My words are flames that spread
     like the legs of a red-
     headed whore, efforts at
     literature nothing
     more than that lisp we scoop
     from piss-poured pools of our
     subconscious, steaming up
     reflections of hidden
     Selves that haunt us, drowning
     out unsecured futures
     in fucks and fists when words
     endure such injustice.

Around the dreaded block
     executioners march,
     my baked pupils have no
     use dilating when so
     black, such innocence scorched,
     odds so stacked against us
     when all we work for is
     education, students
     whose dialing in will
     not reach Heaven, not when
     its direct line is just
     a 900-number.

Calling in the balmy
     indecision of my
     indecent summer, I
     climb lust’s mountains lost in
     soft, multiplicitous
     vapour, surrounding my
     soul in burial shrouds
     of unlicensed samples
     my song took long ago,
     knowing I would find use
     for them later, after
     crawling through Hell’s lobby.

‘All in?’ or ‘Pull out!’ goes
     our invocation, shouts
     affirmative, calls to
     action ringing out clothe
     our revolution so
     tomorrow will not come
     without preparation,
     its mouth wet with sayings
     worth my going down, things
     your knowing of right now
     demand our showing up
     to demonstrate how loud

     we citizens—humans
     each—infested hosts whose
     black bodies politick
     against white demons we
     see in our Selves and side
     streets better halves of these
     secret societies
     keep hushed in asphalt dusk,
     we all need to ask what
     ending we want, if this
     violence will end up
     binding or blinding us.