AMERICAN SONNET FOR MY PAST AND FUTURE ASSASSIN

 

Aryans, Betty Crocker, Bettye Lavette,

Blowfish, briar bushes, Bubbas, Buckras,

Archie Bunkers, bullhorns, bullwhips, bullets,

All cancers kill me, car crashes, cavemen, chakras,

Crackers, discord, dissonance, doves, Elvis,

Ghosts, the grim reaper herself, a heart attack

While making love, hangmen, Hillbillies exist,

Lillies, Martha Stewarts, Mayflower maniacs,

Money grubbers, Gwen Brooks’ “The Mother,”

(My mother’s bipolar as bacon), pancakes kill me,

Phonies, dead roaches, big roaches & smaller

Roaches, the sheepish, snakes, all seven seas,

Snow avalanches, swansongs, sciatica, Killer

Wasps, yee-haws, you, now & then, disease.

 

 

 

AMERICAN SONNET FOR MY PAST AND FUTURE ASSASSIN

 

Probably, ghosts are allergic to us. Our uproarious

Breathing & ruckus. Our eruptions, our disregard

For dust. Small worlds unwhirl in the corners of our homes

After death. Our warriors, weirdos, antiheros, our sirs,

Sires, our sighers, sidewinders & whiners, winos,

And wonders become dust. I know a few of the dead.

I remember my sister’s last hoorah.  I remember

The horror of her head on a pillow. For a long time

The numbers were balanced. The number alive equal

To the number in graves. After a very long time

The bones become dust again & the dust

After a long time becomes dirt & the dirt becomes soil

And the soil becomes grain again. This bitter earth is a song

Clogging the mouth before it is swallowed or spat out.

 

 



 

AMERICAN SONNET FOR MY PAST AND FUTURE ASSASSIN

 

I pour a pinch of serious poison for you James

Earl Ray Dylann Roof I pour a punch of piss for you

George Zimmerman John Wilkes Booth Robert

Chambliss Thomas Edwin Blanton Jr Bobby Frank

Cherry Herman Frank Cash Jim Crow your name

Is a gate opening upon another gate I pour a punch

Of perils I pour a bunch of punches all over you

I pour unmerciful panic into your river I damn you

With the opposite of prayer Byron De La Beckwith

Roy Bryant  J.W. Milan Edgar Ray Killen Assassins

Love trumps power or blood to trump power

Beauty trumps power or blood to trump power

Justice trumps power or blood to trump power

The names alive are like the names in the graves

 

 

 

AMERICAN SONNET FOR MY PAST AND FUTURE ASSASSIN

 

The earth of my nigga eyes are assassinated.

The deep well of my nigga throat is assassinated.

The tender bells of my nigga testicles are gone.

You assassinate the sound of our bullshit & blissfulness.

The bones managing the body’s business are cloaked

Until you assassinate my nigga flesh. The skin is replaced

By a cloak of fire. Sometimes it is river or rainwater

That cloaks the bones. Sometimes we lie on the roadside

In bushels of knotted roots, flowers & thorns until our body

Is found. You assassinate the smell of my breath, which is like

Smoke, milk, twilight, itself. You assassinate my tongue

Which is like the head of a turtle wearing my skull for a shell.

You assassinate my lovely legs & the muscular hook of my cock.

Still, I speak for the dead. You cannot assassinate my ghosts.



 

 

 

AMERICAN SONNET FOR MY PAST AND FUTURE ASSASSIN

 

America, you just wanted change is all, a return

To the kind of awe experienced after beholding a reign

Of gold. A leader whose metallic narcissism is a reflection

Of your own. You share a fantasy with Trinidad

James, who said “Gold all in my chain, gold all in my ring,

Gold all in my watch” & if you know what I’m talking

About, your gold is the yellow of “Lemonade” by Gucci

Mane: “Yellow rims, yellow big booty, yellow bones,

Yellow Lambs, yellow MP's, yellow watch.” Like no  

Culture before us, we relate the way the descendants

Of the raped relate to the descendants of their rapists.

May your restlessness come at last to rest, constituents

Of Midas, I wish you the opposite of what Neruda said

Of lemons, may all the gold you touch burn, rot & rust.

 

 

 

 

AMERICAN SONNET FOR MY PAST AND FUTURE ASSASSIN

 

I remember my sister’s last hoorah. She joined the black

People I've grown tired of losing. They were going upstairs

Together, all the dead from parts Of Florida, Ferguson,

Brooklyn, Charleston, Cleveland, Chicago, Baltimore,

Everywhere. Someone is prey in all of our encounters.

I am someone with a good memory & better imagination.

I know the names alive are like the names in graves.

Probably all of our encounters are existential Jambalaya.

Probably blindness has a chewed heart in its belly.

Probably, ghosts are allergic to the blindness you’ve hitched

Your wagon to. Because we are made of earth, don’t you

And I share a loss, sweet Assassin, aren’t you & I haunted,

Sweetness, Sweetness, Sweetness? Poor, tattered Heart,

Old, poisoned Heart, I’ve almost grown tired of talking to you.

 

 

 

 

AMERICAN SONNET FOR MY PAST AND FUTURE ASSASSIN

 

Rilke ends his sonnet, “Archaic Torso Of Apollo” saying

“You must change your life.” James Wright ends “Lying

In A Hammock At William Duffy's Farm In Pine Island,

Minnesota” saying “I have wasted my life.” Ruth Stone ends

“A Moment” Saying “You do not want to repeat my life.”

A minute seed with a giant soul kicking inside it at the end

And beginning of life. After the opening scene where

A car bomb destroys the black detective’s family, there are

Several scenes of our hero at the edge of life. A shootout

In an African American Folk Museum, a shootout

In the middle of an interstate rest stop parking lot, a shootout

In a barn endangering the farm life. The life

That burns a hole through life, that leaves a scar for life,

That makes you weep for another life. Define life.

 

 

 

AMERICAN SONNET FOR MY PAST AND FUTURE ASSASSIN

 

Goddamn, so this is what it means to have a leader

You despise, the racists said when the president

Was black and I’ll be damned if I ain’t saying it too.

Is this a mandate for whiteness, virility, sovereignty,

Stupidity, an idiot’s threats & gangsta narcissisms threading

Every shabby sentence his trumpet constructs? You

Are not allowed to say shit about Mexicans when you

Ain't actually got any Mexican friends— I bet you’ve never

Been invited to a family dinner. You ain’t allowed to deride

Women when you’ve never wept in front of a woman

That wasn't your mother. America’s struggle with itself

Has always had black people at the heart of it. You can’t

Grasp your own hustle, your blackness, you can’t grasp

Your own pussy, your black pussy dies for touch.

 

 

 

AMERICAN SONNET FOR MY PAST AND FUTURE ASSASSIN

 

When I am nowhere near a ledge or knife covered

In a corridor of fever colored carpet or catching rain

Bead upon the morning headlights hungering some crash

To crack & blacken me before a train full of women

With nose rings & thigh boots, the curved ass of a mother

With her toddler & the rain still following the hills

And shoulders of parts of Maryland & New Jersey,

And the oncoming trains passing inches from head-on

Headlong into Newark where I almost escaped this path,

Before remembering the thrill coloring even today’s

Melancholy delay asleep, awake, the wild haired woman

Smiling on the stairs before fading, a song in the ear

Like the broken phone booth I passed in the Village

Beside a puddle of what could have been crushed tomatoes

 

 

 

AMERICAN SONNET FOR MY PAST AND FUTURE ASSASSIN

 

On some level, I'm always full of Girl Scout cookies

In the Land of a failed landlord with a people of color

Complex. On some level every action is an affirmation

Of personality. In the near empty subway car

I watched a brother dance on the ceiling, spin

On the subway pole like a stripper, twirl like an inverted

Ballarina on the parallel bars. I had no money

To give him. I was going to the party as Will Smith

In the first half of the Hancock movie: aloof, gifted,

Fucked up. I saw the shadows of planes gallop

Over buildings. I saw five white girls side by side

On a park bench, almost synchronized taking selfies

Of themselves taking selfies together in the land

Of a failed landlord with a people of color complex.

 

 

 

AMERICAN SONNET FOR MY PAST AND FUTURE ASSASSIN

 

The difference between stay woke & don’t sleep

Was lost. The difference between knowing & thinking.

You can teach the heart to love its sadness. Yes, you can.

In the land of a failed landlord with a people of color

Complex. The difference between cursive, tantrum,

Trauma. Assault & pepper spray. When it was learned

The first man was actually born a woman with a clit

So swollen with longing it hung from her like an udder

Waiting to be drained, no one mentioned what was at

The beginning of longing. Which is loneliness.

Which will not be snuffed by power, which will not be

Quenched by sex. No one mentioned the implications:

To be a man is to possess a woman’s consciousness,

To be a woman is to possess a woman’s consciousness.

 

 

 

AMERICAN SONNET FOR MY PAST AND FUTURE ASSASSIN

 

It was discovered the best way to combat

Sadness was to make your sadness a door.

Or make it an envelope of wireless chatter

Or wires pulled from the radio tape recorder

Your mother bought you for Christmas in 1984.

If you think a hammer is the only way to hammer

A nail, you ain’t thought of the nail correctly.

My problem was I’d decided to make myself

A poem.  It made me sweat in private selfishly.

It made me bleed, bleep & weep for health.

As a poem I could show my children the man

I dreamed I was, my mother & fathers, my half

Brothers, the lovers I lost. Just morning, as a poem,

I asked myself if I was going to weep today.