
Every dawn i played tennis with James Baldwin
but
i didn’t mind it was a fantasy because i can come out of de smog
to meet him anytime he played dat cross-court winner he said negro
Go Tell It on de Mountain & Another Country his volleys have a beautiful
black smell on de back of my hand thank ya’ for de reflex of liberty it is
de instinct of a scar it is de yawn of a lion in my head negro you’ll have to play
against de wall someday against ya’ self against de jaws &
jagged-hands
in de crowd heightening de wall de membrane dat barricades de race
have you discovered de protein in Burning Spear’s Identity?
Michael Jackson is caught in a postmortem of being reengineered
i heard my uncle jabbering in de conservatory i command de lethargic
fan-blades to rip de fibre in his squabble i distaste politics not detected
by de intuition of a wind vane ignore de ragged fathers
begging for alms in traffic our children will pay with demma children
maybe just maybe coffee stained wind i don’t make a lob with it
escaping de fear is twice de death i am liberated by de pandemonium
on de phone call my girlfriend is mad at me Gabriel you lie you lie you lie a lot
i do not want a man who lies to me she breaks up
breaks up breaks me up all de time & punches me into a morass
like an expired ticket i’m finding ways to marry her without consent
de irony of the issue she laughs she plays
she laughs she plays a lot not knowing
she needs permission to be happy Pumpkin step back!
de land you are standing on is bisected it is mortgaged
which means you are a stranger in ya’ house ya’ body is de function
for different things your genitalia is de shyness of a sunflower
your excrement is a picnic for scavengers don’t tell me you make breathing a leisure
ya’ heart is a discarded litmus in a sea-diver’s rucksack you were dead before
a black-tridarn of revenants don’t let it scare you
my stomach is blushing on a grave under de untimely regime of wraiths in eternal coma
allow me to understand how de dead is kind to each other at de construction
site yesterday my father said death is a height dat begins on de ground
which means we are in a paradise of a turning crane only waiting to come down
fuck de gunshots fuck de summits fuck dat chaplain
de dead will wake to kill us all my anger is an eyesore malnourished
Ukrainian dolls whining for bun crumbs & raincoats i hold de tasteless
spectacle back & tie it into a single ponytail Go Tell It on de Mountain
& Another Country de dead will wake to kill us all.