American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin

by Terrance Hayes

What do you call a visionary who does not recognize Her vision?

Would you rather spend the rest of eternity With your wild wings bewildering a cage or With your four good feet stuck in a plot of dirt?

I know your shade. You are the color of a sucker punch, The mix of flag blood & surprise blurring the eyes, a flare Of confusion, a contusion before it swells & darkens.

I lock you in an American sonnet that is part prison, Part panic closet, a little room in a house set aflame.

I make you a box of darkness with a bird in its heart. Voltas of acoustics, instinct & metaphor. It is not enough To love you. It is not enough to want you destroyed.

I love how your blackness leaves them in the dark. I love how even your sound-bite leaves a mark.

The hysteria of being multiplied & divided In your lover’s mind until you go out of your mind.

Christianity is a religion built around a father Who does not rescue his son.

On some level, I’m always full of Girl Scout cookies In the land of a failed landlord with a people of color Complex. On some level every action is an affirmation Of personality.

America, you just wanted change is all, a return To the kind of awe experienced after beholding a reign Of gold. A leader whose metallic narcissism is a reflection Of your own.

Like no Culture before us, we relate the way the descendants Of the raped relate to the descendants of their rapists. May your restlessness come at last to rest, constituents Of Midas. I wish you the opposite of what Neruda said Of lemons. May all the gold you touch burn, rot & rust.

I live a life That burns a hole through life, that leaves a scar for life, That makes me weep for another life. Define life.

What if it were possible to make a noise so lovely People would pay to hear it continuously for a century Or so. Unbelievably, Miles Davis & John Coltrane Standing within inches of each other didn’t explode.

The song must turn on the compass Of language like a tangle of wire endowed With feeling. The notes must tear & tear, There must be a love for the minute & minute, There must be a record of witness & daydream. Where the heart is torn or feathered & tarred, Where death is undone, time diminished, The song must hold its own storm & drum, And shed a noise so lovely it is sung at sunset Weddings, baptisms & beheadings henceforth.

In this we may be alike, Assassin, you & me: we believe We want what’s best for humanity. I’ll probably survive Dancing with the kinds of people who must find refuge Among the sweat & rancor of a Fish & Chicken Shack But Assassin, they’ll probably murder you. Do you ask, Why you should die for me if I will not die for you? I do.

I believe Eurydice is actually the poet, not Orpheus. Her muse Has his back to her with his ear bent to his own heart. As if what you learn making love to yourself matters More than what you learn when loving someone else.

It’s not the bad people who are brave I fear, it’s the good people who are afraid.

Assassin, you are a mystery To me, I say to my reflection sometimes. You are beautiful because of your sadness, but You would be more beautiful without your fear.

If you think a hammer is the only way to hammer A nail, you ain’t thought of the nail correctly.

In a parallel world where all Dr. Who’s Are black, I’m the doctor who knows no god Is more powerful than Time. In a parallel world Where all the doctors who are black see cops Box black boys in cop cars & caskets, I’m The doctor who blacks out whenever he sees A police box. In a parallel world where doctors Who box cops in caskets cry doing their jobs, I disappear inside a skull that’s larger on the inside. Question: if, in a parallel world where every Dr. Who was black, you were the complex Time Lord, When & where would you explore? My answer is, A brother has to know how to time travel & doctor Himself when a knee or shoe stalls against his neck.