when the night can breathe
in billows of gust
when the daytime can bleed
and eventually rust
then you would remember how
we used ta kick it on the corner
telling more truth than sojourner
through a kaleidoscope gaze
and a grape cisco haze
never speaking in forked tongues
larger than grapefruit
there is nothing more absurd
than a plane without wings
there is nothing more hopeless
than a phone that never rings
the human soul is a choir that sings
forever in tune with the breezes of june
a young girl spoke to me at noon
asked me what happened to her pops
you see the key that life forgot
is now an x that marks the spot
one more murder in the hood
to feed suburban paranoia.
yes, my soul is on a rampage
through a neighborhood of void
where the houses are unmarked police cars
mass produced with bar codes
the streets are solemn funeral processions
for hearts that need music lessons
such a lie tastes like stale mucous
a casper ghost designed to spook us
in goddess we can still trust
but not god, the male version
because he thinks only with
his bloated penis, ejaculating asteroids
onto purple peaks of venus.
the truth is: these primates jus don't know
they jus don't know
they jus don't know
the hands that feed em the books that read em
the devils that lead em the deceptions that bleed em
give my soul a pair of rubber-band wings,
flexible enough to enclose
the whole spectrum of planetary woes
save us from the ratraces carve our houses up
into a garden where bicycles can blossom
and all scumvees can come home to die
dat's right: my only house
the one where the servants all wear pajamas
and eat meat from golden dishes
if we hanged every lawyer by his britches
then dogs would still chase an ambulance
if we turned all gangsters into snitches
created cartels of transparency
could we discover that true riches
can't be stored up in pockets
or tucked away in lockets
real wealth is not some dead executive's picture
from that history book you wiped your ass with
way back when your acne made facial craters
and the locker room felt like guantanamo bay.
if society is really the problem
then my soul will move to mars
on a 5 am express train to crooklyn
pimp-walk her great red carpet of dust
and melt with an aurora
you see assholes be excuses for things
that might have been born and allowed to flourish
in the shadows of a junkyard in harlem
her face drew pictures on my lusty canvas
it was all smiles of perfect teeth
perhaps, some compassion lay beneath
she is like a fairy from a distant galaxy
trying to bridge the cosmos with multiple band-aids.
i would love to wake up one morning
to the falsetto of a rooster
singing "my way"
appear on a daytime talk show
wearing a t-shirt with a smiley face
and pundits empty heads
impaled upon it
tell oprah she's not black
only brown
give dr. phil
a thorough beat down
make jerry springer
masturbate his bouncer
be just the kind of off-kilter psychopath in training
that society requires for a scapegoat
to disguise a dungheap of hypocrisy
that is taller than the sum of a basketball team
amerika's favorite vocation
is to make angry postmen into villains
and dress their victims up as martyrs.
we are clever without wisdom
are only as deep as our debt
history looms like an unpaid bill
its collectors are mostly ghosts
the eviction notices at plymouth rock
the hull of a slave ship run aground
the faint echo of an appalachian child.
how can one ignore
the duality of a dalmatian?
a canine conundrum
its colors are separate, hostile, and unequal
yet somehow we do manage to share the same streets
and stare at each other with daggers for eyes
the shopping mall could be a hearse
headed towards the cemetery of rebirth
the whipping sands of past sins
could be vacuumed up,
ancient enemies could become friends.
we cannot become something else
unless we really want to
and
we obviously don't
so
until my soul leaves for mars
on a five am express train from crooklyn
this entire planet i will scour
for a single someone
that is something else.
