I'm sorry

Before he could even sharpen his tongue
start slicing away at what I had left
I said it first
I'm sorry
I'm sorry that I expected greatness from you
pyramids of possibility built on a mustard seed
or limitless lyrics running on a continuous beat
without ever crossing a bridge
I have intangible artifacts of what we could have been
you were Jean-Michel Basquiat
scouring my skin, looking for places
to test a new technique
colors that prisms search the light trying to find
it was the most gratifying graffiti
but again, I'm sorry
I'm sorry that you don't know your father
that you have this manhole
in the center of your chest
a crawl space where you avoid the son
but you are his shadow
and I have climbed out of enough to know
that you can go blind
living in the dark
you see, I don't wear these glasses for fun
I should have known
you could never finish a poem
and I'm sorry I look like your mother
a piece of bark
torn from a tree
cut down and twisted into a cross
then set on fire
that still stands tall
it's probably why my words burn like raw morning
and I have this caramelized coating
with a soft center
but you would prefer something more exotic
concocted from a perpetuated fantasy
I'm sorry I have bad hair
and too much common sense
to let your lies lie here
take up space in my bed
I would have to wash my sheets 5 times a week
use bleach
and get them dry cleaned
to protect them from potential hurt
so I'm glad that you're doing this now
because baby,
I feel so sorry
for you.

How to Eat Sugar Cane

I use to be a detective. Harriet the Spy. transcribing the lives of unsuspecting strangers. examining their rippled hands. making up stories about Southern women in full length furs buying milk at the grocery store. silver rope tossed across their shoulders. Decorated warriors. wondering how many times they've folded their paper hearts and floated them on top of roaring oceans. Waiting for high tide on shifting floors. Nine life living. Now I follow men. Convicted criminials with no records or recollection of their sins. Stealing tithes from a lone congregation. I know them. Wu-tang loving, weed smoking, mama's boys. who can pull Pomegranate seeds from their pockets and make me eat from their hands. Them. Walking out of the same doors their fathers did. Forgetting to close it. Them. Engraved pens that can't write for shit. I put puzzled pictures back together. I prefer Scotch tape or vodka. But this one taught me How to Eat Sugar Cane. brought bundles of sweetness back from the Sticky sun. and tucked me in. But when I came home, probably after scrapping another chapter. My Mama's permanent First Sunday smile was lost. I looked for it. under brown couch cushions and in the frames of the ten pictures of me on the mantle. I found it in the overflowing dirty clothes hamper. I should have known, it was in his pocket. I threw away my magnifying glass.

We Both Loved Words

I was sixteen
he was too old for me
But
we both loved words
So I let him
Kiss my verb
He tried to
strip my thoughts
But the zipper kept getting caught
On my tongue
Or his baseline
I’m not sure which
one
Bright like Black smiles he was
raised on Holloway St.
Where they brew poison
that burns like honey
Taking swigs on Sundays
Until the bottle is finished
I took a sip
And haven’t stopped drinking
Since
his lyrics slipped down my throat
almost choked on the word bitch
But censors couldn’t stop his flow
He wore precious stones set in metal
A medal
To hide rope burns
I learned that he was born in the Bronx
Explained his accent
And his grit
We broke up once
Because he wanted to fuck
Every girl in the world
But were back together again
Call me an alcoholic
because as I lick
The foam from my lip
All I can see is the sun
Reflecting green glass
On concrete
Our symmetry
embedded in
Beats and trees
The ones he smoked
And the ones I wrote
On

I have five minutes to write

I slid in between bars
contorting to fit
neatly in this space
but chaos;
matches in our eyes
toes coiled to the soul
climbing up my wall
kisses laced with lies
innumerable exit wounds
congregating in my mind,
chaos
doesn't fit neatly
and I have five minutes to write.

Heartprints

Words
writhing on the back of my tongue
burning taste buds
prying lines from my neck
mixing pigments in my irises
the perfect shade of
black
the kind the moon soaks in
peeled back
and dipped in sugar
forgetting to write
this down but
you were here

Oak

Unrequited,
quiet
I can't hear my song
with all of this
thumping in my chest
of steps taken by men with no clear destination
just up
where on my knees
I floated my fragmented peace,
to the Son
I heard was a carpenter.

Black Coffee

You would think she felt it
the way she melts syllables into song
tip toeing on her tongue
losing their balance on the rim then
falling on to her audience
they call her black
because she has skin like scrolls
with no more room to write
wrongs, but she keeps finding places
like the lips of a gutter
she sips coffee without cream or sugar
waiting on this feeling
to walk through the door
and it will, but it won't take it's shoes off
tracking mud all through her home
on her raw knees
scrubbing
the paper clean