That we await a blessed hope, & that we will be struck
With great fear, like a baby taken into the night, that every boot,
Every improvised explosive, Talon & Hornet, Molotov
& rubber-coated bullet, every unexploded cluster bomblet,
Every Kevlar & suicide vest & unpiloted drone raining fire
On wedding parties will be burned as fuel in the dark season.
That we will learn the awful hunger of God, the nerve-fraying
Cry of God, the curdy vomit of God, the soiled swaddle of God,
At this hour the soul floats weightlessly
through the city streets, speechless and invisible,
astonished by the smoky blend of grays and golds
seeping out of the air, the dark half-tones
of dusk suddenly filling the urban sky
while the body sits listlessly by the window
sullen and heavy, too exhausted to move,
too weary to stand up or to lie down.
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:
People, don't ask me again where my shoes are.
The valley I walked through was frozen to me
as I was to it. My heavy hide, my zinc
talisman — I'm fine, people. Don't stare
at my feet. And don't flash the sign of the cross
in my face. I carry the Blue Cross Card —
card among cards, card of my number
and gold seal. So shall ye know I am of
the system, in the beast's belly and up
to here, people, with your pity.
I don’ t buy it, says
the scientist.
Replies the frail
and faithful heart,
it’ s not for sale.
A lizard does not make a sound,
it has no song,
it does not share my love affairs
with flannel sheets,
bearded men, interlocking
silver rings, the moon,
the sea, or ink.
But sitting here the afternoon,
I’ ve come to believe
we do share a love affair
and a belief —
in wink, blink, stone,
and heat.
Also, air.
This is not a fable,
nor is it bliss.
Impatience,
remember this.
From the far star points of his pinned extremities,
cold inched in — black ice and squid ink —
till the hung flesh was empty.
Lonely in that void even for pain,
he missed his splintered feet,
the human stare buried in his face.
He ached for two hands made of meat
he could reach to the end of.
In the corpse’ s core, the stone fist
of his heart began to bang
on the stiff chest’ s door, and breath spilled
back into that battered shape. Now
I came awake in kindergarten,
under the letter K chalked neat
on a field-green placard leaned
on the blackboard's top edge. They'd cagedme
in a metal desk — the dull word writ
to show K's sound. But K meant kick and kill
His death in Benares
Won’ t save the assassin
From certain hell,
Any more than a dip
In the Ganges will send
Frogs — or you — to paradise.
My home, says Kabir,
Is where there’ s no day, no night,
And no holy book in sight
To squat on our lives.
And into the heavens, as on a bright day after rain,
there came the shapes of four creatures,
and they each had the likeness of a man,
and each man had four wings outstretched
and each wing had four eyes emblazoned, wide open,
given to weeping at the worlds they contained:
