6.

i don’t know how to tell you to feel 
compelled loving me; to copy & paste.
to save a positive jpeg of us to your pinterest.

to paint a quaint spouse black;
seeing gardenias not gun powder in orbit 
crowning the heads of her brown babies.

ruminate, with romance, on the elegance 
of her earlobes, her stretch marks, her keloids;
every poem her constant companion, her carriage

across every threshold. our mouths her entryway
to privilege and a life of promise. our songs to her
at play in beds of rosebuds and pomegranates…

her kitchen’s common kink 
cast in diamonds and pearls 
on the highest of billboards.

7.

Akhenaton knew the power of a single narrative.
sought to monopolize light and power…
before a lit mob made it monotonous

and made Merlin, a wizard grand, into a dragon.
his chokehold on camelot turned melanin into gold
(his philosopher’s stone just a regular ol’ nigger-toe).

8.

Whitewash Jones precursed invisibility
his harmonica a shadow of self; his immortality
a magic act… Nkrumah In The Dust… 

in this corner, the challengerrr, Luuucas Beauuuchamp.
in the corner to my right, Bigger Thomas, our chammpeeen!
twin bevels from a plymouth rock, or so said a signifyin’ chimp

(Planet of the Apophonies)
“but i am not a simian,” said the semiotician;
monkey seize what monkey’s due, i guess.