This year the leaves turn red green black
freedom colors each leaf
each stitch of grass. I am amazed
at my sweet harvest. The prison door has opened
and a nation’ s heart is released. I am full
having spent my greediness in a ritual of joy.
and then there are the one-hit zombies
cursed to an eternity of Monday nights
who runs our music does not make it
controls manufacture and marketing of rhythm
schemes on and fixes the charts. it’ s polyphonic
from the dark of the chitlin to solid gold dawn
doublecrossed over
a love come down
after the plunge
sloshing around in limbo
that too sweet gospel splash
This exclusive shit I don’ t share with the world.
50 Cent
I, Herman, made medicinal — concocted potions in ways my former’ s was hearsay;
Turned palomas christened Zora on to formulas husbands roll over n mitzvah.
I, a black lad, proud Virginian, selling out Liberty Hall n pinched w/ stickpins
in Woodlawn, do bequeath my next-to-last oratory:
there is a dark mass following me. these legs are clumsy. they flap quickly.
I want to slow them down. but my nerves. Lord, these pensive endings.
the sun slumps against the merging fall on red leaves.
and where the natives are unenlightened, the mass comes closer.
only white people swim in lakes nowadays
you know... Crystal Lake?
“Lincoln? —
Well, I was in the old Second Maine,
The first regiment in Washington from the Pine Tree State.
Of course I didn’ t get the butt of the clip;
We was there for guardin’ Washington —
We was all green.
The clouds had made a crimson crown
Above the mountains high.
The stormy sun was going down
In a stormy sky.
Why did you let your eyes so rest on me,
And hold your breath between?
In all the ages this can never be
As if it had not been.
So I'll speak ill of the dead. A was crooked,
planting the small left finger of the raccoon in the upholstery
before he sold the car. B made certain to point out Celia's
bewildered look before her pink slip came in the flimsy institution.
In the videos of C, a jejune overwhelmed the cast.
Thanks, Ray, this is just what the doctor ordered.
No, you never see me have one with olives — your father likes
olives but I can’ t stand them.
No, cocktail onions are just picked small. Turn that down, Dan.
Flashing in the grass; the mouth of a spider clung
to the dark of it: the legs of the spider
held the tucked wings close,
held the abdomen still in the midst of calling
with thrusts of phosphorescent light —
Knock me or nothing, the things of this world
ring in me, shrill-gorged and shrewish,
clicking their charms and their chains and their spouts.
Let them. Let the fans whirr.
All the similar virgins must have emptied
their flimsy pockets, and I
was empty enough,
sugared and stretched on the unmown lawn,
dumb as the frost-pink tongues
of the unpruned roses.
When you put your arms around me in that moment,
when you pulled me to you and leaned
back, when you lifted me
just a few inches, when you shook me
