FLEX

Hear me Neglect turned everything to gold Midas touch     I turn the comfortable To the dead     an anti-elegy tho     I’m Learning not to mourn what I make It’s a complex     this gravity I birth unknowing Not my complex     yours     say it I am owned by several things     all of  them Inherited from a horizon claimed before I was languaged     Invoke the historical Somethingsomethingsomething Chains Somethingsomethingsomething Unworthy I’m citizen of a clumsy imperative Belonging     is a concern of a self   I deaded Past participle implies the historical is a mob Try again     I mobbed my own lonely and was legion Play some offense then     Gold the impossible wound Citizen of  betrayal     Citizen of the going going going — Recursion     this fugitive state as native to me as my father’s Eyes     chestnut of a tree felled before we were languaged See   Inheritance is a hell of a drug     We Black and highly valued For our Flex     I said what I said     and became citizen Of  this petty excuse for forever     Flex on ’em then Invocation of the bicep I have and the bicep throttling me I live here now     Mississippi     and everywhere is everywhere That someone may have escaped from     Fugitive A sad motivation for river     It’s a strange thing That belief you are beautiful be a subversion of the water But here I am     winter gasping at the conditions Too weak to even strangle the grass to soil     No instead Trees feathered with their hollowed offspring Here the wind don’t howl just blooms a militia Of castanets     seven people were lynched here I looked it up and nobody will tell me which tree You are not as tired of the image as I am of uncertainty Every day the rain threatens     Every day my same imperious lonely Hear me     the sun ran like a punk     the sun ran like it owed Not even the gold     is trustworthy     why gold? Because it was the color of my love     and by extension The life I buried here     Gold the genesis of one lonely My ancestors were traded mere miles from here     Gold the genesis Of  another     I know they are not the same in anything but geography Still it is an act of   Flex just to stand anywhere     gravity being what it is Attempt the volta toward impossible     Midas the lonely into a radif Dreams of living life like a gilded garrote Flex The crown of scar tissue still the crown Flex Go to therapy if  you scared Flex Shuck the fear out of  the opposition Flex Every day gold for the sake of your attention Flex Your hereness a mountain plumed with trees Branches hemmed like unplayed notes A history can be undone with less than an alphabet Amend the scandal of the time that brought you here Fled to Flex     Ex. My family fled from Mississippi My family Flexed from Mississippi     and you become The muscle driving you forward     See     you were ugly Once     because you believed it     Dire invocation I am some kind of unkillable and don’t know how to act Everything I said I couldn’t live without Gone Lucky me     to be born into a language of mistakes I leave the violent on Seen and watch them wither Turns out I was their gravity     their forgetful sovereign I Flex     they flinch     the sonics of the words     cousins By virtue of a pistol     This is how I was taught to bridle Sadness like an American     Run with a band of  kids With silver caps     so you know we bad     waiting for the bone Eviction     Flex like value native to your mouth     Tooth out A tiny moon     a second grin shimmering in your palm     Flex The loss     the cost is secondary   Hear me     a life I had ended While I was trying to pursue the life I wanted     by pursuing A loss cobwebbed as a bride     All of this true the calcium winnowing Under the gold     I widowed my own comfort     I am in danger My squad an echo     my squad a promise you get dead someday If you touch me     thus I’m untouched     Neglect killed the grass The dead turn to gold before they resurrect     I am framed By a pastoral I might have escaped once     O the history O the lineage     the renowned Flex of survivors     I’m here I’m back     muscled like a creek          or the whisper That threads a storm miles later     Maybe not     Stick to the facts I’m alive despite a growing and planetary grief     I wear a chain Somedays     and a sweatshirt that translates to I Am Coming Back For What Is Mine Gaudy surprise on the faces of children Of owners     They think I am impossible     They think I am a ghost I Medusa like my daddy taught me     their eyes wilt and are Ill-tended grapes consumed by the skull     I’m metaphoring I told you     I don’t know how to act     but I know how to anthem My lyric loose and I got time today     I’m the type of  bad No synonym alive can hold