1
My brain is gone.
It ran headlong into the night,
Where the street lamps radiate warmly,
Across the swallowing asphalt,
Made frigid by the damp drops of sweet cloud's tears.
It continues to pound,
Echoing,
Crying out against abysmal alleyways,
And night-cloaked streets like car corridors.
My brain is gone.
Bursting into the wilderness of this,
Concrete world soaked in wild rainfall.
This empty cavern called my skull,
Filled with nothing but a yellowed IOU post-it note.
IOU-One brain.
Because my brain is gone.
It prefers the company of heathens.
2
Do you remember,
Where you buried the dead canary?
In the garden, between hyacinths in full flower.
Clusters of brilliant blooms huddled together,
Gossiping in rich purples and royal blues.
You despised them,
Because the florets seemed at the time,
To defy demise.
I remember,
The small mound of earth you watered,
Liquid spilling with your childish wishes.
I asked why you did it.
"To sprout a song" you answered.
I hadn't the heart to tell you,
It doesn't work that way, my love.
Did you forget,
How you foolishly believed,
That beaks will always be full of warble,
And wings always beat with vigor,
Brilliant bursts of yellow,
To forever flit in an iron cage?
I can't forget,
The smile that waltzed across your lips,
Upon hearing those staccato chips,
And high-pitched, lilting whistles.
How lethal it is to seal the mouth that sings!
Can you recall,
The words you spoke,
When the feathers stopped their ruffle?
"What happened to it?"
I can recall,
When I responded,
"It has died. It's a natural thing."
You probably forgot,
That you wept bitterly.
3
Since when did I become the variable?
My persistent, pensive palpitations preface,
That I won’t sleep tonight.
My acumen, my mental grasping clasp,
Fondled in a functioning ransacking rape,
Rushing ‘round a rapturous raging riptide-
The ratification of my unhinged mind.
So I wait, in my mattress plunged,
I stare subverted in sedative sediment,
At the ceiling,
Wheedling warrants to wistfully wallowing,
In the recesses of my restless repose,
Trying to sleep—but alas!
My teetering, tottering, tinkering tranquility’s tedium,
Of too much thinking!
Creaks crippling these candid crimes,
Of wake-thievery.
Quickly, I coagulate in juxtaposition,
To collectively correlate a cocoon of covers
Luxuriously lying loftily, resplendently,
As I steal the night’s ally, sleep,
And I am vacuumed into life’s ventricular pulse
4
I am the Creature,
Without a voice.
Without sound or sigh,
Cry or whimper.
I am the Creature,
The mute-
Devoid of rippling giggle,
And bubbling laughs.
I am the Creature,
The silent shadow.
Seen as the eye perceives,
But auditory presence have I none.
This vexes me not.
Besides,
Would you have taken my words,
And thoughts and fears,
And conceal me somewhere safe from my verbal demons
Anyway?
You are the Keeper
Of my voice.
The holder of the letters,
That form my communication.
You are the Keeper
Of my words.
Of terrors and trepidation.
You are the Keeper,
Of my thoughts, ambitions,
That I lost,
When we were in love.
It vexes me so,
But would you know?
Would you have taken my words,
And thoughts and fears,
And conceal me somewhere safe from my verbal demons,
Anyway?
5
Hey.
Can we-
Can we talk?
Just for a minute.
I want you to know,
That my head isn’t your home.
I can’t have you making yourself comfortable;
A revolving tenant rife with “hellos” and “goodbyes,”
And “hellos” again when I thought it was over.
Your being here is too much to bear at times,
And I’m left falling to my knees again tonight,
White-knuckled and wailing against the wooden floorboards,
Desperately detaching, trying to catch my breath.
I don’t want to be this person.
Please don’t do this to me.
I don’t deserve your kindness.
Just please, leave me.
Leave me to-
Myself.
6
If you're like me at all, you're going to want to run.
A desire; a need as carnal,
As those pointed, wolfish smiles,
That cruelly flash, then disappear behind your shoulder,
Just as you crane your neck to perceive them.
In your head, you're already gone.
Passed through night-shrouded spaces and places,
Avenues and alleyways that lay in the great anywhere but here and now,
Ending at some ink-blackened scene,
As though ripped from a gritty graphic novel.
Still you would want to keep moving.
Every bus stop and train station,
Platforms lit by lamps that flicker and fade,
Right on the chipped, cracked edge of being unceremoniously squelched—
They would be miles away from you by now.
Running is just a momentary alleviation—
A Band-Aid over a compound fracture,
A naive belief that kisses make everything better,
Like a poultice that calms an inflamed soul.
Only a man defeats a monster.
Determination-the spirit man's sword and buckler,
Ripping through the ribs of scales,
Of the wyverns that stalk the mind's dark hovels,
Hissing and spitting and swaying their great reptilian necks,
Sanity decaying at the very touch,
Until they are thrust down and subjugated,
By a greater will.
7
I plant my foot into the soil that birthed me,
My hopes, aspirations, flights of fancy,
-All that jazz-
My sputtering cranium, gnarled with crouching beasts.
My head bloats with their ceaseless prattle,
As they try to resolve, who I am to be:
A kid of the cool clay-
My listening medium, informer: ears,
They divulge unto me, but I beseech not to abide
Because my corpse cannot be composed of composted dirt,
For linguistically, my illuminating mentality mentions that I am no longer
DIRT!
MUD!
CLAY!
-All that jazz-
My knotty, knobby, notorious tool for survival: hands
I look at them, I see them, and I study them
-All that jazz-
They are covered in my past, my dirt that I till,
And never in my most mystical imaginings, may I intrigue myself,
To make this tomorrow,
And the next day,
And the next day,
-All that Jazz-
I will take a walk to the big city
The musty, misty mountains,
The tiny towns and hamlets,
-All that Jazz-
But I will always,
Have some dirt on the bottom of the sole.
8
Lethargic, graphite adhesive to white,
Scratching out curvaceous meter,
Line,
Verse,
Rapturous!
Ink seeps, saturates below,
The story deepens,
Further,
And further,
Down to the final cut with every passing press.
9
Rum shop percussion,
Pounding dirge!-vociferous squabbling with life drink.
Snare, the tabletop trashing with taps of bottles,
Macroppo Street drum
Taxi trumpet
Wheels slice silence, fluid motion commences-On an asphalt river.
Faces, curled forms, sidelines whirring and warped-STOP!
-A red light-
The horn fractures security, sound peals across.
Open market bass,
Cat scat, bottom tone embarks,
Fish, shark on ice, pulsating pounding tone-cat’s hungry,
“Mew, buy me fish, mew!”
Beggars splayed, their song spilled in larynx rain,
For a mango.
10
Legends speak of the Prince of Freshness, who in the ancient land of West Philadelphia, was conceived and spent his former years. The story goes that the playground was where he involved himself in social pastime. Presently, a plethora of ruffians full of ill conceived intentions, proceeded in causing trouble within the Prince of Freshness' area of residence. The Prince entered into combat which in turn dismayed his maternal unit, to which she exclaimed, "You are to travel to the land of Bel Air, and there you will inhabit the domicile of my sister and her husband."
The Prince of Freshness summoned a transportation device with all haste, and as it approached, the plates by which it could be identified said FRESH and replica dice were suspended before the reflective unit. The destination of his travels, the Prince could have directed as he desired with no repercussions, but the idea was dismissed. "Yo homes, to Bel Air!" he cried.
Late on the seventh or eighth hour, the Prince arrived and dismissed the transportation unit with "yo homes, smell 'ya later."The kingdom sprawled before him, he had established his presence as the throne of Freshness he reposed upon.
11
Don’t look a serpent in the eye.
You’ll be rendered breathless,
Transfixed by its arresting, gold-flecked gaze,
Crouched beneath the loom of coiled convolutions.
Don’t be cajoled by rows and ranks of glinting scales,
Or by armor-plated smiles,
Because all that glittering gives way to a beautifully blissful end.
Beautiful—but still an end.
Then the regal head bobs and sways, And sends a song across the hardwood,
Just low enough...just slow enough...
That you’re swallowed by the yawning void where time and place abandoned you,
With nothing, but an ache for fangs on flesh.
12
Years ago, I’d sit off the side
Of the dock at Augur Lake
And dip my toes beneath its glassy calm.
Then after a while they’d gather,
Sun-gilt and glinting olive,
To seize and dive away
With one of the ten tiny intruders
They found wriggling in their refracted realm.
And maybe it’s cruel to tempt them
With designs of filling
Their bellies until they’re pumpkin seed plump,
When really the most they could hope for
Is to grab, and strain,
And dart away hungry.
But I still sometimes sit off the side
Of the dock at Augur Lake,
Casting out a leg line to bewilder
Another set of expectant gapes
Who weren’t let in on the trick.
13
Play Layla.
Play like last year,
when it slipped out from under your door
and crawled past black cats
with their tails and tongues curled in contented yawns.
Take your time; pick your way through.
I’ll lay here and listen to your endeavors,
over, over, over with a warmth that only comes from copper bronze.
Play Layla.
But first, a cigarette
out your window.
Spark a flame over Bed Stuy then let it smolder
for a time before your focus turns to frets again.
Pour a drink if it helps
you sound clearer than the amber you fill your glass with.
(Neat. Always neat.)
Sip slow, the sumptuous night
and just
Play Layla.