American sonnets for my past and future assassin
The black poet would loves to say his century began
Inside me is a black-eyed animal
But there was never a black male hysteria
Why are you bugging me you stank miniscule husk
Probably twilight makes black dangerous
Are you not the color of this country's current threat
I lock you in an American sonnet that is part prison
I pour a pinch of serious poison for you
You don't seem to want it, but you wanted it
Aryans, Betty Crocker, Bettye LaVette
Even the most kindhearted white woman
Seven of the ten things I love in the face
The earth of my nigga eyes are assassinated
I'm not sure how to hold my face when I dance
We suppose Ms. Dickinson is like the abandoned
Probably, ghosts are allergic to us. Our uproarious
Maxine Waters, being of fire, being of sword
For her last birthday I found in a used New Jersey
A brother versed in a ideological & material singer
But there was never a black man hysteria
Our sermon today concerns the dialectic
Something in the metaphor of the bow
An old woman looks at the rows of clothes
Maybe I was too hard on Derek Walcott
On some level, I'm always full of Girl Scout cookies
America, you just wanted change is all, a return
You know how when the light you splatter spreads
If you have never felt what is fluid
Rilke ends his sonnett "Archaic torso of Apollo" saying
Goddamn, so this is what it means to have a leader
Probably all our encounters are existential
I'm full of more water that a forest
But there was never a black male hysteria
Because he cannot distinguish a blackbird
Sometimes the father almost sees looking
It feels sadder when a black person says Nigga
The subject must be cultural, confessional, clear
A remix of "Pony" by Ginuwine plays
The umpteenth thump on the rump of a badunkadunk
Drive life fifteen miles along a national parkway
After you turn off Shop Road where the flag leans.