I wasted my youth on a life without truth, I’m
just as fake as my promises
A slight tinge of blue in mind that’s old news, I
used to be such an optimist
...
I picture my stained glass seat as you file down
And pay dues to my pinewood house
I can see that the pain won’t leave if I do right now
It’s passed around

the rippling shallow water
the white ash trees shedding their leaves

my blood rushing
like the shadow
cast by a cloud of starlings

On the birthday of the world
I begin to contemplate
what I have done and left
undone, but this year
not so much rebuilding
of my perennially damaged
psyche, shoring up eroding
friendships, digging out
stumps of old resentments
that refuse to rot on their own

every night I paint the back of my
closed up eyelids and see the past - I get
visions of you that I can’t unsee - and I’m
I’m all black and blue - but i’ll
make believe that I’m -
fine ok
that I’m doing great

talk all the shit you want
call me when you’re drunk and lonely
I’ll always pick up
but I should make it hard to reach me
talk all the shit you want
say what you’re gonna say about me
I’ll still cheer you on
but you won’t see me in the bleachers

We used to feel rest in each other's presence
But now we wait on karma to strike each other
And we light another useless flame
To try, ignore how I and you, would the love company of fools
But we were the fools, tied in a race
But if you would
I'll give you your old place back

The moment I died is when I seen
I loved you more than you loved me
You moved on quick so I guess I need
To light one up so I can forget you

The skull of my father
grins at the Mississippi moon
from the bottom
of the Tallahatchie

I was always afraid
of the next card
the psychic would turn
over for us—
Forgive me
for not knowing
how we were
every card in the deck.

Now hills hatch menace, spawning shade;
Midnight cloaks the sultry grove;
The black marauder, hauled by love
On fluent haunches, keeps my speed.

At the throat of Soweto
a devil language falls
slashing
claw syllables to shred and leave
raw
the tongue of the young
girl
learning to sing
her own name