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You . . . flowing through selves Toward you.
Spring is the harshest Blurring the lines of choice Until summer flesh Swallows up all decision. I remember after the harvest was over When the thick sheaves were gone And the bones of the gaunt trees Uncovered How the dying of autumn was too easy To solve our loving.
they are not waiting but being an entrance to somewhere unknown and desired and not new.
We are hung up in giving what we wish to be given ourselves.
Am I to be cursed forever with becoming somebody else on the way to myself?
Always in the middle of our bloodiest battles you lay down your arms like flowering mines to conqueror me home.
TO THE CHOCOLATE PEOPLE OF AMERICA Chocolate people don’t melt in water they melt in your eyes. Jonathan Rollins—1971
I have been given other doses of truth— that particular form of annihilation— shot through by the cold eye of the way things are baby and left for dead on a hundred streets of this city
It is possible to shoot a man in self defense and still notice how his red blood decorates the snow.
The Brown Menace Or Poem To The Survival of Roaches Call me your deepest urge toward survival call me and my brothers and sisters in the sharp smell of your refusal call me roach and presumptious nightmare on your white pillow your itch to destroy the indestructible part of yourself. Call me your own determination in the most detestable shape you can become friend of your image within me I am you in your most deeply cherished nightmare scuttling through the painted cracks you create to admit me into your kitchens into your fearful midnights into your values at noon in your most secret places
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The only hungers left are the hungers allowed us.
as our dreams come true as our bloody hands move over history writing we have come we have done what we came to do.
but we do not wish to stand like great marble statues between our children’s eyes and their sun.
Learning all we can use only what is vital The only sacrifice of worth is the sacrifice of desire.
The difference between poetry and rhetoric is being ready to kill yourself instead of your children.
trying to make power out of hatred and destruction
lined her own womb with cement to make a graveyard for our children.
I have not been able to touch the destruction within me. But unless I learn to use the difference between poetry and rhetoric my power too will run corrupt as poisonous mold or lie limp and useless as an unconnected wire
that would destroy me for any difference where shall my eyes look? Once it was easy to know who were my people.
I do not believe our wants have made all our lies holy.
Humility lies in the face of history and I have forgiven myself for him
Do not mistake my flesh
for the enemy do not write my name in the dust
if we do not stop killing the other in ourselves the self that we hate in others soon we shall all lie in the same direction
I am woman and not white.
compromise is a coffin nail
I have died too many deaths that were not mine.
Therapy Trying to see you my eyes grow confused it is not your face they are seeking fingering through your spaces like a hungry child even now I do not want to make a poem I want to make you more and less a part from my self.
I made you and take you made into me.
What do you mean no no no no you don’t have the right to know how often have we built each other as shelters against the cold and even my daughter knows what you know can hurt you she says her nos and it hurts she says when she talks of liberation she means freedom from that pain she knows what you know can hurt but what you do not know can kill.
am trying to reach you before you fall in to me.
My sister and I have been raised to hate genteelly each other’s silences sear up our tongues like flame we greet each other with respect meaning from a watchful distance while we dream of lying in the tender of passion to drink from a woman who smells like love.
Once it was easy to know who were my people.
However the image enters its force remains within my eyes
A woman measures her life’s damage my eyes are caves, chunks of etched rock tied to the ghost of a black boy whistling crying and frightened her tow-headed children cluster like little mirrors of despair their father’s hands upon them and soundlessly a woman begins to weep.
I could open her up to my anger with a point sharpened upon love.
was born in the gut of Blackness from between my mother’s particular thighs
I cannot recall the words of my first poem but I remember a promise I made my pen never to leave it lying in somebody else’s blood.
What do we want from each other after we have told our stories do we want to be healeddo we want mossy quiet stealing over our scars do we want the powerful unfrightening sister who will make the pain go away mother’s voicein the hallway you’ve done it right the first timedarling you will never need to do it again.
Thunder grumbles on the horizon I buy time with another story a pale blister of air cadences of dead flesh obscure the vowels.
offwe drift separate and syllabic if we survive at all.
Who did you bury to become enforcer of the law
Our deepest bonds remain the mirror and the gun.
Your hunger for rectitude blossoms into rage the hot tears of mourning never shed for you before your twisted measurements the agony of denial the power of unshared secrets.
This could be the day. I could slip anchor and wander to the end of the jetty uncoil into the waters a vessel of lightmoonglade ride the freshets to sundown and when I am gone another stranger will find you coiled on the warm sand beached treasureand love you for the different stories your seas tell and half-finished blossoms growing out of my season trail behind with a comforting hum. But today is not the day. Today.
