i’m confident that the absolute dregs of possibility for this society,
the sugary coffee mound at the bottom of this cup,
our last best hope that when our little bit of assigned plasma implodes 
it won’t go down as a green mark in the cosmic ledger,
lies in the moment when you say hello to a bus driver 
and they say it back—

when someone holds the door open for you 
and you do a little jog to meet them where they are—

walking my dog, i used to see this older man 
and whenever I said good morning, 
he replied ‘GREAT morning’—

in fact, all the creative ways our people greet each other
may be the icing on this flaming trash cake hurtling through the ether. 

when the clerk says how are you 
and i say ‘i’m blessed and highly favored’ 

i mean my toes have met sand, and wiggled in it, a lot. 
i mean i have laughed until i choked and a friend slapped my back.
i mean my niece wrote me a note: ‘you are so smart + intellajet’

i mean when we do go careening into the sun, 

i’ll miss crossing guards ushering the grown folks too, like ducklings 
and the lifeguards at the community pool and
men who yelled out the window that they’d fix the dent in my car, 
right now! it’d just take a second—

and actually everyone who tried to keep me alive, keep me afloat, 
and if not unblemished, suitably repaired.

but I won’t feel too sad about it,
becoming a star 

After Benji Hart

1. How many hands have touched this food?
2. What were their intentions?
3. How vast is the range?
4. What makes them hands at all?
5. How many seeds survived their birth for this?
6. Did you count yourself?
7. From sprout to pluck, how many breaths old was the oldest?
8. What’s become of its homeland?
9. How many breaths will it add to yours?
10. Or is this a thing that takes?
11. Which things were born dead for this?
12. Did you count yourself?
13. Which born free?
14. Which born food?
15. Is there a state in-between?
16. How old was the well of that answer?
17. If governments and their signed scrolls are Plato’s cave wall shadows, where is the real sun?
18. What’s become of its homeland?
19. How many generations removed from the land are you?
20. What floor takes its place?
21. What is it built on top of?
22. Are the people who tended that place still alive?
23. Are there any living descendants?
24. Is their language still spoken on earth?
25. If you heard it, would your feet twitch?
26. Or does dead mean gone?
27. How many gone things in your place?
28. Did you count yourself?
29. What does your body and the day it makes cost?
30. What is its price, in gone things?
31. Is this sustainable? Better—regenerative?
32. Or will this make you the most gone thing alive?
33. Is god or the human the cave wall shadow?
34. Who says the shadow is nothing at all?
35. Are you still eating?
36. Who?
37. What for?
38. What have you grown in its place?
39. How much is enough?
40. Is enough a place or a count?
41. Is there a state in-between?
42. Or does enough mean gone?
43. Did you enough yourself?
44. In the language of the oldest gone thing, how do you say devour?

I refuse to choose
between lynch rope and gang rape
the blues is the blues!
my skin and my sex: Deep dues
I have no wish to escape

I refuse to lose
the flame of my single space
this safety I choose
between your fist and my face
between my gender and race

All black and blue news
withers the heart of my hand
and leads to abuse
no one needs to understand:
suicide wipes out the clues

Big-Time-Juicy-Fruit!
Celebrity-Rich-Hero
Rollin out the Rolls!
Proud cheatin on your (Black) wife
Loud beatin on your (white) wife

Real slime open mouth
police officer-true-creep
evil-and-uncouth
fixin to burn black people
killin the song of our sleep

Neither one of you
gets any play in my day
I know what you do
your money your guns your say
so against my pepper spray

Okay! laugh away!
I hear you and I accuse
you both: I refuse
to choose: All black and blue news
means that I hurt and I lose.