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O fly away home, fly away. — Robert Hayden There are eyes, glasses even, but still he can’t see what the world sees seeing him. They know an image of him they themselves created. He knows his own: fine-lined from foot to finger, each limb adjusted, because it’s had to, to achieve finally flight — though what’s believed in him is a flightlessness, a sinking-down, as any swamp-mess of water I’m always thinking of might draw down again the washed-up body of a boy, as any mouth I’ve yearned for would take down, wrestler-style, the boy’s tongue with its own    ... What an eye can’t imagine it can’t find: not in blood, swollen in the stiff knees of a cypress, not definitely in some dreaming man’s dream — Let’s have his nature speak. What will the incredible night of  him say here, to his thousand moons, now that he can rise up to any tree, rope or none, but not fear it?

A black God touched me today and I knew I was a poet. When I produce poetry I am responding to a God who touched me in a perverse way. The state of my text is an act of worship to a black female God that told me to worship capital.   From   a   business perspective  my   poetics is   about marketing a God who fondles with my white self. This is what makes my poetry so friendly to the void in the world. I marketed a God who exploits me to bring her message of panic to the poetry sector. I was watching a Kenneth Anger film when a large aphrodisiac God converged on me and told me to create a poem that pleases her. The results of her visit are collected in books called Hit Wave and Right Now the Music and the Life Rule. The text in these books is to give the audience hope for life today because a black female God told me to.

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: My roots subverted the man, honeys n dog voyagers to Neptune, who dared interfere w/ your melodious saccharine midsection. My cluster of tricks made chaps seek out connotation. Look at my magic stick. Not my clavicles, but my magic stick. Ain’t no lightness of hand but of bounce player. Constraints imposed by a corvid named Jim could not interpret my remedies. Jim wasn’t much of a MacGyver: not one skill in therapeutic thaumaturgy. He prescribed cowlicks for the heartsick: I mean, really.

A boy who knew enough to save for something like the whim that took me downtown on the bus one lost Saturday morning of my mother’s birthday, I sat in the back where the gasoline smell made me dizzy and I closed my eyes but didn’t think of her, only of myself, basking in the light and love that would fall down on me when I handed her the box and she untied the bow to save and lifted something shining out and held it up before us like a promise taking shape for once in her hands, though I didn’t know what to buy, the bus door hissing behind me because I’m in some kind of state now, a trance that comes when you pull at the cords of light that connect the mother to the boy, the 1959 department store opening up before me like a jeweled city. In lingerie I found myself surrounded by those torsos sheened in silk, dreaming my mother, feeling the silk against me, the two of us moving through a cloudy room in a dance I can’t remember until shame comes. From out of nowhere the matron frowned, asked what I wanted, hovered over me. Confused and afraid I whispered, without thinking, The black hose with rhinestones down the seams please and pointed to the pair across the room stretched over legs on the glass counter as if about to step off and I saw her in my mind slip them on, her skirt hiked above the garters, the sun catching in her tangled hair until the matron made a sound in her throat and looked at me with eyes that said What’s wrong with you dirty boy. All the way home a sweet ache rocked me, the silver package riding my lap like a heavy wrong thing I couldn’t give up no matter how it dragged me down to a place where I could barely breathe or see or feel. Whatever happened that spinning afternoon— she ran her fingers over the rhinestone seams or she didn’t, she wore them out into an evening or kept them forever in her drawer of impossible things— doesn’t matter. I would find my way into the light of another woman into whose arms I fall nights my fingers can’t tear through the dark that eats me, the silk stretched across her breasts, the need for something womanly to raise me up pounding in my head until I curl in sleep away from those longings, ancient and blue.

Behind the Fauverie a crawl of quayside traffic while Aramis roars for his food, the air turbulent as he opens his jaws in a huge yawn. If I hold my breath, half-close my eyes and listen hard — there at the tongue’s root, in the voicebox of night, I might hear the almost-vanished. He’s summoning his prey, this lord of thunderbolts, calling to ghosts of the Lost World, with this evening chant to scarlet macaw, tapir, golden lion tamarin. Until everything goes slow and the rush-hour queue of scale-to-scale cars is one giant caiman basking on the bank. The jaguar’s all swimming stealth now — no sound — a stalker camouflaged by floating hyacinths, senses tuned only to the reptile of the road. Then, with one bound, spray scatters like glass, as Aramis lands on the brute’s back and bites its neck.

in the end, cold crows piece together the night: a black map I've come home—the way back longer than the wrong road long as a life bring the heart of winter when spring water and horse pills become the words of night when memory barks a rainbow haunts the black market my father's life-spark small as a pea I am his echo turning the corner of encounters a former lover hides in a wind swirling with letters Beijing, let me toast your lamplights let my white hair lead the way through the black map as though a storm were taking you to fly I wait in line until the small window shuts: O the bright moon I go home—reunions are one less fewer than goodbyes

It snakes behind me, this invisible chain gang— the aliases, your many faces peopling that vast hotel, the past. What did we learn? Every twenty minutes the elevated train, the world shuddering beyond the pane. It was never warm enough in winter. The walls peeled, the color of corsages ruined in the air. Sweeping the floor, my black wig on the chair. I never meant to leave you in that hotel where the voices of patrons long gone seemed to echo in the halls, a scent of spoiled orchids. But this was never an elegant hotel. The iron fretwork of the El held each room in a deep corrosive bloom. This was the bankrupt’s last chance, the place the gambler waits to learn his black mare’s leg snapped as she hurtled towards the finish line. * * * How did we live? Your face over my shoulder was the shade of mahogany in the speckled mirror bolted to the wall. It was never warm. You arrived through a forest of needles, the white mist of morphine, names for sleep that never came. My black wig unfurled across the battered chair. Your arms circled me when I stood by the window. Downstairs the clerk who read our palms broke the seal on another deck of cards. She said you’re my fate, my sweet annihilating angel, every naked hotel room I’ve ever checked out of. There’s nothing left of that, but even now when night pulls up like a limousine, sea-blue, and I’m climbing the stairs, keys in hand, I’ll reach the landing and you’re there—the one lesson I never get right. Trains hurtled by, extinguished somewhere past the bend of midnight. The shuddering world. Your arms around my waist. I never meant to leave. * * * Of all that, there's nothing left but a grid of shadows the El tracks throw over the street, the empty lot. Gone, the blistered sills, voices that rilled across each wall. Gone, the naked bulb swinging from the ceiling, that chicanery of light that made your face a brief eclipse over mine. How did we live? The mare broke down. I was your fate, that yellow train, the plot of sleet, through dust crusted on the pane. It wasn't warm enough. What did we learn? All I have left of you is this burnt place on my arm. So, I won't forget you even when I'm nothing but small change in the desk clerk's palm, nothing but the pawn ticket crumpled in your pocket, the one you'll never redeem. Whatever I meant to say loses itself in the bend of winter towards extinction, this passion of shadows falling like black orchids through the air. I never meant to leave you there by the pane, that terminal hotel, the world shuddering with trains.

Prairie winds blaze through her tumbled belly, and Emmett’s red yesterdays refuse to rename her any kind of mother. A pudge-cheeked otherwise, sugar whistler, her boy is (through the fierce clenching mouth of her memory) a grays-and-shadows child.Listen. Once she was pretty. Windy hues goldened her skin. She was pert, brown-faced, in every wide way the opposite of the raw, screeching thing chaos has crafted. Now, threaded awkwardly, she tires of the sorries, the Lawd have mercies. Grief’s damnable tint is everywhere, darkening days she is no longer aware of. She is gospel revolving, repeatedly emptied of light, pulled and caressed, cooed upon by strangers, offered pork and taffy. Boys in the street stare at her, then avert their eyes, as if she killed them all, shipped every one into the grips of Delta. She sits, her chair carefully balanced on hell’s edge, and pays for sanity in kisses upon the conjured forehead of her son. Beginning with A, she recites (angry, away, awful) the alphabet of a world gone red. Coffee scorches her throat as church ladies drift about her room, black garb sweating their hips, filling cups with tap water, drinking, drinking in glimpses of her steep undoing. The absence of a black roomful of boy is measured, again, again. In the clutches of coffee, red-eyed, Mamie knows their well-meaning murmur. One says She a mama, still. Once you have a chile, you always a mama.

Dark as the clouds of even, Ranked in the western heaven, Waiting the breath that lifts All the dread mass, and drifts Tempest and falling brand Over a ruined land;— So still and orderly, Arm to arm, knee to knee, Waiting the great event, Stands the Black Regiment. Down the long dusky line Teeth gleam and eyeballs shine; And the bright bayonet, Bristling and firmly set, Flashed with a purpose grand, Long ere the sharp command Of the fierce rolling drum Told them their time had come, Told them what work was sent For the Black Regiment. “Now,” the flag-sergeant cried, “Though death and hell betide, Let the whole nation see If we are fit to be Free in this land; or bound Down, like the whining hound,— Bound with red stripes of pain In our old chains again!” Oh, what a shout there went From the Black Regiment! “Charge!” Trump and drum awoke, Onward the bondmen broke; Bayonet and sabre-stroke Vainly opposed their rush. Through the wild battle’s crush, With but one thought aflush, Driving their lords like chaff, In the guns’ mouths they laugh; Or at the slippery brands Leaping with open hands, Down they tear man and horse, Down in their awful course; Tramping with bloody heel Over the crashing steel, All their eyes forward bent, Rushed the Black Regiment. “Freedom!” their battle-cry— “Freedom! or leave to die!” Ah! And they meant the word, Not as with us ’tis heard, Not a mere party shout: They gave their spirits out; Trusted the end to God, And on the gory sod Rolled in triumphant blood. Glad to strike one free blow, Whether for weal or woe; Glad to breathe one free breath, Though on the lips of death. Praying—alas! in vain!— That they might fall again, So they could once more see That burst to liberty! This was what “freedom” lent To this Black Regiment. Hundreds on hundreds fell; But they are resting well; Scourges and shackles strong Never shall do them wrong. Oh, to the living few, Soldiers, be just and true! Hail them as comrades tried; Fight with them side by side; Never, in field or tent, Scorn the Black Regiment.

She was cleaning—there is always that to do—when she found, at the top of the closet, his old silk vest. She called me to look at it, unrolling it carefully like something live might fall out. Then we spread it on the kitchen table and smoothed the wrinkles down, making our hands heavy until its shape against Formica came back and the little tips that would have pointed to his pockets lay flat. The buttons were all there. I held my arms out and she looped the wide armholes over them. “That’s one thing I never wanted to be,” she said, “a man.” I went into the bathroom to see how I looked in the sheen and sadness. Wind chimes off-key in the alcove. Then her crying so I stood back in the sink-light where the porcelain had been staring. Time to go to her, I thought, with that other mind, and stood still.