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.