III
WHEN I LOSE I CRY AND I'M LOWKEY SAD TO SEE
after Frank Ocean and Kendrick Lamar
I know I need to quit smoking, but
I have fifty fucking screens in front of me / a homeland of mirrors / of trumpets.
when will the empire housing us crumble?
I look to wooden floors for retribution.
soak me through and let me swim varnish
a lacquer sits on the other side of a wall
absent of mineral
to shellac the despot.
this is a testament to the sound
of pistols and leadpipes.
a smokespleen in a body
—in a cup of body--
my language is a metronome.
a work in pages eats through mángu.
feed me kisses and salchichón.
feed me the varnish from the floor.
I was surrounded by the punks and felt gauze covering my neck.
I used to have nightmares as a kid
of a bullet passing through my larynx.
I’m haunted by the gunshots I never felt.
in the distance I heard a man die
and my block bloomed flowers through the concrete.
after Frank Ocean and Kendrick Lamar
I know I need to quit smoking, but
I have fifty fucking screens in front of me / a homeland of mirrors / of trumpets.
when will the empire housing us crumble?
I look to wooden floors for retribution.
soak me through and let me swim varnish
a lacquer sits on the other side of a wall
absent of mineral
to shellac the despot.
this is a testament to the sound
of pistols and leadpipes.
a smokespleen in a body
—in a cup of body--
my language is a metronome.
a work in pages eats through mángu.
feed me kisses and salchichón.
feed me the varnish from the floor.
I was surrounded by the punks and felt gauze covering my neck.
I used to have nightmares as a kid
of a bullet passing through my larynx.
I’m haunted by the gunshots I never felt.
in the distance I heard a man die
and my block bloomed flowers through the concrete.
So when they say people don't care about their own
bodies I look at ‘em like, “What the fuck you mean?
Y’all watched an elementary school get gunned down
and pushed pistols by the case.
bodies I look at ‘em like, “What the fuck you mean?
Y’all watched an elementary school get gunned down
and pushed pistols by the case.
when I lose I cry and I’m lowkey sad to see
there’s all this rumbling about water.
I remember guzzling down
from house hoses
under palmettos like what
coconuts must mean.
an eye carved into the shell
gazes into the road
searching for a half-cab.
when will the cracks in the concrete turn me over?
I stare into potholes looking for limestone.
I’m in another place now.
the sun meets me a little less while I scrounge around for a way to be dollared.
a lot built to be a home is seeking a weaker drywall.
‘how long til feral cats soak water from the crevice between the tiles?’
is what I’d ask if I wasn't eating the drywall.
my left temple is bending towards a glassbluff from a Civic’s window.
it’s giving and taking a pulse / in the affirmative.
poach me into a willow tree.
I’m wanting more than one night when we walked down Broad waiting for the buildings to tower
over us. through the feet of my stool, I watched your teeth grow into monuments I want to write
poems in. a rose means nothing for how I want you to choke me in thorns. your song is bloodlithic.
I never want to write of the sun now waiting for the moon.
*
am I turning a night into a molehill or anthill or whatever it is people say?
I just want a poem about someone to mean more than a poem about me.
the rain keeps falling on this page, but what do I do without it?
this is me begging for a cumulonimbus cloud
to feed me from its mouth.
when I lose I cry and I’m lowkey sad to see
there’s all this rumbling about water.
I remember guzzling down
from house hoses
under palmettos like what
coconuts must mean.
an eye carved into the shell
gazes into the road
searching for a half-cab.
when will the cracks in the concrete turn me over?
I stare into potholes looking for limestone.
I’m in another place now.
the sun meets me a little less while I scrounge around for a way to be dollared.
a lot built to be a home is seeking a weaker drywall.
‘how long til feral cats soak water from the crevice between the tiles?’
is what I’d ask if I wasn't eating the drywall.
my left temple is bending towards a glassbluff from a Civic’s window.
it’s giving and taking a pulse / in the affirmative.
poach me into a willow tree.
I’m wanting more than one night when we walked down Broad waiting for the buildings to tower
over us. through the feet of my stool, I watched your teeth grow into monuments I want to write
poems in. a rose means nothing for how I want you to choke me in thorns. your song is bloodlithic.
I never want to write of the sun now waiting for the moon.
*
am I turning a night into a molehill or anthill or whatever it is people say?
I just want a poem about someone to mean more than a poem about me.
the rain keeps falling on this page, but what do I do without it?
this is me begging for a cumulonimbus cloud
to feed me from its mouth.
when I lose I cry and I’m lowkey sad to see
|
I saw the moon and said “you left
me, bruh.” his craters unboxed to stroke the bay. there isn’t salt here, just a body of sand where we came and went until our throats coughed futile and viral. |
Still wishing for you to call me back, I remember when my bike fell apart and an older woman asked me if I had God in my life. She held my hands in prayer and I looked to the nothing in the sky / an empty detergent / a ball of what yarn devolves from. Why do I stand in your pace for a way to walk when it was my mother who fathered me?
when I lose I cry and I’m lowkey sad to see
I rewatched the scene in a documentary about Nico when her aunt weeps while singing ‘I’ll Be Your
Mirror.’ The fatigue in Nico’s veins rests still in the throat of my collar. I’m awake merely from
pitted water roasted into the city’s seeds. Nico’s songs loom through the background noise of
mufflers in unison, in euphemism.
I write absent of device now where my palm can burn effigy
elegiac feeling / elegiac the body
I sleep so much less now.
the hour hand has no fingernails and my cuticles are ruined
by all the corrugated boxes I reach into.
I want my blood to be the soft sponge of insulin and indolence.
the sky looks down to me beating its drum soldered by the cloud’s lining.
it’s a sky I’m yearning to taste.
when I lose I cry and I’m lowkey sad to see
I rewatched the scene in a documentary about Nico when her aunt weeps while singing ‘I’ll Be Your
Mirror.’ The fatigue in Nico’s veins rests still in the throat of my collar. I’m awake merely from
pitted water roasted into the city’s seeds. Nico’s songs loom through the background noise of
mufflers in unison, in euphemism.
I write absent of device now where my palm can burn effigy
elegiac feeling / elegiac the body
I sleep so much less now.
the hour hand has no fingernails and my cuticles are ruined
by all the corrugated boxes I reach into.
I want my blood to be the soft sponge of insulin and indolence.
the sky looks down to me beating its drum soldered by the cloud’s lining.
it’s a sky I’m yearning to taste.
my mother tells me to keep my head up
and I remember when I read her my poem
about a headstone marked ‘BLANK.’
and I remember when I read her my poem
about a headstone marked ‘BLANK.’
again today, I declare I’m an artist.
when I lose I cry and I’m lowkey sad to see
the assumption that this poem is like Fabuloso® is factual in how it cleans me.
I play language like dominoes. a talk is wrapped in el platano’s skin.
give me all the biotin.
the balding isn’t what gets me,
it’s that I want my fingernails
to be stronger. I would rather the testosterone evade me
into a barrel we use for fuel and not for a fire
burning down the towering buildings we walk under.
I’m in front of a mirror saying again burn the effigy.
when I lose I cry and I’m lowkey sad to see
this can’t be another poem about poems / or solace / or a song.
this has to be a poem about how I took the chip from my shoulder
and flicked it in the direction of a villa.
“mis hijos no quieren la casa que compre para ello,” my mother says pricking sugar.
I dreamt of the house we cleaned together every Sunday for a check.
I dreamt of the house we cleaned together every Sunday for a check.
AND FUCK THEM FOR SAYING MOMS STOLE
this might be more a poem of the chip again.
my language is a laminated piece of the tide and the moon.
moon, is this an action painting?