Brass Knuckle Poems

    1.  A Magician.

2.  A MOTHERFXCKING ROCKSTAR.  

3.  Various dates in Twentieth Century America.  I’d skip myself entirely in some cases. In others I’d wring out every last second.  

4.  Point Guard for the New York Knicks.

5.  A rainforest floor.  More than anything I believe in life itself, and what a pleasure it’d be to feel the feet of all those colors. I been to Costa Rica before. The air is wet with God sweat out there.  It smells a lot like what Man forgot to trample on in his quest for gold.  I’d be a jungle of green and slick. 

6.  Professional cake batter milkshake taste-tester.

7.  Rich; like Autumn. Like the ride home on a Sunday night after drunk dinner and the record player before bed. Like the backpack of a fourth grader with mean parents and an awesome report card.  Like a good cup of coffee.  Like that good chocolate. Like a handshake from Sinatra, like someone who wouldn’t be questioned betting his spine.  

8.  My father.

9.  The devil to my fathers fucked up plan for me.

I fear nothing except…

               1.  Divorce.

               2.  Bees.

               3.  God.

Which is interesting—because real love don’t run out, honey never rots, and heaven reigns always and all ways.

    1.  Write a poem.  Make it an honest one.

2.  Hug your mother.  Sink into her arms until it becomes clear you came from somewhere gorgeous.

3.  Roll a spliff.

4.  Take that poem from #1 and tattoo it to the inside of your skull.  Walk with it everywhere.  Make sure that everyone you speak to throughout the days knows that honesty is dripping from every inch of your fingertips, and you don’t fear shit but God.  

5.  Believe in God.

6.  Start reading a James Baldwin novel.  As you’re getting close to the end of it, buy a plane ticket to Athens, Greece and fly there in late summer.  When you get to Athens, see the sights first, and then hop on one of those powerboat ferry’s at the harbor and take it across the Mediterranean Sea.  Ask the captain to take you to Santorini. Santorini is a small town built into the sloping side of a volcanic island, outside of Crete. The town is quiet but there are black and pink sand beaches bordering its bottom as well as bike trails that lead to hidden caves.  The sunset is literally a different color every single evening. When you get to Santorini, take the trolley to the top of the island and find a restaurant the locals seem to be enjoying. Ask for a glass of their finest white wine in broken Greek (as to show the host you’re interested in the language of the place he/she calls home).  Drink in hand, walk out onto the western part of the deck and feel the air on your face.  Sit down and take out the Baldwin novel.  Time it perfectly so that you’re reading the last word of the book exactly as the fire dips below the horizon.

7.  Lips.

8.  DRIVING DOWN AN EMPTY HIGHWAY ROAD ALL WINDOWS DOWN AL GREEN BLARING THROUGH THE SPEAKERS.

9.  Find a naughty girl and xxx. XX.  Xxxxxx xx xxx xxxx xxxx.

10.  Dream. 

1. I’m sorry.

2. I have more fingers than people I trust, and I am not one of those people.

3. I have more hands than times I’ve seen men admit they are scared. Manhood is a funny thing. The intrigue of standing tall swallows your skin and all of the sudden keeping ones spine intact becomes more important than the truth.

4. You are a fucking liar too and I hate you for it. You fucked him (and him and him) and I fucked her (and her and her)…but I’d forgive you for things I wouldn’t dream of forgiving myself for.

5. You’re fucking beautiful.

6. I have more lovers but less love now than ever before. Nonetheless, the eyes you watch me with are the blood-orange French kiss of hunger + caramel womanhood, and I want nothing other than to spend with you the nights that slur themselves into the morning. The ones with the full moons and werewolfed eyes.

7. Just know, baby, that I used to wake up without a clue as to which way was up or down. To be or not to be, to dream or to drown. You ended all dat and attached my feet to the ground. God, how you walk like a teethed sun—like lions done raised you. I’ve still got rise to rule the jungle together.

8. The last time we had sex your hips made Picasso out of my neck (and then my waist) like love literally didn’t exist before the second I tasted it in my mouth that night. You uninvented time when you climbed on top of me.

9. X XXXX XXX. XXX XXXX XXX.

10. I’d probably quit smoking if you asked me to.

11. Hearts are still something like sweatshirts. When you leave them in someone else’s home for too long, well, it’s not completely yours anymore.

#NOTDALTONSKIDS

1.     Sometimes I feel like writing about race is sad and pointless.  What do you possibly got to say.  It’s deeper than any speech.  It’s sharper than any King’s dream and heavier than the weight on Martin’s great-great grandfathers grave.  It’s bolder than the boldest and weaker than the weakest of Mandela’s steps. It is sterner than the firm of Biko’s grip and windier than the rooted caverns of Lena Horne’s hips. 

Most times I just say

“White-boy to the brothas. Half-nigga to the white folks”

and call it a day.

2.      I was raised by a black father. That in itself is luckier than most.

3.     I was raised by a white mother.  She has curly blond hair and a continental smile.  She is the only person I know who has actually listened to me when I was talking without thinking something to themselves during it.  Her skin breathes.  She is one thousand unicorns even when she whispers and I am jealous of my father.  She is the most beautiful woman in the world.

4.     I have never slept with a white girl.  Never even kissed a blonde, including high school and all those drunken college club nights. 

5.     I’m not sure why number four is true.  Maybe its because you can’t ride dick without a culture behind you. 

6.     Free Mumia.

7.     My father told me a story this morning over coffee before work.  He said during the night shifts up in South Boston, at the ER he was training in through his medical residency, folks would roll in with double-digit stab wounds—blood seeping from their pores like Venice in the rain—and scream at him like “DON’T LET THAT NIGGER DOCTOR TOUCH ME. DON’T LET HIM FIX ME!!!!”

8.     I have slavemaster blood in my veins.  I don’t get fucked with in the hood because people think I’m a cop.  My grandfather was a Black Panther and he’s going to die soon.

9.     A lot of my friends write poems about blackness but didn’t go to the Trayvon Martin rally.  It sucks.

10.  RIP (him and all his company)

11.  For the ones that did go to the rally, I felt their stomachs clench a slight clench at the notion of all the white faces in the crowd.  This is because there is something selfish about pain.  It happens and it hurts, and we want to keep that hurt to ourselves for us and only us to claim revenge for.  40 acres and a mule, on our terms.

12.   White guilt exists, as it should.  But every white person is not guilty.  Black people cannot be racist.  They can be counter-productive.

13.   This is polarizing but I’m still not sure we’ve had our first black President.

14.   Fuck Don Imus regardless.

15.   I am not gray and I am not beige.  My skin is the color of my fathers love, and that love has been/will always be my single reason for living.  That has nothing to do with race.

Tis all. Carry on…