Ravis

My brother turns his life insideout,
from a jail in Leesville,
from a half-way house in Lake Charles,
from a slave-quarter in DeRidder.
He is prisoner of his own rage,
trapped behind the swollen bars
of some lingering chains
and some sudden cage.

I speak to him from miles away,
from the cell next door and
lightyears away,
from motherlands and the fertile earth
our Mississippi father plowed:

I am trying to be the lawyer he needs,
the father who died fighting for his son,
the big brother with muscles in his miles,
the preacher with his pitiful prayers,

I am trying to give him
the key to the cage, the hammer
to break the chains, the plot
the escape, the magic, the ju-ju
the tunnel under the demon walls,
the North Star to follow,

I climb inside all his sins,
find them in the flesh of this poem,
do bloody battle with them,
rip them apart like a white man's curse,
become their bitter judge,
their merciful jury,
their solemn executioner,

I leave them on the open floor
of his cell, spread out like the pages
of a testament, shadowboxing him
like a mirror,

I can forgive them
those far-away long-ago sins,
but I can't erase them,
for they have their own afterlife,
their own ghost pulsating
on the hot breath where
my brother's frustrated bloodline boils...

yet no loving offering
from my elderly black hand
can reverse his youthful middle passage
as he sits
on the frontporch of his betrayed generation,
sent to his silent room
like a spoiled boychild,
where he conjures secret maps
for whatever freedoms
he chose to rock his dusty soul with.