I Do Not Know the Spelling of Money
I go to the railroad tracks
And follow them to the station of my enemies
“Yes, you poets make points. But they are all silly.”
Like he is in some kind of solar position
Police chief looking straight through the poet
“Awkward basketball moves look good on you, sir… Yes, we are everywhere, sir… Bandanas in the middle of every society, sir… Surveil the shuffle, sir.”
The ruling class have a child
Outside of “Prophet Basket,” the bar
A cobalt-toothed man pitches pennies at my mugshot negative
The ruling class floats baskets of swathed neighborhood off to be adopted
Government plants braiding dust
Toddlers in the rock
I see why everyone out here got in the big cosmic basket
And why blood agreements mean a lot
And why I get shot back at
I understand the psycho-spiritual refusal to write white history or take the glass freeway
Ricochet sewage near where I collapsed
into a rat-infested manhood
My new existence as living graffiti
The new bullets pray over blankets made from old bullets
The 28th hour’s next beauty mark
The waist band before the next protest poster
for settler polity
I am going to go ahead and sharpen these kids’ heads into arrows myself and see how much
gravy spills out of family crests.
Bought slavers some time, didn’t it?
The tantric screeches of military bolts and Election-Tuesday cars
Proof of fondled nooses
And sundown couples
making their favorite graphic audience out of opaque peach plastic
the Medgar-second is definitely my favorite law of science
Fondled news clippings and primitive Methodists
My arm changes imperialisms
Simple policing vs. Structural frenzies
Elementary school script vs. Even whiter white spectrums
Artless bleeding and
the challenge of watching civilians think
Modern fans of war
What with their t-shirt poems
And t-shirt guilt
And me, having on the cheapest pair of shoes on the bus,
I have no choice but to read the city walls for signs of my life
Soldier Clothes
Millions pretend
that water is white noise
The people part of memory
sleeps beside a soda can
or two
Beside a chair’s-eye view of revolution
Chemical America
becomes human enough
to wear a wedding ring
then no form further
But Rooftops Did All the Work
Half asleep was my tutor
When I played my hand violently for the first time
“I’m snorting cocaine on the back of a poorly decorated camel,”
I told the choir as they rushed out of the church doors
“why are you all running in a drought?”
I am a mock person
Clocks where the toilet
apparently does not need to be anymore
“at least I know where my veins are metaphors.”
-talking about facts that
the choir will never be able to handle
(they are somewhere pretending that they are in the desert)
“my veins are metaphors right here, chumps!”
I say watching the library burn
“Go ahead now. Run to the corner store
and let the oligarchy know that everything is alright”
people/walking confidently down the street with their real arms reaching up
people/ walking confidently down the street/walking on top of their real clothes
people/naked with hands up
The staircase under this slavery
And one hundred slaves
For a delicate five dollars
I made a deal early in life
But now I feel like hanging in there a little longer
—when human flight becomes the fall that nobody saw
I am influenced by it all
—as is the custom
I do not trust immortal people
And therefore hope to not become one
“I’m a bluesman. Of course I mean to kill you.”
not in charge of an altar
not in charge of an important altar, anyway
not one that is about fancy deities
just a plain neighborhood for the dead
please give me
spare change and your word that I won’t be missing in a year
—as is the custom, two humans make a humanity