after Bobby Womack's "Across 110th St"

what do you see across the street

you and your family survived by any means

trying to break out

of the road paint, across

23rd st., across Wisconsin, across

the faces of my friends, who come and grimace

at danger, the darker they think

the riskier, and we still speak different languages,

i'm a human variant,

I GOT ONE MORE THING ID LIKE

TO TALK TO YAW ABOUT RIGHT NOW

there's better ways out.

guilt isn't one of them.

nor is blame.

to be strong you have to survive to survive you need to know need

closely like a younger brother you are protecting.

across 110th street i'm watching Womack drink a coffee and i'm drinking a coffee

and time is pressing paper down somewhere else but not in my brain.

after this we will throw a house party.

across these streets and down that beautiful broad park

where i'm told not to go people are tested every day.

somebody shed my skin naked and now everything is a paler or darker

brown and i mean mug yaw who tell me i should think differently.

EVERY CITY YOU FIND THE SAME THING GOING DOWN

ME -----> YOU

where is global at where? where dig duck down pond lips lasting
past Springtime Jesters! Listen cordially, numbers filling up my sieve, fruitless,
knee ----carpet,
glass, please. Just interview me! ALREADY
when I have 1 bean HUSH-HUSH?
leprechaun chandelier rapping at my hem, scratchy, bereaved. Cacophony
like cancer: holy O's, discount cereal marked up because I DING hostess bell over over over
over & she's in front of me. ELECTRICAL BILL? Just give me the real reason I'm not welcome
anymore. Lazy on a NET of FREE: handsome buckaroos
clambering towards a gold (but
probably lead- PLUMBLUM) rocking
chair unafraid of the creaking heard over
my pivoting sex,
currently unimagined
yet so present. I ache with mouth closed, fingers tensed.

Dry Season

bridge to nowhere
lousy git gone square
said he'd motel hunt then whiskey his neck
sideways with me. We don't kiss.
We don't kiss unless I'm more gone than when I care.
We change our names. Wear feather boas,
imagine cue ball suicides & fashion suspension bridges
in our heads that'd take 10-15 years tops to
ribbon cutting ceremony. But Wallace skipped town on me.
He found a new juice & speaks less desperately. Roots and all now.
Making his own 'hood now.

conglomerate

we forget about the money.

I’d rather have you turned on by a picture of me

and jump my bones in response

instead of decay in a desk chair.

it’s the sentiment that’s sweet

but the self that is dissolved in the sacrifice.

but what else do we have tongues for?

every day it’s a bridge, sugar.

whether word or limb.

whether word or limb,

every day it's a bridge, sugar.

but what else do we have tongues for?

but the self that is dissolved in the sacrifice -

it's the sentiment that's sweet,

instead of decay in a desk chair.

and jump my bones in response!

I'd rather have you turned on by a picture of me.

we forget about the money.

About No one

marry me, Sticker Pants, where I was I miss Mary.
He might fall down he waits for something to smooth him then
he loses his keys no more states, no more gives a shits birth control
wait no more silent night
never stop dig any where. Over here. Don't stay don't stay
always corrugating meaningless phrases
control lips opposite then obsolete happens
careful your diction, you're sweet
your sweet aberration
dig: aware of body, now.

It can wait, can't it?

it ought to be, a click.

the tap, the one silence and we know

what the other must say, so I slip off

like Grace, like Doris, like any

and offer a dance. Head waggle,

fine. Avarice of the good times.

if poets were hot celebrites

O MY GOOOOOOOODDDDDDDDD your deviant sonnets make me wet!

and when you right justified that one poem in your first book

I nearly CRIED I was so impressed

your. extended. metaphors. extend. my. throbbing. womanhood.

those line breaks were practically a wet dream but when I woke up

I was in a small art gallery with people around me and my cries

made it SO AWKWARD – I didn’t care though I had your new

collection nestled in my shirt cuddling my breasts your showing not telling

made my nipples hard O MY GOODDDDDDDDDDDD those eye rhymes made me whine

and moan and those caesuras?! FUCK ME they were surely

the greatest textual silences ever created. will you sign

your name on my cleavage with a simile

of my smile and its k if you cant I just want your word play

playing on my body the hand of a prosody god!

I wake up and flip through your pages,

im moving to Iowa, maybe I can find out where you live!