Posts for 2020 (page 129)

I take a deep breath
looking up at a
backbone of clouds
across the sky,
sunlight cast around
the edges and touching
the field of red clover
and daisies stretched
as far as the eye can
see over the hilltop.
I think about
the news,
the deaths,
the spread of a virus
and people unwilling
to take precautions,
the coming fallout –
all out of my control.
I watch my kids play
tag, their laughter
and shouts of joy
filling up the
empty air in a
pause before
the night
chorus.

Robert wrote poetry

best
when he was in love
and love making
lit the flames
inside him

he was a failure
at farming
but cultivating
woman gave him
pause to write
upstairs in the
loft at a table
after following
the plough

his sister
would sneak up
and read his poetry
when he went back
to the field
he planted with
ruined seed

his seed
grew in women
and he drank
with his bawdy
friends
and sober repented
of his trangressions

women
were his
weakness
and words
his salvation

window open
even though it’s warm
too warm, perhaps, but I indulge myself
summer sounds drifting in
fireworks in the distance and radios
people talking and I can hear every word
smells of cookouts, backyard fires
loud motors
and then quiet
a hush before the next car passes
late, late spring night
where are we going
nowhere, somewhere but not everywhere
not tonight
I would only close the window
if
there was a reason and I only have one
therefore I imagine what is yet to be
and consider we’re all lacking
I am at least
so I dream

(content warning: violence, murder, hate crimes)

Latin beats in the blood
pulsing on the floor
gunshot beats in the song
49 dead, 2016
peppering history with screams
and texts I’m dying mommy.
18 years old, 50 years old
dance club queers dying.

Loving in Orlando,
Loving in Virginia,
1967, Supreme Court
allows marriage without race
determinants if the genitals
are still correct
because there’s some wiggle room
but some loves
just cannot be sanctified,

black woman and her white man
freeing love
freeing love to kill for love
in Orlando. Kill for the bombing
of his country
the murderer said.
Killing the brown dancing queers
America doesn’t give two shits
about to demand the brown folks
in his country stop dying. 

Kill to stop the killing,
end the loving for love.

My family my friends
white woman and black man
black woman white man
smiling wedding photos
it’s loving day,
black woman and white woman
finally allowed 2015
it’s loving day,
the names of the 49 dead
brown and red
and loving their pulse
unloved delivered
into the arms of Jesus

and the Tulsa massacre pep rally
coming up for the incestuous
rapey father of the county
loving all those immigrant women
if they’re white enough
if they’re white enough
and rich enough
and like his daughter enough
and that pep rally is gonna be in Tulsa,
the 1921 massacre echo
on Juneteenth 2020

because dammit we’re erasing history
by throwing Columbus and Davis
in the harbor
because all lives matter
except all of them that aren’t white
aren’t rich
aren’t straight
they all matter
except the ones that don’t.

Rapey prez removes protection
for trans folks in healthcare
on loving day
pulse day
because prescribing antibiotics
for a transman threatens
white baby Jesus,
don’t care about brown Jesús,
his pulse pulsing
onto the dance floor,
the immigrant cages’ floor,
his brown woman caged
into cleaning the lobby
of rapey white man’s big, big, stiff
building
so big in belief that a trans patient
can threaten heaven
in the lobby
in the bathroom
by breathing the loving air.

Because that’s what Jesus would do,
that’s what his white followers want
to separate the brown
the black
the trans
the queer
the dying
the dying the loving
get away so we know who we are
and die
and god and investors will smile
their big, big white manly smiles,
oh those women on their knees,
white knees on black necks
white bedsheets with red blood
pulsing out of black women,
white bedsheets folded by brown women
now ghost riding the night
for the red in the black,
I’m dying mommy
pulsing love.

Taking your pulse home with you
in your chest on loving day
would almost be enough.

Another black transwoman
washed up in the river
and a black Fed Ex man
crying on Facebook,
spit on by white hate on loving day,
spit on called N
while just doing his job on loving day
because his black parent
and white parent
don’t matter
he doesn’t matter
he’s just black black black,
the queer shot dead
bang bang bang
for loving on loving day
in America and their lives
the Latinx lives
the pulse of queer lives
the love on loving day
it doesn’t matter
it’s not white enough
not white-washed blue-eyed Christ enough
on loving day
my world full of pulse and loving
and death and I do
I do
I do baby I do
but only if it’s white enough
if it’s a godgiven big hard manhood
and a female to worship it enough
on loving day.

Say you are who I say you are,
trans pulse can’t get you in a bathroom,
queer pulse doesn’t get you into heaven,
black pulse doesn’t get you into justice
brown pulse doesn’t get you a key to that cage
be white
be straight
speak English dammit

this loving pulse
on this day
is all worth
killing for.

Today we venture out,
feign normalcy,
the world has replaced itself
with an off-brand replica-
I wonder how many of us
are squinting just so,
pretending everything has
always been okay.

A mountain preacher said it first,
“Steve, you know what we like about you?”
What’s that, Homer? – a sudden surprise. 
“You’re just like one of us.”
Suddenly, a place to be
a community. 

So I visit each and every house
in this humble coal camp in Harlan county,
listen to the people’s strories
each one somehow flawed
but less deeply than I, it seems. 

Another mountain preacher said, 
“How beautiful, these mountains. “
How deep his sense of the sacred. 
He told me of his work on the coal mines, 
how the miners built the union
from the ground up, 
then faced the machine gun
mounted on the counter of the company store. 

When the strip mines came
the beautiful mountains were destroyed. 
He remembered the earlier times, 
But what now, what is to be done?
He hears about a meeting, 
The Appalachian Group to Save the Land and People
“Buddy, let’s go.”

A deep sense of the sacred, 
neighbors joining neighbors, 
a movement builds
taking action toward the good. 
Mountain preachers peaching, teaching
God is love, and love is good. 
Good God, save the land and the people. 
Do Good Work. 

August 2, 2013

This is the wall where they lined up the civilians, what it looks like now, generations later, years of cleaning and painting and advertising posters for films and bath soaps and circuses later. In the picture from then I count thirty-one people turned to face the cold bricks, although there may be a few more obscured by the closeness of the row. They stand erect, arms raised high as if these weren’t adults and children, real as the foggy air they breathe, but cartoon creations ready to take flight. There is trash, once prized possessions and important papers, between them and the off-camera soldiers, left after pockets and purses were emptied. A moment from now, the guns will be fired, but I didn’t give the order or squeeze a trigger, and so am free of guilt. I simply stood by silently.  

Today she will go out.
Brushes and shades lead to wide eyes in the mirror. 
She slips on her wedges, slips out of the house and takes off.
Bass thumping, 80mph of pure freedom, she’s anyone she wants to be. 
It feels good to be alone.
6 speeds of revving engine at the light, she feels eyes upon her.
A 10 second hold.
Slowly outlining full lips with her favorite colors, she winks, blows a kiss, and the light turns green.
It good to feel beautiful.

The Muse is silent.
I try to push words
From my head
Through the pen
To paper.

I write with no verve;
An obligatory stanza
To meet the commitment.
Like saying the Pledge of Allegiance
At the beginning of the school day.

It serves its purpose,
But does not fulfill its promise.
Empty. Parroting.
Until another day,
When the Muse speaks.

It was early,
and I walked on alone.
As the grey streets rocked past