(note: this collection, self published in 2004, is presented here in its entirety)
delvation n. a sudden, epiphanical glance into the real or imagined nature of something.
i.
if i could be
time’s concubine
then i would make Truth
a cluster bomb
you see
love is like a porcupine
it only hurts when you feel it
the most perfect beach
is that space between
two eyes wide open.
ii.
live bare
walk wanting beauty
glorify anything elementary
sleep swimming through shadows
and
occasionally
produce
smear.
iii.
amerika is a vast attic
full of empty things
dead things
that speak in voices louder
than those of our own families.
amerika is a u-rent-u-store-u-keep-the-key
where knick-knacks clutter like mousetraps
cheddar cheese to entice the highest bitter.
so we live in a casino economy
can we ever be more than
mere slots ta pull?
iv.
linton kwesi wafts through
my bloated membranes,
reminds and rewinds
through captive london streets.
his diaspora is actually a stateless memory,
fine sheets that don’t fit anyone else’s bed;
perhaps, “standing in the rain in vain...”
expressing the pain of the ghosts of brixton
nevah enuff tah struggle hand ova fist
for the few scraps that are missed.
my schoolmate was dismissed
for beating on his desk like a stolen drum.
the mammary glands of cancerous curfews
belie gradual hopes of integration
into an alien nation of sarcophoguys
and demented holsteins.
v.
our love compulsion
may be less fatal
than secondhand smoke
intimacy is certainly the cigar
burning agile throats
while cupids miss their notes
on the alphorn of my libido.
vi.
i adore chile coated niñas
with teeth that won’t rust
hair a regal outgrowth
of the ancient guaje, oceans
of locomotion this metropolis jus
ain’t comin up for air. she moves chicle
like rivers into their unsatable palms,
the chin of santo domingo buries us
in his good intentions.
the sun alone could ply her
to serve a celestial trade
if this earthbound renown
should one day forsake her.
vii.
his rage would be more fair
if planning was as simple
as aftermath. he wouldn’t want
to know the sucktion of tv then,
its portentious beckonings
to a garbage-can existence.
yes, I forsook planning
to revel in social calamity
the set dangles
like a winoed leech
from the seventh-floor balcony
neither gravity
nor desire
can save it now.
viii.
haiku written fo’ you
bubba
billy clinton:
pants straddle ankles
a villain milking scandals
i am still homeless.
my bank account is nil
work’s a bitter pill compared
to the unconditional freedom
of teeming street canals. your refuse
gives me a regular gourmet spread
your neglected cardboard builds a cottage
to rest my head.
how amazing:
life is truly worth living
when money ain’tcha daily bread.
ix.
the kid’s quite a kaleidoscope, marvel
of pastmodernism, somewhere
between the five a.m. express to bed-stuy
and a kiva at zuni pueblo
-beatific captain, cruising a shoddy sea.
so why not let it be me, one day,
finding a winnable social mission
maybe true democracy to deliver?
ya know what?
hatred is quite the river
flooding its banks
at hysteriorical moments like these
8balls say make a wish
but please don’t ya hope
on dreams broke
and tied-up in scary knots.
guess what?
the people his story forgots
have stuck around to defecate
on your penthouse sweet.
x.
chocolate chica: authentic power
plus an original language.
sunbeams be massaging summer roads.
you should know
just how much love blows.
but still:
manifest tawdry fantasies
let faith animate your whispers
think in frantic caffeine screams
beneath a coattail moon.
xi.
dubya is a premature ejaculation:
shot heard round the world
or maybe just in take-ass
that scary planet with more electric chairs than cattle anyway:
pappy shrub sticks his oil pump in mammy pure unleaded crude straight
from a royal saudi spigot better than that troublesome nigerian stash
but he still jerks off to the thought
of killing all those alaskan caribou
c’mon barb oh yes ummm oh yes ummm
straight goes my dynastic load
down the executive chamber
meeting with the egg dutifully arranged
by the carlyle group, lucifer,
and osama bin hidden’s big brother
this one won’t even have to pee on his own
we decided
that he will be destined
for dicksieland chads
that hang just the right way
and timely terrorist atrocities
that can be used to create
a fascist wet dream state
from sea ta shining sea.
xii.
at lost: mid-souk,
the tone of her skin
just a shade darker than pumice
as i gently wander
the marketplace of pre-history:
my comrade is beckoned by a ram’s head,
dressed in her sunday best
for the end of ramadan.
mustafa shines me an arrogant grin;
new countries can bomb our ancience,
but our pre-neanderthalic dignity
remains more secure
than all the locks on pentagon doors.
xiii. (for nick, the ramshackle anarchist)
when time starts to burn
and duckets go sour
invade a shittibank
they get more defenseless
by the hour.
xiv.
what if somethingstan
became like post-war japan?
the small price of deconstruction
a military puppet state
an invader whose body leaves
but whose candy bars stay behind
if that was the case
then i would dream of jeannie
as my viceroy
she is so perfectly a fantasy
who knows?
life might even become bearable
for a month.
xv.
she flirts with the wind,
urges for a million moments
of preposterous fluff.
our winter heaves and moans,
in spasms of sadness.
behind the confines of time
there goes my sweetest music.
please tell it that we are not alone
chanting fallacy for our daily creed
becuz there are surely others,
others equally unsuited who come
from remote planets draped in vulgarity.
we humans may come
to appreciate their charity
wearing a disguise of malice
go ask alice
if the looking glass ever breaks.
xvi.
(lines from the heart of petty bourgeois suburbia)
these perfect phantoms, perfection
of non-acknowledgment: pacing
through this over-manicured
gas chamber, seeing nothing moving
but despair. here, you can pocket greed
in disposable cartridges made fecklessly
by nimble brown hands in dusky java.
there is nothing here that is native,
the oldest street was paved last week.
material success requires the instant death
of social memory.
so only let me live
in the brighter intimations
of whatsoonwillbe.
xvii.
i fancy drifters
who reek of pine
for a better epoch where
a bird in the hand is worth more
than a bush family crime tree.
democracy gurgles blood
inside the realm of the beltway.
i made a disgusting soup out of asscrack’s
medieval torture fantasies and dicky perle’s
pre-emption souffle.
wait a hot minute at least
cardiac cheney’s daughter is gay.
the truth can no longer yield to delay
come home for once, peace
take off those golden slippers
and putcha feet up high.
xviii.
the bare stubble of a creek,
sclerotic industrial artifacts
begging for promise. the old grist mill
stands at attention, the sun
becomes a pitiless drill instructor
barking a litany of insults.
trout flail, then fuck; the current
can be quite the conundrum.
they attempt to spawn something pure:
like a fresh miracle, we are dazzled enough
to saute them con amor.
this creek feigns health
like a politrickcian has one face.
xix.
dere’s a dimly wit fanatic
cum strait down from hell’s attic
quite traumatic
shame dat
he don’t listen much ta jesus
sholey not
da j.c. dat we useta kick it wit.
peep dis:
dat renegade homeless cat
who expelled moneychangers
like bad karma
from da empire of transaction.
my bible don’t say nuthin ‘bout
weapons ‘a mass distraction.
powell would be pilate
if thirty a.d.
wuz today’s d.c.
he too would be
making excuses dat stink
like a devil’s asshole.
xx.
she walks in beauty
like the night could talk
it hushes through stardrops
that communicate nothing more harmful
than a hug from a distant galaxy.
if there is intelligent life out there
it would be a good idea
like western civilization, replied
gandhi, when pressed by a reporter
from the metropole. if an eye for an eye
makes the whole world blind
then amerika should make stevie
wonder
swatting at nothing more than
mere hints and vagueness.
xxi.
main street looms
like the silence before a hanging,
the sooncome corpse of concrete
bearing witness to an eager
collective tuneout. they arrive
like conquistadors, with empty promises
for steeds, from bentonville, from japan,
orgies of profit to be had.
my bad luck was that hanging chad
and misplaced pacontribution
we’d rather have gotten gored
than bushwacked
at least demorats do a sincere job
of disguising their crimes
as something benign
the larger depublic can go ahead
and blame ralph
he only gave us seat belts
and one less nuclear waste site
repulsiveacan lite
sure ain’t alright…
xxii.
in your sandalwood eyes
i can clearly see
the rise and fall of history,
those cave-dark places where
hate’s hand dropped
like a felled redwood tree,
as well as
the day-bright spots where
love conquered all
like some generic happy ending
in some archaic sappy movie.
the Truth, presented, quite obviously:
our yin and yangs melting
into a single, Absolute unity.
xxiii.
when our thoughts are midnite sharpest,
she feels that we should discuss
fux news and its gaggle of hawks.
what a noble creature to spoil
for hallyburton profits much
from smoldering cities
and oil lobbies who spew
crude language and retarded syntax.
here’s the strait-up facts:
prisons in amerika are just warehouses
for “surplus populations”
who are not allowed to either sell or buy.
xxiv.
a.
she spins it freely
the floor is an ocean of sweat.
b.
elvis died on the can
smiling through the sunrise.
c.
william godwin wrote a book
that we still refuse to read.
d.
i stashed a dimebag of decency
on the hood of a police cruiser.
e.
elvis was reincarnated
inside a burger king bathroom.
xxv.
i bought my masculine side
a corvette that smells like beef
painted it the color
of a triple x orgasm
watched dan rather not be honest
talk about killing for liberation
through the lens
of a forty-ounce martini.
the amerikan dream farted in my ear.
butterflies can flap their wings
while congress does evil things.
i ate lunch with leroi baraka
in a crackhouse in newark
he was wearing a dashiki
the color of cowry shells
i was wearing an imitation tuxedo
traded for life in an export processing zone
in and out reality is never closer to fiction
than when george orwell’s diction
moonlights as journalism.
xxvi.
his heart opens up like a sieve; my son’s
picture feels so close to home. “could be
my boy, if only he were browner,” is
all haroun can think of in the impasse.
on the other hand, farah’s album
is like a distillation of anxiety;
barely scratching for it,
you can discern a warsick people
who are desperate for respite.
when daily purpose is shredded
by “smart” bombs sent graciously
from the homeland of insecurity
my adopted family has a grim choice:
suffocate in impotence or despair.
not like the amerikan taxpayer
will ever care
where his or her money is funneled.
i am over here to die with the “enemy”
since street protests don’t work
and what’s left? has become little more
than a spineless jerk.
xxvii.
buy amerikan drink bud wear jeans
gulp down those fries in supersize
forget the seventy percent of goods we consume
not made by red, white, and blue fingers.
i bought my masculine side
a front row seat
to the abscess of primevil
dummy rummy bush and dick profanity
i went down on jspringer on live tv
because he didn’t make my toothless
juvenile girlfriend start throwing punches.
his affluence had a pleasant taste
like balsamic vinegar
splashed atop some asparagus.
i hope that i’ve now become
society’s fondest wish-
a citizen without distinction.
i bought my masculine side
a one-way ticket
to extinction.
xxviii.
market-moments: san cris, the buzz is ripe:
severed heads stuck on pikes,
the new world disorder has correctly deemed
that the evolution is going too far.
arnaldo swings blindly; the ball
is captured by the mist. the ashes
of roasted goats festoon the doorway to a sparse chapel.
margarita rolls up her weaving like farout sushi.
seas of spilled soda begin to bubble in the heat.
a rebel transistor crackles like an omelette,
announcing fresh eulogies.
xxix.
(a postcard to armageddon)
por favor: block us out
of your mendacious monopoly
on sinister human intention.
you can give away our seats
to the world cup of megalomania
thoughtfully exclude us
from your frivolous festival
of feigned freedom sipping coca-caca
on an occupied beach, joe camel telling victoria’s secret
so boeing can inscribe it onto the wing
of its next bomber.
all dat useless crap
makes we wonder
if we can ever be
more than just
the sum of our things.
