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, antiheroes, 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.

***

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.

***

In a parallel world where all Dr. Who’s are black,
I’m the doctor who knows no god is more powerful
Than Time. In a parallel world where all the doctors
Who are black see cops box black boys in cop cars
And caskets, I’m the doctor who vanishes whenever
He sees a police box. In a parallel world where doctors
Box cops in arenas, and in a parallel world where
The doctors box cops in caskets, I am the doctor
Who disappears inside a skull too small to hold a mind.
Question: if, in a parallel world where every Doctor
Who was black, you were the complex Time Lord,
When & where would you explore? My answer is,
A brother has to know how to time travel & doctor
Himself when a knee or shoe stalls against his neck.

***

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.

***

I only intend to send word to my future
Self perpetuation is a war against Time
Travel is essentially the aim of any religion
Is blindness the color one sees under water
Breath can be overshadowed in darkness
The benefits of blackness can seem radical
Black people in America are rarely compulsive
Hi-fivers believe joy is a matter of touching others
Is forbidden the only word God doesn’t know
You have to heal yourself to truly be heroic
You have to think once a day of killing your self
Awareness requires a touch of blindness & self
Importance is the only word God knows
To be free is to live because only the dead are slaves

***

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.

***

But there never was a black male hysteria
Like the logic of one who litters to lower
The number of fires caused by burning cigarettes
Tossed in trashcans is relatively low but fear of fire
Probably explains the number of butts everywhere
In New York democracy is like the story of many
Black people in America are rarely compulsive
Hi-fivers believe joy is a matter of touching others
Is forbidden the only word God doesn't know
You have to heal yourself to truly be heroic
You have to think once a day of killing your self
Awareness requires a touch of blindness & self
Importance is the only word God knows
To be free is to live because only the dead are slaves

***

But there never was a black male hysteria:
As if you weren’t the lover of Langston Hughes,
Forced to hold what you knew of his measure
Secret until it drove you mad enough to cruise
The dive bars reciting the poems he wrote
About you but never published for shadows:
Lines covered in bruises & stars, almost
Unhinged lyrics. The man was high yellow
In public, afraid of himself, pretending the Blues
Was a substance when in fact, it was the opposite:
Like a breath that comes so quickly you
Feel you’re breathing ether: either atmospheric
And anonymous as the air against a window,
Or indefinite & mute as a curtain of wind.

***

But there never was a black male hysteria:
As if you weren’t the spouse of Toni Morrison,
Forced by love to watch her flower, as well as
Literally expand. The locks of her hair prevented
Your skin from ever touching her skin. You never
Smelled the nape of her neck, though you glimpsed
It when her head cocked to illuminate paper. As if
Everything was a tool or weapon. Often you offered
Your measure, but she preferred her own song.
As if to make your manly blackness more strange,
More elaborate, more characteristic, fine-tuned
And refined. Soaphead Church, Empire State, Guitar,
Gideon, Son. The hysteria of being so multiplied
And divided in a mind, you go out of your mind.

***

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