Selling What Slaves Made

Nothing worked in the ring, man

I took my angel on one

I mean really divided him from God

They write books backwards about fights like mine

a lone wolf in three pieces

everything we know of duty, we made up

Maker, My Maker

Born in the garbage pile outside a silver mine

Garbage piles or interstate rug

I think I dealt with your death well, Lord

Garbage pile or shelf full of inner city poems

Silver mine or interstate rhymes

Looking up at the floor tile

I learned how to dodge rain on purpose

Looking up at your floor tile

I cursed my second hand shoes

I cursed up at my second hand heaven

Had no brothers behind the milk crates

Had no father where your cracks 

Make an interesting contortion of border

And speed up war stories

Police daydream at me

While someone’s laying puddle-side 

Half curled up

Half related to no one

Don’t put this on your temple wall

Don’t put a temple in the middle of this side room 

Don’t twitch yourself to death

Don’t take yourself so serious that your soul falls off

He’s down on his luck

Making snow angels 

On the abandoned factory loading dock

Looking up at the 

Tonsils of a non-African deity

We are going to stay right here 

until the third world comes

“a beautiful rejection though”

-we call Europe distant criminality and toast to it

a ten pound weight can kill you

if applied the american way

straight forward philosophy finds me well

well meaning

a flood only means one thing on the west coast

made to struggle on top of people

the reformist’s class contradiction continues in thin air

one of the many phantom skylines collapsing

too bad our gasoline means nothing to their world 

because we would certainly lend it

wise man, if you didn’t win the war

we would call you a nobody

and look for advice

in other Louisiana houses

“a funny way of declaring me a saint”

I can be two things to all people

Old or a hammer 

“the world is this pile of clothes”

“the world is this pile of worlds”

-maybe I’ll hang onto my style a little longer

the jailer moonwalks to the switch

“may your skin end up 

on a tambourine in the deep south”

tendered my death threat 

on a lounge napkin with three stains

talking about biological parenting

and the presents I brought to powder

laughing a little

then laughing hard

my empty hand takes a bow

-final impersonation

front row with the sirens

sequence counts only for survivors 

and a field of gun handles is better than most fantasies