 This river runs west and counter to every story I drank deep in those small dull days strange heavy with collective unconscious with all of those west running improbable relations spending lavish hands worth of emotion on this imagined west in this city Which also runs west into an ocean. I own no stories for a Borrowed ocean full of marvels fed by these long men who collect different water Who polish stones that won't tell me the future in any language that I know My brother and I are driving in an empty cell lane We are God's evil to these settlers. They might throw us under the shift chains. We take wolf naps We don't know what else we good at besides this traveling state lines in the night tide passing through beachhead America passing with Hurricane memory 3,000 exits of sludge-babe depart time Everything south of Canada is extra judicial gun oil and your local unemployment factory in a few hours We will fit in relax for now hop out the car And I'm a dirty shoe illusion leaning on the trunk with the ghosts of switch blades and other rusty services I'm enemy humor and traveling father's ashes on the backseat behind two sons in the lane now for metaphor Well, maybe a metaphor about something unfinished one million hands passing us through the Midwest Last wishes by way of fishtail daydreams by way of collision home in the badlands of translation Relax passing great grandparents finger bones fathers ashes no longer arms just tattoos Badlands imagination barreling translating a father's last trip home. We don't know what else we good at besides this traveling exits and collage exits and pieces pieces of 1970s kitchen plates and a good luck refrigerator We still ain't eight the narcotics swing or how we see yesterday get out the car against desperate white supremacy Gas station greeting stray dogs and other earthborne alarms. We are straight deadly against Desperate white supremacy and other senses that die silly and it murdered. We don't know what else we good at besides this traveling Two coins of the other toll is us character in this date on a journey of a million parallels Some like is better high some like is better drunk every late night has a Summit to it cousin breeze and murder rate barreling like upborn love songs your ancestors are smiling as we pass the time When we ride this language past Gary 3000 cast-iron lining proud for arms for meals three-man ghost story fishers of ourselves Cards dealt Narrative implied maybe something unfinished like an Indiana hurricane or two midnight semil walkie Or no arms no tattoos. No Chicago ever again. We don't know what else we good at besides this traveling and besides Heaven is all goodbyes Anyway drive Drive placidly through the noise and haste drive placidly Drive It's not a secret that most people waste a lot of time and if they were doing something different They would feel better and in fact be better people So tell your secrets to someone no one talks to in the buzz and hum of conversation overlapping rants implications Hydra secrets out loud It's the tingle of karma and what seeds we so I Am an American therefore I drive I want to do the right thing, but I have Retroactive amnesia. I know what I said when I said it, but now I don't remember any more time is short-stopping for cigarettes Blow smoke in my face. I gotta go I gotta go. I gotta go It's gonna be an early night or is it good sense has coagulated We're all Dehydrated and the last thing we need is another drink, but that's what's likely to happen The city smells like urine We endure run-of-the-mill Pilsner kisses love without flip-flops love in a full lotus position Love that just misses masking what harvest comes of bones in mass graves a crack head Sings too softly to be heard over boomboxes and traffic passing through What can soften the flavor of bad dreams and reality to bitter to smoke How do you write a love song in a time of war? I might as well be sitting in an ashtray rolling in the dust of my own exhalations Sing me a love song anyway. I'll just pick up in media's race like they say You can look away flick a switch turn a dial be virtually a lot And there's a lot to look away from well So fill it up with disney's and Rassland costumes your children are spitting images your mind reeling in their disbeliefs now video watching after news After shooting information at Littleton near Denver suburban high school middle-class Colorado trench coat mafia now being watched by video against minorities and students of purported Christian persuasion and athletic prowess 14 hospitalized a student body of 1800 after explosions now being watched by Video background fantasies 20 people in all black men painting nails and eyes black apocalyptic death cult images intercuts of Informations after shotgun blasts swat teams hostages clothing as costume in hiding in drag dragons Dungeons fantasy game video game going out with a flame kamikaze maybe nazi to multimedia ultimate shootout in the living room intimate and intimidation Shucks ma we was only kidding and then it got real like we were in this movie this power We really had them being paranoid of Us Vampires with deadly fire and reach ma you should have seen us. They thought we laid minds Ma imagine that us in trench coats a real mafia for those few Precious moments ma they used to make fun of us Well qr has challenged me. I had kind of suggested some kind of improv activity And he handed me this and said you can read that Maybe no glasses helps it does look at that Is it the work of poets to create soft cozies around the edges of contemporary society that protect one another Is it the work of poets to make sense of Displacement and tragedy if we pick the brightest colors The prettiest marking pens our shiniest words and Gloss them over and around and create pattern Can we protect one another? Can we hold each other safe? I Find myself worrying about the fixed like the weather of the seasons I can do nothing about like the reasons of second nature's repetitious fancies I choke at rancid cues of stone too high to tiptoe around Stumbling premises of apt gesture that ingest a little too much far-gone just in cardboard styling and water rat scurry Smart at those hip-toned otherness who hinted do's with indigo obsolence dribbling from the corners of their wit I find myself adopting bad habits thinking about what thought I thought I have nothing to do with and can't help Looking at pictures of terminal cancer of desire who sniffling wheeze and whisper please and sputter and gravel Gravel for tardy resurrection modeled complete complexed artistry in rhinestone settings and backseat Jalopy drag What bad thought junkie I am strung out on the concrete of protein the lips of staggering of adjectives Informing the sepia image drunk with multi-form gray and guilty esoteric verse that binds and hides the sun in amorphous profusions nouns listing on their sides y'all can't handle this This is exactly what I would want to be doing on a Sunday Making decisions on the fly Deciding whether I'm gonna drop f-bombs for posterity You can usually count on me for that or waxing nostalgic about You know problems that we've been considering for a long time, so they seem more cuddly than current problems climate change This heat grips me like the plethora embrace of a discount dominatrix. I like it You may call me perverse But I like this new heat in northern cities See San Francisco's never been a frigid bitch and she's always been for sale Her sweat stinks of sweet steam beer It's sometimes hard to navigate her silicone valleys her devil's slide But I cling to her commands Flip that switch drive me drive me come on give me a lift drive me drive me Her wish is my command. I'm a willing slave and everything I do heats her up sweat dribbling Down fishnets into stiletto boots Climate change. I saw these with Out our home becoming victims of their own cons robbing the public dry on welfare lines mental health clinics for the general public now Displaying their sores ghost dancers in the streets shaman shaman trying game in public acts provoking charitable retributions from the heads of states down to you and me and on the party line I Saw this army of criminals waiting on the corners skillfully plotting on the corners in heavy rains scheming as competent as NASA for its own ends and means only in Snowdrifts at midnight Gracefully evading the sharp braces of winds Amazing the others at their stamina their abilities to launch and operate a full-scale production under conditions like these I Saw these super people without jobs who kept on standing there with no visible means of support This is literally a random poem pulled out of a pilot But it's kind of excellent and perfect because it's called narcissism The shadow of the Lorax plays on the walls of Plato's cave where Christ was buried and on the third day Sisyphus rolled the rock away and invented religion To fuel all feuds with folks who might yet be friends The world is getting small or the world is small and getting smaller and Unlikely oasis in space. I am you all the myths are true We are all gods at all times and of course we see ourselves in every drop of water it is us a Tour guide through your robbery. He also is Cigarette saying look what I did about your silence Ransom water in box spring gold this decade is only for accent grooming I guess Ransom water in box spring gold the corner store must die war games I guess all these tongues rummage junk the start of master structure and begins and ends in restaurant bathrooms And some people use another people clean you telling me there's a rag in the sky waiting for you Yeah, we've been seen we set of stays we should have fit in you know warehouse jobs are for communists But now more cord during hallway of walked into our lives now the whistling is less playful and the bar bar overcrowded to my dear If it is not a city it is a prison If it has it if it has a prison it is a prison not a city You know when a courtyard talks on behalf of military issue all walks take place outside of the body dear life to your left The medieval painting to your right none of this makes an impression crop people living in thin air You have five minutes to learn how to see through this breeze when a mask goes sideways Bob wire becomes a floor Bob wire becomes the root 40 feet into the sky becomes out of bounds when a mask breaks in half Mind which way the eyes go they killed the world for the sake of giving everyone the same back story We're watching Gary Indiana fight itself into the sky old pennies for wind for that wind feeling you get before the hood Goes up and over your headache pennies that stick together mocking all aspirations stuck together pennies was the first newspaper I've read along with the storefront dwelling army that always lets us down where the Holy Spirit favors the back room souls in a Situation they offer a hundred ways to remain a loser souls watching a clock hoping that I know a lot of sad people I was we talking about again the narrator asked the graveyard ten minutes flat said the graveyard the funeral only took ten minutes I never tell that to anyone again You just gonna pin the 90s on me all 30 years of them then watch it I know the difference between sleep and satire the pyramid of corner stores fell on our heads We died right away that building wants to climb up and jump off another building. These are downtown decisions Somewhere on this planet. It's August 7th, and we running down the rest thinking one more needs to come with me What evaporated on earth so that we could be sent back down? colonized American daughters English has left me speechless in at least three other languages My mother tongue ate up all the words that might have been mine If you can't say it, you can't think it and you can't do it What's left all that's left a few family keepsakes quaint old trinkets a recipe or two Self-loathing a desire to fit in This is how wisdom gets lost and never finds her way home so my man whose daddy Took him to mr. Michelle's bookstore, and you met Ben Davis and Richard Wright and I mean to ask you if you knew Vito Mac Antonio during those times of rust that busted the poor in spirit down even further Gave the boys free passes to the Taj Mahal Sent the slickers into literary country to slice away the balls Pudenda of story and song. What are the lessons of those times you? Transcended not too easily yet Maybe too quickly in earnest gestures of flash and humanizing frenzy nurturing yourselves on exotic places exotic people who Recognized in you their lack and asked to be fed biscuits instead of stones and Steins of imported beers and the lines of Palaver who use canvas and notebooks as bedroom props bed after bed What are the lessons of those times your distant? Magnanimity never tease them nor gave the condescending nod and knowing look in the Transactions of identity they didn't know and you knew well What are the lessons of those time? I wish I'd asked But years of research tells me just the same We sold the words for gathering berries when Great Aunt Lydia needed school clothes a Picture of her wearing them snuggles in an envelope in my father's bedroom Some family pictures you just don't know what to do with precious as thorny canes Homeplace when as a matched set for bail money mays brother. I can't remember which framed says family story But he must have skipped because we never got those words back No witnesses No witnesses and broad daylight Let's be clear for a moment. Nothing has been lost Some of it was traded Some of it was stolen these are the colonial times and community memory stretches thin Days are you have to travel light? Pick carefully the things to leave behind no matter how beautiful I keep the word for catfish Folded tight in the lining of my left shoe safe and close for my boys Have I messed this up for everybody now? If you reverse the car any farther You will run over all the scenes in the back of your mind. I Never cared for teachers just the patterns of their fainting spells, of course Of course induced by wall art all that to say Propaganda is courage, man The price sticker hides my tattoo. I treasure my problem with the world My mother becomes from Brooklyn first thing in the morning. That's a proverb around these parts Proverb or peasant entrance password Writing short notes to famous Europeans on the back of postcards with ransom requests They reply with a newsreel or cigarette announcement. I can't tell the difference Noble dollars, then you die inside But only inside they call it sleeping deeper than your stalker and stalker is all that badge makes you Says a great spirit dressed in the bloody rags tuxedos became Meanwhile my punch is feared by no one Proud of yourself. I ask my fret hand porch lights is what they call our guns I've seen this house in a dream. I believe with trumpet was the first possessed object to fly Keep going. She cheers the draft in the room becomes a toddler toddler obsessed with the altar The altar becomes a runaway train. I got a thousand paintings like these Cascading down my skinny arms dictionaries piled up to the window bars A reminder to the population that your blanket can work with or against you human reef We will be a big human reef for concepts that finally gain a metaphysical nature And they will swim around our beautiful poses. We stop being flashbacks Then stop being three different people Then I was alone the pistol one city away One of the drug triangles lines runs through my head. I tap the bottle twice and consider the dead refreshed They don't you want to rest your bravery? Don't you want to be a coward for a little bit back and forth to a panic attack with no problems nor fears? A man gets a facial expression finally a Friday finally goes his way His life is finally talked about happily in his head. I can't possess the body of a hermit I must be the last of his smoke now running the other way with three blocks of alley tucked under my arms You ever see a man get to the bottom of his soul in a car ride down a missing cousin street? Half step to the right. I mean, I took the whole car outside of history Half step to the right. I mean a whole pack of wolves stepped to my left road marker Is what I call the light bulb we had for a son a whole civilization might slink to the sink Or a changang shuffling next to a sucker also known as the lone look in the mirror A stack of money starts talking from four cities away America drives drunk She's a bloated old whore vomiting the star-spangled banner on the sidewalk Oh say can you give it to me? Give it to me. I'm free What happened? I just want to watch tv Don't touch that dial. We have remote control Vertical and horizontal hold We watch tv on endless stream But there used to be a broadcast day They'd spin the star-spangled banner while we watched the astronauts plant the flag on the moon The test pattern turned on colored bars and blocks and that single tone woke me up if I fell asleep in front of the tube The happiest memories of my childhood are of my family gathered My mother never cooked. So we watched tv together Star Trek and doctor who Wonder Woman and Saturday morning cartoons I liked the click of the dial I liked how static really looked like noise I didn't believe in radiation or god or really anything I couldn't see I like to sit really close to the tv My mother would scream, but I never did go blind I like to press my eye against the curved glass I couldn't see inside But I saw how the picture made itself of millions of tiny boxes of color Constantly rearranging to entertain us to sustain us What happened? A crash drunk driver Won't make the news Oh, say can you red eyes and blood white Sidewalk the ambulance blue nitrile gloves Can you see? You are trying to imagine this is all a dream containing just another truck stop story I thought Then I saw this in english subtitles If you are captured the poetry will dissolve between your teeth with you You are breathing hard A mirror will crack under your nose before your exhalation registers on it All the white powders in this country are in the hills The killers here produce pain not the stilling of it You are trying to and very quickly Summon up phrases about injustices The trooper says he cannot finish writing the ticket In spanish Till it is dry in the city you will have to wait He notices the ring around your collar as he grinds the heel of his Boot underneath your ear. He will remain Clean at any costs Richard Pryor says this factory stinks like shit They seem to be doing Alexander Nipsky backwards in rag time Meantime there is this roar of blood running down a blind alley You find yourself screaming I can see, I can see, I can see it's a miracle All is red, all is red Eisenstein is having a shit fit in Kabul Chuck Berry is ringing in the slaughter Who's dangling about to be crushed Cut off in primitive gestures, buddy Whatever happened today bought the thom you Who really cut that tune with a razor exile from tin pan alley now proxied in santiago Big time south of the border slicing deep Suzanne Sontag has recovered. Thank god What language do they make duck soup with dear gulp el golpe? quack quack That season again The Nina the Pinta and the Santa Maria have been carried overland for far too long Every indigenous child handed a ballast stone at birth Five adults masked on shoulders Four young women untangling rigging and elders Folding sun-dried sails flaking with salt We walk the southern wagon trails to the pacific like an unhealthy song Singing everyone west for all time. We have carried Chris in our pockets Our shoes are muddied with him and word of him Our faces are marked, our hands are mussels soar, our voices are raven growling songs of the lost The planks have been sent out into the California surf But they float back Every october they float back on shore Here comes the tap water Whistling past our heads Institution tile under brake pedals Matching white watches painted on palms for smashing grab recollections People who are related by ballad hot plate failures fishing for polyterians The matchstick that is a draft card by the time the loner finishes sweeping the train Also related by ballad under paved streets hanging like strips of film in thin air I missed the carpentry more than the religion. I tore the tattoo Out my uncle's picture and lent it to my friends one left cross at a time for life mined behind my back They say the child will do better upside down the child's cake party is in the precinct Mainstream tune playing upside down a t-shirt with their face on it printed on a cop stone 28 hours later a headrest will do the city rain feels like clientele Our dough's on the back of a bus and woken the mind of a three-story man God won't you hear with that crowbar in your hand? All of the world is the third floor seasons invent themselves But we invent the underground cause and effect is nothing but a casual venue. I once played He decided not to kill me like giving loose change. They don't teeter now tall man I was nobody at point blank range Nobody finally again lung first. I fell a love then a rule then a hate dance moves within murder attempts within dance moves They lean back and be celebrated by small people He said the clothes on my life teacher needed new patches sit back and disrespect at all I've given up on counter revolution. I said Well, well, then here's your weapon little bank Hey, knowing what you know now Would you still have written fortunes on the bottom of church shoes and put them back on the rack? And how does everyone think that a rich guy is their twin along with other tantrums is my cue fortune teller half Sleeps while talking about a mere treading all over the posters in my childhood room And how cold calculation really mothers nothing in a vision of chess pieces and chains He says then my friend you will have fear and then you will have form This is from sidewalk indian by kim shuck infections and narratives hard to tell if this story is remembered or invented I'm in no position these days to know too many hours of pouring over blankets and miscellaneous strips of weaving and how many times can I catch the intended pox anyhow There is that Throat tickle of repeated histories And I confess that I can't pick one of them from the other Anymore either the threads packed by years of group delusion repainted woodwork and the deep desire for self justification For belonging our truth has stained this flooring has died your hymns And if the hum of history before the invasion isn't part of your dream soundtrack yet Then it soon will be That was by kim shuck now it's just tumble town all around More haves rule more have knots there is less to have to be had For all is another rule is trash is fact and it's all over town now The top hits bottom bottom nowhere in sight just the Aftermasses of terminal blight You know, there is some stuff you just can't make up. This is the last blue cloud quarter blue cloud quarterly Which was a publication out of marvin south dakota This particular issue was poems by mary tall mountain who used to make food for homeless people a few blocks from here I wanted to Read this Is there light still springing At that house in capronone. She waited at the door In myself. I felt angry No Of simon. I willed him admit her She of the burning hair the magdalene She came to my couch. I heard the trickster Pharisees clicking their beads I saw their wagging beards as I lay at the table Sharing fare with judas and my brother. She bore an urn of alabaster Oh the blaze of her hair more bright than my woven walls I thought of john across the way chained by hered on tipas, of course For this mary was imprisoned too But the bright hair burst free Her tears laved my dusty skin Spike gnarled glazed the air Now I felt the gust of judas's anger and that was begun Which is finished tomorrow yet Tell me is there light still springing from the marvelous hair of the magdalene When a drummer is present They are god I am I am not an eye I am a black commons I'm writing my new tattoo out on bus station glass making tattoos all afternoon trying to talk myself into seeing the decade through And I must really be the devil's front man staring at an empty bus that I imagine in fact carries paintings of people And the man drunk behind the wheel has to choose between a black and white toddler after school in america on a california street That doesn't need a name nor california No one on the street has a job and therefore no one is there I colored my oppressor's gun and dance floor for him in the same day The joke began The walk under bus seats is fine by me as long as I get to the front The joke concluded And tuesday is downhill entertainment or commotion in the ashtray the day that jail quotas get filled or the day that the planet plays flat Maybe the capitalist says stadium seats on fire and cause the economic progress The communist has plenty of time to finish his cigarette and lie to his boss killer lying down in front of a Tank I have a small statue built in my chest and also an anchor upside down in the air worried about the walls I forgot that the ceiling was closing in on me too That's my take on my alcoholism I'm hunched over a meal like eight five years ago That's my take on the look on my face curse god alone took another step up the staircase and for a second forgot all occupants of the world Beginning with this house this action hero of one street proportion declares rap music is the way to count blessings The 80s were better than its fiction I will be half eaten my entire life always walking beside myself with a gun to my head And another one pointed at passersby half of me all of you But i'm always happy to see you with a miraculous route you took through the threat Honest pay is a knife in his arm honest paying my chest is a broken lock on the monument tell you the truth I forget what his hands look like what he did with them or what kind of third eye the handcuffs cut into his wrist understanding The opposite of love is ego And neither of us have anything in the game So let's ruin our friendship. Let's drink cheap beer on a first date that lasts at least seven years Maybe sometime we'll need some sleep. Maybe sometime But not now I'm wearing one batman sock And one with blue stripes I never got the hang of matching Except when I'm with you You know, uh, we are happy but strangely insignificant to most souls No match for human kisses. I wonder what the speechwriter would tell himself now I look twice at the tower and write nothing Flashing back to a high school teacher talking to me like I've ever listened to jazz music On the day someone got killed TV static then the 70s then tv static then the 70s again Then the coin trick They look at black people twice sometimes Then the 70s again Then the dinner plate cornered all I could think to do was admire their guns One thousand knocks on the door made me a happy dead man The weight and shape of bravery is particularly your own It's not the only challenge you'll face Morning today was not as cold Tests of your heart are constant. I've seen you wedging yourself into cracks between window And frame seen you squarely on your feet beak to muzzle with mythology Fortunately a story you recognize Conclusions reel out in all directions blue and light blue and then unseeable But this is the thing you've seen caught here by your own childhood sweat dream In this moment you are too tired for fear Eyes open this is actually dangerous An equation of meat and alcohol and anger your calm doesn't help and you're not interested in the choreographies of submission A physical language that too many women are forced to learn Feet firm you do not conform Sad for the moment you do not conform Tomorrow can be anything else Tonight is not yet an emergency The first cigarette Makes this parking lot my bedside The second cigarette makes this parking lot my front pocket Next I hold the witness like a newborn though half-hearted brittle teeth by my art Watch how we talk in depopulated circles You caught me Said the hangman to the condemned Caught me red-handed But the hangman's hand kept moving nevertheless Biting flags eastbound and other familiar sound effects A revolutionary would call us a landless fire The night train agrees that these are my keys. I'm just admiring your fabric lord My art is rational therefore my life is in danger Traveling up the tap this time and it looks like water was never here Just jail noise and the jail noise that politicians speak This world is weak Bosses graffiti too many times I tell the witness all characters are in motion regardless of what that day did to your disposition I also left that piece of good news in the ashtray next to my nickname In every room has a kitchen in it Every life has company to feed every room has a rumble in the corner Eighth grade heroin in my hand along with pieces of an uncle a purgatory grease fire got us worried A phone rings in 1988 and epoch begins when a mother hangs up. This is not writing poems. This is wishing Car loads well understanding Harder times coming when respect isn't mutual Power usurped by men in expensive suits against the will of ordinary people Bamboozled double-talked and flim flammed We stand cardboard in our hands we the for the by the Comes the revolution Us folks are the peoples who look towards the sea vision and memory past Perfect futures are stoned about our musics like seaweeds on the shore our eyes Hearts of fire dancing on looms aghast and bedazzled caress in these sands hand clapping spirits Our souls are numberless Our souls are numberless buckets and bus stations Tennessee bound and Tennessee was bound to do it Shark to music. It's a pool room in a car cigar break I told you don't be no more than one woman late again They killed your best friend for those songs, but I bet they don't get you to Sea drifter in blue p-coat on a miracle Clear night for my love walk on the gulf like we've been doing our whole life A god's voice cracks We only talking about water, baby How many times you got to write letters to the city? How many times I got to leave you at home? You know guns don't really talk and gods only talk to themselves I never knew your father, but one drifter to another. I see you never stood a chance tornado pick toothpick for mask 185 gambler past slavers trade or marble past smoke back and forth to a fork and back rec center's crumbling sign on the backs of his knuckles the man the myth the summer dust puddle under dirty eyes 10 numbers to rest messed up the cards the deck of right eyes I own three devils in a joke about a virgin Worried that too much heaven is possible a fan of anxious comics waiting behind tornadoes for food That was by tango ison martin But the interesting thing one of the things about doing reading one another's work that I always notice I have a really hard time with one or two poets not like Not trying to do them Carolee sanchez is one of them. I have a really hard time not trying to read it like she does But I got to say about tango's work if I just unplug my brain It's an entirely different poem because I've heard you read pretty much everything at this point rather And it's like it does not come off the same way when I do it. So thank you for indulging me on that one We are also the ones spoken of in prophecy we fence walkers with multilingual imaginings of birdmen sunflowers and rattlesnakes to We time travelers who carry our part of one Of the fires or maybe the fire is gone underground and waits Some find themselves marked with a scar where a coal was picked Or just as it looked likely to go out But were written on by that heat with words of their own history Just the same on some of us the marks can be faint. Yes the sound of those eastern rivers Not even in dreams. Yes, still it doesn't take much breath to relight us all to a set a whole new generation ablaze When the streetlight uh prophet speaks by kim shuck he did That was my interpretation I learned all my spanish in school I never tried to pass for white But I have been passed Because it's good to be white in america and mother knows best To give a not quite white baby white names that don't explain such dark eyes and such tight curls My name never stopped mean girls hissing gringa colaprieta and guera and taco Brown on the inside not quite white on the outside You would not believe how white people talk About other people when they think you're white How it's more polite to say spanish instead of mexican And the subtle shift in tone when your mexican is discovered your tortillas uncovered I never tried to pass for white But I have been passed because white people who like me Want to give me the benefit of the doubt And let me tell you sister there's nothing like white privilege and my mother knew it So when people would ask are you italian or greek she would laugh and say good guess That's true It's so disappointing such dark eyes and such tight curls Failed to fit in Not white Not mexican I have been passed. I identify as white trash My mother is mexican, but her family doesn't mind porque no hay indios in la familia And since I learned all my spanish in school It was years before I understood it's good to be white in america We used to dance We used to dance to the drums To the drums To the drum drum drum and pulsate knowledge stoke and stomp steps of flowing science smoking Hours of rhythm imagining wise of delicate proportion We used to dance to learn we used to dance and learn to the drumming and the hum That wove the selves and stars into bright black eyes visions Stomp and stroke pulsating language all around flow of rhythm and balance song of smoking house of blaze Imaginations rigorous ways Then this great cosmic joke One feather dropping wise The river wakes Shakes her wings as if her body were a bell as if bells yearned to ring warning She arranges her feathers and one drops wise and damp to the pebble bank That sings importance and responsibility As if rivers forget what they can be forget how to rainbow or essential lessons in healing As if bodies have forgotten the ocean As if we've let slip the habits of salt blood and dancing with the moon A palm placed on the fallen feather nose remembers that selling isn't knowing Slip your banks shake the equation of wings Let's start the deep work of making well From a two-floor skyline An abandoned house talked to me It said young man, you are heroic in 10 years old Among 20 generations of friends Friends will free fall away Free fall up Free fall the walls with fifth grade speed to industrial paint behind secondhand fences young man use quick knife tongs Be boning brass be last laugh music. You are always leaving Always one change of clothes from the door a life in escape A two-floor skyline said you're the guy that dies in the middle The friend more blues than skin The face the cheap hotels schizophrenics can place with 90 mile per hour right eyes among dry heat killers Once children three feet high and roaming and repeating and aiming at cotton mirrors that hang on breathing walls You are 10 years old tagging along yawning at well lit violence whistling two shop songs You will be useful You will be high and alone flying on a nephew dragon from a $20 family in a sky that calls itself just more soil Around walls that are just walls except these walls suggest you make wives out of highs and currency Here to air is polite to sleepy glass and bullion walls young man. You will come to admit There's sometimes Suicide is power and some people live stronger as ghosts and sometimes the afterlife empties Billions of souls enter objects like playground bullets and abandoned door frames Even broken glass will prove it has voice too There are 24 hours behind your back. Look over your shoulder right now. Can you hear it the sound of drums punching themselves out The sound of piano parts learned in between assassination attempts be boning brass be boning enough for two souls Be invincible again suffer red-eyed accents professional finger tips gifted victims six in the morning beer The first month of probation to shout at the wall see these words that shouldn't be home look behind you again Be invincible again be windward be a sad machete be her son Be a thief still is back and laugh too long and never look away The afterlife will empty and walk you home peace It's easy to photograph war harder to show peace Because peace looks like birthday parties picnics at the beach waiting for the bus and another day at work The problem with peace Is that it's nothing special Peace is ordinary Subtle as crossing when the light turns green And the rhythm of your feet becomes part of the pattern of the crosswalk yellow and black yellow and black yellow and black read just uh an excerpt from a uh A mox cistern called something may flower yet, but Hell of a long winter Hurt till least for some hell of a place containing Unequal spacings called thing Ain't what used to be whether a day of labor or uh permanent thusly May finding dusts too difficult Mush cakes refuse to a flower yearnings seeking orders for delightful Immolations yet atmosphere this way and that all statistics inferred But the nature of this follows from that et cetera Exposed but memory banks bursting. Was it an ad or an adversary? pointing to some The great floods were important of molds an old ice box parasites yet pirates were spent in roosts To rule was empty Inviting a trick a thing a loose old and a washed That had been piped lines A leash to an old first flower hint of mojitas Swarmed over it blew crackling Blewed over sums crying may each disguise Latinate in Undations and Placations in Petina's Dwarves. I'm always trying to figure out how to read this. I don't know That's either really encouraging or really discouraging. I haven't figured it out Qr hand is still trying to figure out how to read