Danez Smith

I did not come here to sing a blues. Lately, I open my mouth & out comes marigolds, yellow plums. I came to make the sky a garden. Give me rain or give me honey, dear lord. The sky has given us no water this year. I ride my bike to a boy, when I get there what we make will not be beautiful or love at all, but it will be deserved. I’ve started seeking men to wet the harvest. Come, tonight I declare we must move instead of pray. Tonight, east of here, two boys, one dressed in what could be blood & one dressed in what could be blood before the wound, meet & mean mug & God, tonight, let them dance! Tonight, the bullet does not exist. Tonight, the police have turned to their God for forgiveness. Tonight, we bury nothing, we serve a God with no need for shovels, we serve a God with a bad hip & a brother in prison. Tonight, let every man be his own lord. Let wherever two people stand be a reunion of ancient lights. Let’s waste the moon’s marble glow shouting our names to the stars until we are the stars. O, precious God! O, sweet black town! I am drunk & I thirst. When I get to the boy who lets me practice hunger with him I will not give him the name of your newest ghost I will give him my body & what he does with it is none of my business, but I will say look, I made it a whole day, still, no rain still, I am without exit wound & he will say Tonight, I want to take you how the police do, unarmed & sudden & tonight, when we dream, we dream of dancing in a city slowly becoming ash.

but there is no proof but proof no mark but the good news that there is no bad news yet. again. i wish i knew the nausea, its thick yell in the morning, the pregnant proof that in you, life swells. i know i’m not a mother, but i know what it is to nurse a thing you want to kill but can’t. you learn to love it. yes. i love my sweet virus. it is my proof of life, my toxic angel, wasted utopia what makes my blood my blood. i understand belle now, how she could love the beast. if you stare at fangs long enough, even fangs pink with your own blood look soft. • low-key, later, it felt like i got it out the way, to finally know it up close, see it in the mirror. it doesn’t feel good to say that. it doesn’t feel good to know your need outweighed your fear. i braved a stupid ocean. a man. i waded in his stupid waters. i took his stupid salt & let it brine my skin, took his stupid fish into my hands & bit into it like a flapping plum. i kissed at his stupid coral & stupid algae. it was stupid. silly really. i knew nothing that easy to get & good to feel isn’t also trying to eat you. • knew what could happen. needed no snake. grew the fruit myself. was the vine & the rain & the light. the dirt was me. the hands drilling into the dirt were my hands. i made the blade that cut me down. but i only knew how to live when i knew how i’ll die. i want to live. think i mean it. take the pill even on the days i think i won’t survive myself. gave my body a shot. love myself at least that much. thank you, me. thank you, pill, seafoam & bland. thank you, sick blood, my first husband dead river bright with salmon.

Have I spent too much time worrying about the boys killing each other to pray for the ones who do it with their own hands? Is that not black on black violence? Is that not a mother who has to bury her boy? Is it not the same play? The same plot & characters? The curtain rises, then: a womb a boy a night emptied of music a trigger a finger a bullet then: lights. It always drives the crowd to their feet. An encore of boy after boy after sweet boy            — their endless, bloody bow. They throw dirt on the actors like roses until the boys are drowned by the earth & the audience doesn’t remember what they’re standing for.

dear suicide how is the war? is it eating? tell me of the girls charging backwards into dumb tides death’s wet mouth lapping their ankles, knees, eyebrows. tell me of the sissies like drunk fireworks, rocketing into earth afterimage burned into river & cement memory. how is the war? does it have a wife? does she know how the bodies got in her bed? dear suicide i know your real name. i bind you from doing harm. i enter the room like a germ. i say your name, it is my name. the walls cave around me like a good aunt. the window hums. the door rocks me. the dresser leaves to go make tea. the room knows my name. it binds us from doing harm. dear suicide where are you keeping my friends? every cup i turn over holds only air. i jimmy open a tulip expecting their faces but find only the yellow heart. what have you done with them? yesterday i took my body off beat it on the front steps with a broom & not one of them came giggling out my skin yelling you found me! not one of them i called for was already in my hand. dear suicide you a mutual friend a wedding guest, a kind of mother, a kind of self love, a kind of freedom. i wish you were a myth but mothers my color have picked ocean over boat, have sent children to school in rivers. i known niggas who just needed quiet. i seen you dance, it made me hard. i would not deny you what others have found in the sweet mildew behind your ear. i know what happens when you ask for a kiss, it’s all tongue, you don’t unlatch, you suck face until the body is gone. dear suicide that one? i promised him i would kill for him & my nigga was my nigga & my word is my word. dear suicide, where are you? come see me. come outside. i am at your door, suicide. i’ll wait. i’ve offed my earrings & vaselined my face. i put on my good sweats for this. i brought no weapon but my fist. dear suicide you made my kin thin air. his entire body dead as hair. you said his name like a dare. you’ve done your share. i ride down lake street friendbare to isles of lakes, wet pairs stare back & we compare our mirror glares. fish scare into outlines, i blare a moon’s wanting, i wear their faces on t-shirts, little flares in case i bootleg my own prayer & submit to your dark affair. tell me they’re in your care. be fair. heaven or hell, i hope my niggas all there if i ever use the air as a stair.

there, on the ground like dirt or a bird december froze & may thawed, blood misted, crying for any mother, the boy who called your mama a bitch bleeds our love for you, his wings frozen & fighting the cold wind of our sneakers. we storm him because we love you & your mama has fed us & only us is allowed to call her out her name because we know her name, Ms. Jones, & she bad & only we can say that & when we bad she has permission from our mamas to beat us like we hers. we hers like you hers. you our boy. we pool our punches into the boy like quarters for a bag of flaming hots. we make him look like a bag of flaming hots. lord forgive me, but i don’t regret it. &, on the real, all these summers later, i miss it. i wish a little bit to gather around a man’s body & stomp in the name of love, beat what he said about my next to blood back into his vermilion mouth, to make his mouth a beautiful, smashed tomato. really tho. Leland, you remember how we beat that nigga? our middle school ritual, that thirty-second eternity. later, i licked his blood off my nikes & dreamed we were water lilies holding the water down. • they were around me like nigga1 nigga2      nigga3 nigga4     me     nigga5 nigga6       nigga7 nigga8 & i felt    ...    safe? what could be safer than a circle of boys too afraid of killing you to kill you? the fists that broke my ribs also wanted me to live. i praise each one true god for each foot that was not a sharp anything. i had always wanted 8 niggas on me (but not) like that. each hand laid upon me like a rude & starving prayer. after a while i started to           like it i leaned into it      unblocked my face the bottoms of their shoes were the sweet of a well-chewed eraser. i was their promise. their ink. you should have heard them laugh a language so delicious i cracked up cracked grin & all. i didn’t know a thing about love until those boys walked away so happy. my heart pouring from my nose.

friends! if i may interrupt right quick i know y’all working, busy smoking & busy trying not to smoke, busy with the kids & moms & busy with alone, but i have just seen two boys — yes, black — on bikes — also — summer children basketball shorts & they outside shoes, wild laughing bout something i couldn’t hear over my own holler, trying to steady the wheel & not hit they asses as they swerved frienddrunk, making their little loops, sun-lotioned faces screwed up with that first & cleanest love we forget to name as such, &, hear me out i’m not trying to dis lil dude, but in this gold hour he kind of looked like Francine off Arthur same monkey mouth & all, ole & i say hey looking-ass boy tho in a beautiful way, the best beautiful same as i know all of us have looked like something off when backlit by love. o loves, y’all ugly asses have crowned me the worst names: wayne brady, gay wiz khalifa, all kinds of bitches & fags (tho only with my bitches & fags), all kinds of shit &, once, mark of buddha that year acne scored my forehead with its bumpy faith. my niggas & my niggas who are not niggas i been almost-pissed myself, almost been boxin’ been tears & snot off your dozen wonders been the giddy swine dancing the flame. o my many hearts, y’all booty-faced weird-ass ole mojo-jojo-looking asses dusty chambers where my living dwells roast me. name me in the old ways, your shit- talk a river i wade, howling until it takes me. i can’t stop laughing, more river wades down my throat. could be drowning could be becoming the water, could be a baptism from the inside out. don’t save me, i don’t wanna be saved. i’ve died laughing before, been seen god’s face & you have her teeth, my nig. but   hers   ain’t   as   yellow   as   them   saffron   shits you   keep   stashed   in   your   gloryfoul   mouth my friend! my friends! my niggas! my wives! i got a crush on each one of your dumb faces smashing into my heart like idiot cardinals into glass but i am a big-ass glass bird, a stupid monster crashing through the window & becoming it just to make you laugh. Andrew used to say friendship is so friendship& ain’t it even after Andrew gave it on over to whatever he was still my nigga. when they turned his body to dust he was still my dusty-ass boy. don’t you hear it? the dust on the fan calls me a bum, says my hairline looks like it’s thinking about retirement. the dust in the car says i look like a chubby slave, says i look too drunk, takes my keys, drives me home. the wind is tangled with the dust of the dead homies, carrying us over to them, giggling in the mirror. hear them. hear your long-gone girl tease your hair on the bus. hear them rolling when you sweep broom across the beaten floor. i miss them. all the dead. how young. how silly to miss what you will become. i apologize. sometimes it just catches up in me. love & ghost gets caught up in us like wind & birds trapped in a sheet just the same. & my friends is some birds, some chicken-head muhfuckas who i would legit stomp a nigga for, do you feel me? when they buried my nigga i put on my timbs walked into that hot august tried to beat his name out the dirt. i beat the earth like a nigga. i threw hands at the earth like a punk muhfucka & the ground chuckled, said my nigga. what is you doing! you can’t hear the wind drunk off the kindred lent? can you hear that great roll from way off like a big nigga laughing in an alley! how your dead auntie laugh when she see you still ain’t grew into that big-ass head! like your real friend laugh when you still the same ugly as yesterday! same ugly as always! same ugly as their last life!

somewhere, a sun. below, boys brown as rye play the dozens & ball, jump in the air & stay there. boys become new moons, gum-dark on all sides, beg bruise -blue water to fly, at least tide, at least spit back a father or two. I won’t get started. history is what it is. it knows what it did. bad dog. bad blood. bad day to be a boy color of a July well spent. but here, not earth not heaven, boys can’t recall their white shirt turned a ruby gown. here, there is no language for officer or law, no color to call white. if snow fell, it’d fall black. please, don’t call us dead, call us alive someplace better. we say our own names when we pray. we go out for sweets & come back. • this is how we are born: come morning after we cypher/feast/hoop, we dig a new boy from the ground, take him out his treebox, shake worms from his braids. sometimes they’ll sing a trapgod hymn (what a first breath!) sometimes it’s they eyes who lead scanning for bonefleshed men in blue. we say congrats, you’re a boy again! we give him a durag, a bowl, a second chance. we send him off to wander for a day or ever, let him pick his new name. that boy was Trayvon, now called RainKing. that man Sean named himself I do, I do. O, the imagination of a new reborn boy but most of us settle on alive. • sometimes a boy is born right out the sky, dropped from a bridge between starshine & clay. one boy showed up pulled behind a truck, a parade for himself & his wet red gown. years ago we plucked brothers from branches unpeeled their naps from bark. sometimes a boy walks into his room then walks out into his new world still clutching wicked metals. some boys waded here through their own blood. does it matter how he got here if we’re all here to dance? grab a boy, spin him around. if he asks for a kiss, kiss him. if he asks where he is, say gone. • no need for geography now that we’re safe everywhere. point to whatever you please & call it church, home, or sweet love. paradise is a world where everything is a sanctuary & nothing is a gun. here, if it grows it knows its place in history. yesterday, a poplar told me of old forest heavy with fruits I’d call uncle bursting red pulp & set afire, harvest of dark wind chimes. after I fell from its limb it kissed sap into my wound. do you know what it’s like to live someplace that loves you back? • here, everybody wanna be black & is. look — the forest is a flock of boys who never got to grow up, blooming into forever, afros like maple crowns reaching sap-slow toward sky. watch Forest run in the rain, branches melting into paper-soft curls, duck under the mountain for shelter. watch the mountain reveal itself a boy. watch Mountain & Forest playing in the rain, watch the rain melt everything into a boy with brown eyes & wet naps — the lake turns into a boy in the rain the swamp — a boy in the rain the fields of lavender — brothers dancing between the storm. • if you press your ear to the dirt you can hear it hum, not like it’s filled with beetles & other low gods but like a mouth rot with gospel & other glories. listen to the dirt crescendo a boy back. come. celebrate. this is everyday. every day holy. everyday high holiday. everyday new year. every year, days get longer. time clogged with boys. the boys O the boys. they still come in droves. the old world keeps choking them. our new one can’t stop spitting them out. • ask the mountain-boy to put you on his shoulders if you want to see the old world, ask him for some lean -in & you’ll be home. step off him & walk around your block. grow wings & fly above your city. all the guns fire toward heaven. warning shots mince your feathers. fall back to the metal-less side of the mountain, cry if you need to. that world of laws rendered us into dark matter. we asked for nothing but our names in a mouth we’ve known for decades. some were blessed to know the mouth. our decades betrayed us. • there, I drowned, back before, once. there, I knew how to swim but couldn’t. there, men stood by shore & watched me blue. there, I was a dead fish, the river’s prince. there, I had a face & then I didn’t. there, my mother cried over me but I wasn’t there. I was here, by my own water, singing a song I learned somewhere south of somewhere worse. that was when direction mattered. now, everywhere I am is the center of everything. I must be the lord of something. what was I before? a boy? a son? a warning? a myth? I whistled now I’m the God of whistling. I built my Olympia downstream. • you are not welcome here. trust the trip will kill you. go home. we earned this paradise by a death we didn’t deserve. I am sure there are other heres. a somewhere for every kind of somebody, a heaven of brown girls braiding on golden stoops but here — how could I ever explain to you — someone prayed we’d rest in peace & here we are in peace             whole                all summer

scooby-doo was trying to tell us something when every time that monster mask got snatched off it was a greedy white dude. • in ’97, a black comic gets on stage, 
says,you ever notice how white dogsbe like woof woof & black dogs be likeruff ruff motherfuckaaaaa!! • the dog upstairs won’t shut up & i’ve thought of ending his  little  noisy 
life but i have to remember he 
matters he matters & if i did the 
brown girl upstairs would cry forever. • dog (n.): a man’s best friend. (see: fetch, roll over, K-9, good boy, put down.) ex.my dog died, I had to do it with my own hands. dawg (n.): a man’s best friend. (see: blunt rolled already, handshake, my nigga, put me on.) ex.my dawg died, he did it with his own hands. • dogs in this house eat the same thing we do. we eat greens, he eat 
greens. fried bologna, neck bones, 
leftovers. ...    he died from the suga, the gout or whatever 
 came for big mama came 
back for the dog. • everybody love Lassie, but what 
about Sounder? • possible rite of passage #37: graduating from outrunning the 
block’s dogs to outrunning the block’s police. • i too have been called boy & expected to come, kneel. • what Animorph did you want to be? i wanted to be the boy who turned into the bird limp in the dog’s wet mouth, holding me toward his human saying I made 
this for you. • the dog upstairs needs to stop running his mouth talking all that shit I can hear him up there fool don’t think i understand he don’t know i got a bark too teeth too thumbs & a terrible child’s mind. • something about Air Bud felt    ...    
the talented obedient beast, the roar of the eggshell crowd. • dogs aren’t racist but they can be trained to be so as can the water as can the trees as can gravity as can anything marked by a pale hand & turned bloodgold a bitter king’s magic touch. • i’m the kind of werewolf that turns into a shih tzu. ruff ruff motherfucka. • while my grandmama spoke on the clean blood of Jesus i watched the hounds in the mud hot for anything warm & thought of something better to worship. • i stand in the dark bathroom in my tightest shortest shorts my vaselined legs the only things catching light. i say i’m a real bitch3 times, clap my hands above my head. nothing happens. i walk back into the club, put my hand on a man’s chest & it’s a paw. • the gay agenda made CatDog to offer your child’s gender to their seven-headed god. • a dead dog is a hero, a dead lion is a hero, a cloned sheep is a miracle, a dead child is a tragedy (depending on the color, the nation, the occupation or non-
occupation of the parents). • during the new moon i switch from an –a to the traditional –er, i raid the farm, smash the melon patch, swallow chickens whole, spit out the bones ground down 
to smoke, howl Geee-zuss! toward the sky’s great nothing. • • dog bred to smell the coke/dog bred to smell the bomb/dog bred to smell the nigger hid beneath the floorboards. • dude’s dog won’t leave the room won’t let his lord out of his sight 
won’t let his master disappear won’t let himself go hungry won’t let nothing happen to the one who brings the water even if it means being owned, being witness to his hunger. or maybe he’s just dumb. • stay. open. stay. look at me. stay. open. teeth. bad. bad. stay. open. treat. treat. pant. wag. treat. good. stay. good. stay. • i listen to DMX smoking a blunt doing bout 90 in a 55 when the cop ask if i know why he pulled me over 
i say i’m just trying to be me. • the dog upstairs won’t shut up but i can’t hate him he’s up there alone all 
day making noise must be the only way he knows he’s not a ghost.

Let’s make a movie called Dinosaurs in the Hood. Jurassic Park meets Friday meets The Pursuit of Happyness. There should be a scene where a little black boy is playing with a toy dinosaur on the bus, then looks out the window & sees the T. Rex, because there has to be a T. Rex. Don’t let Tarantino direct this. In his version, the boy plays with a gun, the metaphor: black boys toy with their own lives, the foreshadow to his end, the spitting image of his father. Fuck that, the kid has a plastic Brontosaurus or Triceratops & this is his proof of magic or God or Santa. I want a scene where a cop car gets pooped on by a pterodactyl, a scene where the corner store turns into a battle ground. Don’t let the Wayans brothers in this movie. I don’t want any racist shit about Asian people or overused Latino stereotypes. This movie is about a neighborhood of royal folks — children of slaves & immigrants & addicts & exiles — saving their town from real-ass dinosaurs. I don’t want some cheesy yet progressive Hmong sexy hot dude hero with a funny yet strong commanding black girl buddy-cop film. This is not a vehicle for Will Smith & Sofia Vergara. I want grandmas on the front porch taking out raptors with guns they hid in walls & under mattresses. I want those little spitty, screamy dinosaurs. I want Cicely Tyson to make a speech, maybe two. I want Viola Davis to save the city in the last scene with a black fist afro pick through the last dinosaur’s long, cold-blood neck. But this can’t be a black movie. This can’t be a black movie. This movie can’t be dismissed because of its cast or its audience. This movie can’t be a metaphor for black people & extinction. This movie can’t be about race. This movie can’t be about black pain or cause black people pain. This movie can’t be about a long history of having a long history with hurt. This movie can’t be about race. Nobody can say nigga in this movie who can’t say it to my face in public. No chicken jokes in this movie. No bullets in the heroes. & no one kills the black boy. & no one kills the black boy. & no one kills the black boy. Besides, the only reason I want to make this is for that first scene anyway: the little black boy on the bus with a toy dinosaur, his eyes wide & endless his dreams possible, pulsing, & right there.

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