On Time Tanka

- 1936-2002

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.

6.3.96-6.4.96

Dear Adrienne
 
But love was never more
than what Elijah
listened to
                        That small
                        that still
a summoning forever
immanent
regardless of its wavelength
pitted against tyrannies
gigantic
in a kitchen
or some other battlefield
                       computer rituals of quit
                       or cancel
                       or the friend who lies
It is often—like the calling 
of the psychopath
“a clean cut kid”—
that we mistake
the madness of the trickster
demon
for our own
or 
minimize the meaning
of these words on open
opening 
space
 
inside this cartoon
context
where it’s normal
to approach a wall
for money
 
this then
is the lens 
to magnify
ignite
redeem
and willingly defy
the maggots eager
for that moment when
our spirits die
and dying
deify the fearsome
meretricious
killer agencies
that jeopardize
the birdsong of our days
 
Oh, Adrienne!
This is that love
                                  It’s here
                                  Between us
                                                          growing
 

Related Poems

The Chil’ren Might Know

we once was warriors
bone sharp and tangling up
wit whatever wild was in the world
before some ships rolled in
wit folk we ain’t never seen
brandin iron and bullet men
claimin everythin
leavin misery

maybe
they know we ain’t always
been so lowly
so feverish wit brokenness
so in   fil   trated
maybe they can look past

the bruises
to see when we
were bigger underneath
and forgive us our frailty
we was overcome
wit the kind of
meanness that don’t care
about nothin but
feedin itself

we had hands once
and a river to bathe in

and names
full names
that called us home.

the chil’ren might know that
if they lookin at us right

we lost our mouths
‘cross a mighty mighty ocean.
coulda died but we don’t know how…

Tanka Diary [Don't need picket fences, brick wall]

Don't need picket fences, brick wall,
or razor wire. Our home's protected by
prickly pear cactus and thorny bougainvillea.

*

Native or not, you're welcome in our gardens.
Lavender's dress is not so vibrant as your
green trousers and purple velour sleeves.

2019

I could string him back up the tree, if you’d like.
        Return his skin’s meaning to an easy distance, coal dust, blaze
And Willie Brown him. You
        Love how the blood muddies the original,
The way it makes a stage of my speechifying, this leeching
        Capital from his dying,
Like an activist. I know

I’m not supposed to sing

Of his ringing
        Penetrability, some hole I open impose
On the form—but all I see is bullets, bullets discerning him,
        As years ago it was rope.
I could pull it tighter, finger each bullet deeper,
        If you’d like, an inch rougher,
Far enough to where becomes that second heat, erotic.

I could use the erotic,

If you’d like,
        So ungarish, baring not too frank
A mood, subtle so you need it.— Funny
        How some dark will move illicit if you close your eyes,
The way, say, my black
        Pleasure is named too explicit for a page, but this menace
I put in it is not.

I could yank and knot

The rope, if you’d like, him like a strange fragment
        In them trees,
And the word “again” spelled out about his neck
        Would be the rope’s predicate till let wild, patterned and
Fierce his moan.
        It is a tragedy. No. It is a sonnet, how I know
Already how he ends,

But I could make him

Her, if you’d like, regender them till merely
        Canvas for your “empathy,”
Soup for my mouth. Still, if I could but just get
        This blunt,
Burnt lynched body up
        From on
Out the pocket behind my eye

All trees could be themselves again, all sound.