Kings and Queens, to Die in Dreams...

Oooooo....

Oooooo....

Kings,
and Queens,
for gold -
for lust -
must fall
to dreams,
like stone
to dust...

O'er
the bridge,
they built
my death,
but break,
I shant -
you are my
last breath...

Oooooo....

Oooooo...

He had.
Iron-forged hands like shackles
about his raging neck;
and dangling there,
from a gloomy spine shaped like a broken question,
resigned to the answer,
were slit-wide wrists
shut closed
to a familiar
oval portrait;
and when the weight was too much to bear,
he stood straight
and let the wavering smile flicker
and grow shadows-like doubts
in the corners of his thin pink lips.
The faded cacophany of blood-soaked happiness
softly dormant
in the silver brand between his collarbone
engraved the words of his sepia derangement
where he could not see:
Ich liebe
dich immer -
I
will love you
always.

And so,
the ache was a thorn
to the blurred vision from the glass lips
of his wine-stained monarchy -
The bridges burned,
and he danced like this -
broken,
fettered,
and wild-eyed,
swaying for the self-hatred kissing his hips.


He was once a king,
with a solid stance
and heels that bounded from pen
to page,
chasing his lofty dreams
like prey.

He neither showed no mercy
nor knew no harm.

Perhaps,
he was insane
upon the throne,
gathering listeners to witness blasphemy,
and laugh;
because the locket branding his throat
succeeded
in drawing the last of it nigh,
and drowning it to the screams
that billowed
from the ash
and cigarette smoke
of the forge in his heart,
where a withered Volcan toiled,
scourging the lungs
where words once arose from.

He was a melting fiend.

Not a king...

...With the sun dying in his eyes.

Oh,
how he fell for lust
and eternal glory...

To lose oneself within one's dreams -
and he lost his dearest
to the dust,
the sands of time he let slip through the heels
of his Supras,
below.

It is no wonder
how he lingers
by the shore,
wishing that whore,
his lover,
his fame
to return...

All that glitters

is not gold.

A Featherless Child.

The silhouette of a featherless child; an etch-a-sketch of a skyline tickling bold brown arms, the length of his burning hair. There were pockets where dreams sometimes slipped through. He sees them, as discarded pennies or blackened wads of somethings, choking lifelessly on the sidewalk. He sees hope in the last breath of wild, honest color from the mouth of a can of spray-paint; the sigh of contentment a masterpiece makes when it's been completed, before it gathers dust and wades in the casualties of criticism.

So he stoops in black chucks; exhales a type of soul to the sky, where it drifts and dusts lightly the rooftop. It leaves a permanent signature, and dries in the caress of fading sunlight before smiling his smile to giggling stars. A featherless child can grow wings through his fingers. Rooftop masterpiece and stars sing to eachother, *A featherless child can grow wings*...

And the featherless child sleeps.

An impatient, gentle morning ravages his eyelids and beckons the bubbling wakefulness from the depths of copper bits like gold and blackened, forgotten mysteries. He stands, and circles the bright image of teenage clarity his lungs and breath gave birth to. Satisfied with the lifeblood of artfulness open to a wrinkled white tank, and staining beautifully those bold, brown arms, he jumps to the clouds and lands in the street. A legacy of wings rejoice behind him, and the rooftop masterpiece laughs at the sun and awaits the stars to sing again...

*A featherless child can grow wings through his fingers*...

Sadness in the Street.

A discarded pair of pumps shedding empty kisses; the splattered chicken leg that hit her guarded face before the garbage bag; dollar earings from the corner store across the street; a forgotten teddy bear with cold, empty arms - a lost childhood. Three bullet holes dotting the imaginary "I"'s in a hastily graffittied message. A curious rat poking its whiskers between a spot of rust or what was once blood, and a half-eaten pizza crust.
She lay with her hair knotted between lifeless hooks, silently gasping for air she could not breathe. Flowers that hadn't seen the sun since that first day of elementary school now browned, withered, and died. A lively dress was now a broken dream. Dark eyes mute, slight smile kissing pink lipstick resting on the fleshy brow of a baby wrapped in black. There was snow, and its sexless lips were blue. It slept on a bed of unwanted things.
How could she forget her child in the manger?
How could we forget that her name wasn't Mary?
A lonely star stared coldly over that dumpster in that alley, at the lost Cabbage Patch Kid finding the baby no one wanted to touch. It cried...

...There was no Santa Clause, and no such thing as Mommy.

L-E-T-T-E-R-S

Lying is not my strong suit.

English is what ur tongue mangles it 2 b; leave ur silence on th' doorstep 'nd create.

Taste the sattire in your vocabulary and spit the hard muddy seeds of thought still stuck between your teeth.

Take a moment to reflect.

Enameled words are not the only typeface you're used to, but script is too elegant for your simple speech.

Rack the last dregs of imagination littering the dumpster with the gun strapped to its side, and let loose the string of beads you've been keeping from me.

Saying is sometimes more than what you've been doing.



*********************



Lying is not my strong suit.

Everything u say is 'n innocent attack on my moral'ty, 'nd th' silent slaughter of my puzzle-piece fing'rs interlock'd wit th' kind of glue ur only allow'd 2 salivate.

Tell me the truth.

Tell me that you only respect my simplicities because I bend myself to your unconcious will.

Erase the very thought of me and spit your string jewelries, like lumps of coal, dead notes, the unappreciated lessons that stuck to your tongue and now refuse to become one with the shadows.

Ravage his ears with my beauty, and he will only commit the same senseless rape of words to yours.

Salvage the leftovers, and promise me you'll think before you speak next time.

So, My Mother.

Tell me that elephants walk barefoot,
and I'll believe that my grasslands are no more.

So the death of heathery hands
and leafy smiles
like unknown poetry -
so the death of my mother.

Tell me that a warrior may stand proud,
and I'll cry that the shackles have fallen.

So the freedom of barefeet
and nearly broken eyes
like loosely obfuscated mirrors -
so the liberation of my mother.

Tell me that the mangos run sweet,
and I will drink to the diving, dancing rain.

So the fall of dreams,
tears that blush on black faces
like happiness ran in water-falls -
so the health of my mother.

I am not my mother's daughter;
I am the daughter from the womb
of the somewhere that my heart calls home.
I will read your wrinkles
and tell the world your meanings
but I cannot live them
for you.

Me, I, Her, We.

There was a grave,
and the stone read Me.
I pulled my arms below the deep,
and prayed that Me
would rest in peace.

There was a grave,
and the stone said Me.
Me will pray that I rest in peace.

There was a tomb,
and engraved was I.
I plowed my feet behind that lie
and prayed that I
would rise.

There was a tomb,
engraved with I.
I prayed that Me
would rise.

A coffin lay,
and it whispered Her.
With face like Me,
and eyes like I,
I pray that Her
will hide.

A coffin lay,
and whispered Her.
Her pray that I
will hide.

Inside Me,
I am six feet gone.
I dig Her lips,
and surfaced sweet -
Me pray
that Her
lay drawn.

Inside Me,
I'm six feet drawn.
So I pray
that Her
lay gone.

A shell,
a case,
Her casket,
my embrace.

I for an eye
will love Me
like death cannot do part to prayers;
I pray that He keep my heart.

I pray that He hold Her heart.

Fingers Are Fickle Too.

Feelings are only as fickle as fingers can be.
Fingering the ring he gave me,
feeling...faithless...
he was fickle,
and I can't loosen the silver diamond-studded noose
constricting the thunder in my chest...
so I pop open that endless cavity
and toss the one thing that transcends color
as a blood-stained prism
worthlessly to the clouds,
hoping God would catch it,
hoping that his fingers aren't fickle too...

I was faithful.
He was farther than he said he could project,
because after a while all I caught was a wisp of him -
the ghost image of affairs,
that far-away feeling,
that...hologram.
Robotic,
and sickly sweet,
like the perfume caught still kissing his chest.
I can't even twist past the arthtitic division
of these fickle fingers
to finally open up the valves
and pipe away the dam where tears come from -
I'm telling you
that I cannot be a waterfall.
I cannot fall at all.
I am fell,
and fickle,
and faithless.

...So say my fingers.

She Smiles Before She Fades.

She used to write me letters
in sweet raven-tainted cursive
with her locks.
Sunshine-imbued poetry
in a bouncing bed of curls,
her smile was a magic all its own.
His burning love
was her alabaster glow,
and it seemed that she was always pregnant
with foreign words
and switching hips.
When I cried in the dark,
she would gently cup each tear
and gild it silver,
molding my sadness
into diamonds of expectation.
I will always remember motherhood
with the sigh of a second
and the woven silence of eyelids interlocking lover's lashes;
Crippled moon
with the slight blue heart
and the dainty fingers
like pillowed daggers.
Follow me
before your descent into light.
...Hold me
before you fade.

Miss Carried.

Under an ocean...
beneath the image of a godess sans wings,
with fingers laced and beaded wrists...
there were pearls bleading from those slits.

There were purple buds blossoming between the lines of poetry,
and mis-conception.
She was horribly beautiful,
with open locks stranded somewhere behind the faucet...
with alabaster legs carved open in red ink;
she was miss carried-away-by-her-dreams...
and then she was miss-carried-away...
and then...

There was a future in her womb,
time constraining itself to the course
of a stray umbilical chord,
contorting the salty stone of her limbs
until puppet strings lifted fingers lined with sandpaper to mold the moon
gently,
lovingly,
to the contours of her distended belly.
She starved,
but for love,
and she flung her sanity like a halo to the stars
and prayed for wide eyes that always had room for forgiveness
and hands that longed to be held.

...This is what happens when men take advantage of the treasure they believe in...

...And it happens more than careful, greedy fingers
plucking at the hem of dark kente cloth
until the very fabric of nature unravels
and man is only too proud to rape her...

...And man is never cautious enough to leave his shoes at the door.
He stomps them into her spine,
his words,
his hatred,
the drivel of his steaming saliva
washing away the magestically twisted riddles
carved so lovingly,
painted with the glowing dusk
and a child's sweet tears
into the fold of her back.
See, if he leaves his footprints where the world can see
than no new found sense of afrosentricity
could wipe away the welcome-mat-sooty-chain-link-scar
like unwanted graffiti,
or a logo
branded by corporate skid-mark sticks
where the diamonds marking her thighs used to be.

...There are just too many ways to disgrace a homeland...

Yet...
hatred can also bear the seed of redemption.
And so she walked with care,
salt-water wounds
puckering to the sound of simplicity
in the tiniest of roiling thunders,
in the largest of impacts one can dedicate to the sky before the light hits.

So she carried...

But.

With doors left open
and empty rooms ransacked and wrecklessly abandoned...
...Strings once conducted but left limp and dripping...
...Words littering clay-river-bed lips,
unwavering
and slightly numb
from the kiss of stale air...
...With heartache impossible to feel,
anymore...
She
is Miss Carried...

...And she is no more.