women
to immortalize his work.

too late
to praise lyrics.
a lifetime lived
to hear nothing.
your words are spit
on flowers planted
next to white stones.

I see your secret fear
you cannot face the elephant
or remind our countrymen
that faith is an Art
lost and found
by souls
standing their ground.

now is too late
to worship our work
and ponder clever clues
to your sorry existence
please do that your damn selves
we do not die to leave instruction
we die to leave you.