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.