Now is not the moment
for my witty anecedotes
Nor is it the moment
for my earnest feelings
It’s also not the moment
for my humble realizations
And definitely not the moment
for my profound platitudes
Now is the moment I shut up and listen
for your voices to rise and enlighten
This is not the moment for any of “my”
This moment is for all of you
It looks like chaos
but I guarantee you it’s not
It’s making a point
It’s caring for
That’s why we riot,
out of love
It looks like chaos but it’s so clearly not
Anger seeps and it’s well overdue
Dreams are for white men
Dreams are for the middle class
But in reality
Dreams are for the human race
But it’s no dream,
it’s a human right
To breathe
There is no such thing
he says
as a bad dog.
Misunderstood, afraid, aggressive, hard to control, but
none of them wants to be
that way. Codependent,
traumatized, weaned too young,
seeking affection in negative ways
afraid of losing it like a favored blanket.
The cure is partly socialization,
mostly self-soothing,
until old neural pathways
die, unused, and new ones
take their places.
I had a dream
last night
and you were there by my side
like you always have been
we took our sons to the park
and they played
cops & robbers
your baby was the
cop
and you looked
relieved
I think for the first time
you weren’t thinking about your baby saying
“I can’t breathe.”
In the night I heard a boy shout
“I can’t breathe; I can’t breathe”
who weeks before yelled
“pass me the ball”
Grateful,
I realize he’s surrounded by family
Horrified,
I realize he’s learning phrases
that should keep a black man alive
but do not.
Years ago in couple’s counseling,
the therapist said I didn’t relate well to men
and now when I see Suzi smiling up at men
at church, sidled close, her eyes saying take me
and when I’m introduced to the dance
instructor I can only see his capped teeth
and softness and when he tells me about
the singles group, I look away at the woman
pouring coffee, th kids playing tag,
the open door promising freedom.
The line that neatly ties the bow
He was ninety-three
“He lived a good, long life”
Neatly packaged and sealed
But not every long life is good
Nor is every good life a long one
The thread loosens
My brother hated visiting the home
It smelled of death and piss, he said
In the security of my silence
I agreed
He was the brave one, for saying so
How we all felt
If we couldn’t bear the smell
The presence of death
How could it have been
To share every moment with it?
Do those years count
Toward a good, long life?
The ribbon has lost its shape
All that’s left now is the box
No need to pick it up
To examine and know
That it’s empty
Around our rolling wold,
see slipshod shame
as little more
than coiling shadows slung from wincing kittens,
ears a riveting starling’s song
had flattened
for fear of startling starlings;
flat and hapless hulls curt cats must cast
to honor a sterling compact
Bast once brokered
many mangled tales ago
to filigree foibled greaves
these countless clowders pieced
from patchwork pajamas
with auric, impervious pride
young Bast had knotted
in matagots’ measured scowls—
yet, how the manx and tabby yowl
when dandled should svelte shadows sleave
with shades our sun unspools of a governess,
shades that cherubic children channel
in mummers parades of menageries mincing;
blade of the Brocken Specter raised
as sharp and swift as a corn maze cradles
children
still afeard of stalking
shadows soft as
murmurous persians—
