That Black Book
The edge of each page
stained red,
Once whitened snow,
Pressed flakes of a day
now laminated with a grayed,
disgusting film.
Is this your worth?
The latticework
of iniquity,
Hugged at your bosom,
Like a day’s wage,
You wrought
in charred soot,
Refusing to let go of dirt,
Of spoiled food.
Yet, you deny, still deny,
That you toiled
in stale sheets of filth,
Plundering with your smug boots,
Unleashing serpent beasts
that roar,
Louder than any train,
On beaten, wooden
tracks, whose dirge is heard,
Echoing off droplets of hardworking
man’s sweat.
And you are allowed the gift to remain
with that book,
The blackest, tarred binding,
Cradled at your arm like an aborted baby,
Lying still, a mucous filled
drowning,
Waiting for the beat of your heart’s drum to cease,
I see ashes, falling silently
upon your chest,
I smell rot, you never have
given your best,
Or at least, I never knew it,
As I never knew you.
I am thankful I had not,
I had never thought beauty,
Eyes in full focus,
I see that black book, the one you cherish,
Plunging me into a cesspool,
Drowning among the fatherless,
Cherish not I,
Just your black book.
If Music Were Boxed
Chiming pins pluck
the serrated, steel teeth,
Amazingly prodding,
That subtle affair; the combing
for softened mixtures,
Bled through dyes; Tyrian purple
and rose madder.
Egyptian layers and layering,
That comforting chemise
cleverly hiding the
discontented memories.
Consistent bells tolling
loft-fully aware,
That the sudden impartment would always
be the decompartmentalized.
The unwinding
wind up of centuries
of echoed voices in the hall.
Cement whispers as cold as the grey sky,
Absorbed into granite quarry,
We met a bargain
on the foot of a flower bed,
And a locket kept hidden about my breasts
was my only recompence for
your absence.
The Naga & the Mirror
A testament
of a forked-tongue,
green scales
line the bellies
of the people
waiting in line,
each etching out
their defining right
to plunder,
kill; any maned source,
“wait your turn,”
knaves shout
their vain manhood;
yet folly
is heard rising above
their impotent domain.
Slithering sorts
caught between,
the naga and the mirror,
an image blackened
by stagnant blood,
used as tar and
feathering
the outside hull
of a crowded vessel,
the mirror cracked,
seven years bad luck
is coveted more
than staying
wedged
on this damned,
near wreckage.
What is Truth?
Life is a lesson,
Graded on a curve of grace;
Mercy follows Truth.
Heaps of Hues
I helped pluck the pictures from
the wall.
They had hung like a
schizophrenic haze,
Canopying the brilliance
of a time
when the flying amari
swooped heaps of hues
upon our heads.
But now I ached deep,
Pulling each nail from them
from the wall.
I envisioned hanging myself
from his clear shower curtain rod,
Because the scent of his departure
left my body writhing in sheer madness.
He had kept me from the booby hatch,
Taught me the inner markings of
Enocian and sage work.
He had taught me jealousy
had a name.
She moved with ease from
East to West,
Traversing satellite waves
to find myself stricken
with blue shades
from the dried caps
still metabolizing in my brain.
I was smitten.
Even Alice leapt to her grave.
And when he left that summer day,
I knew another Wednesday grief,
Another June heat sadness.
Mandrake root had backfired
that day.
Those Days
My nose is awake,
Awake to the beaded oil memory of
coconut draped
over the freckled hamlet base
of my Mother’s flour colored skin.
It was hot.
The chance of
her tan increasing
as blades of crisp grass
pricked at my bare feet.
Brother and I took spoons
to the fresh dirt,
Scooping up mounds to
toss the cores of our finished Granny Smiths.
We had hoped a tree would grow,
Not in Brooklyn or anything.
But in our coal mining town,
Whose beginnings were marked by
a dream that mining and fishing
for buried treasures would yield supper:
tuna fish sandwiches and
crunching off brand Cheetos against
my short, planked teeth.
That was the true highlight of
those days.
Those magnificent days.
Lost to time and required space.
I am left to dilly-dally.
