Day 664: after Chinaka Hodge and Rita Dove

(this was a project for a poetry class- these are not my words, think of it more as an arranger taking the music someone else wrote and re-arranging the pieces)


This is as far back as I can think


1.
This is no place for lilac
or somebody on a trip
to themselves. Hips
are an asset here, and color
calculated to flash
lemon bronze cerise
in the course of a dip and turn.
Beauty’s been caught lying
and the truth’s rubbed raw:
Here, you get your remorse
your

Tragedy
Involves
One.
History
Involves many
Toppling
One
After
Another.

But This is not a riot.
This is NOT a riot.
The best I can explain is this:

Every month she wants
to know where it hurts
and what the wrinkled string means
between my legs. This is good blood
I say, but that's wrong, too.
How to tell her that it's what makes us–

expendable
Shaved and scraped from the inside out
there are no people here and it’s exhausting…
how to tell her that every day begins like this




2.
spent sex years coming
to dream my body steel
create these arms as weapons
bear them daily
sub hellas with mad
replace mad with anger

skin is stretching to accommodate woman
when it opens
where a scar
should be, I think nothing but
‘so I am white underneath’-

don’t expect it not to pain I
walk like, the devil slided up my thighs
play better with myself than ever

here, I nightmare of guns
cause im here
and metal rules the world

3.
it is 2008 now
the year of dreams
we are dazzled by inauguration
and rightfully so
there centuries of memory between this fury
and a joy we have never known
we are pressed for time and so
we are praying for an apology

but The wages are heavy
and that leads definitely to an attitude
and an attitude will get you
nowhere fast so might as well
keep dancing dancing till
tomorrow gives up with a shout,
’cause there is only
Saturday night, and we are in it -
black as black can,
black as black does,
not a concept
nor a percentage
but a natural law.

4.
the sky is wired so it wont fall down

if only we could lose ourselves
in the wreckage of the moment! Forget
where we stand, dead center, and look up, look up,
track a falling star…

now you see it


now you don’t