Stigmatization is not a cause for canonization,

But, I have bled and we are blood on wax—

Molten vocalizations—rising up on the Ninth Station.

It flows like my Afro-Saxon sin tax

In rows—sheets of dough—unleavened bullets in their formation.

I am sweating agony, paining my dew as I git ghost

In the garden, playing an unfit host

To a feasting litany of wingèd flames without pardon.

Acculturation is without pause in my laceration,

Yet, I am fed despite the parallax

Of starvation which seems to flavour my sweet situation.

And, in my flight tonight, it’s Halifax

Where I will flee in the ecstasy of my mind’s migration.

With a hot five-spot I’ll gavotte on the Underground upcoast—

Each mark is for my matriarch, impost

For my passion, due nightly—rightly, my heart to unharden.

Josh, my source and summit; Paul, in Acts, my emancipation;

Frank, with stinging elations—my entr’actes

Widening the cracks into which I plummet on occasion.

Black Madonna, Miss Magdala—both stacked—

Have all got my back, so, I sit and wait for the oblations.

I grow not bored of the boards I bear nor the stakes they bore most

Deeply into me; I am the milepost

Astride the pavement and the sign which lost men look so hard on.

The night is my flesh; shaded—like sorrow—it is salvation.