Luther Hughes

After  Jean-Michel Basquiat Crows and more crows. One crow with a rat hanging from its beak, sloppy and beautiful. Another crow with its wings plucked empty. I wanted so much of today to be peaceful but the empty crow untethers something in me: a feral yearning for love or a love that is so full of  power, of  tenderness, the words fall to their knees begging for mercy like tulips in wind. I don’t wear the crown for the times power has tainted my body, but I can tell the difference between giving up and giving in. If  you can’t, ask the crow that watches me through the window, laughing as I drink my third bottle of wine. Ask the sound the tree makes when the crow has grown disgusted with my whining. After years of repression, I can come clean. I was a boy with a hole other boys stuffed themselves into. I have wanted nothing to do with blackness or laughter or my life. But about love, who owns the right, really? Who owns the crow who loves fresh meat or the crow who loves the vibration of its own throat? Everything around me is black for its own good, I suppose. The widow, the picture of the boy crying on the wall, the mirror with its taunting, the crows that belong to their scripture. Can you imagine being so tied to blackness that even your wings cannot help you escape? About my life, every needle, a small prayer. Every pill, a funeral hymn. I wanted the end several times but thought, Who owns this body, really? God? Dirt? The silly insects that will feast on my decay? Is it the boy who entered first or the boy who wanted everything to last?