Stacking Rocks

I've been told to stop
stacking rocks
to let what nature does
do nature's will

so here I write
and stack another rock
the chasm of my heart
its left to fill

because I know
these stones don't
stack here
perfect

because I know
the past turns red
to blue

I will not let
the weight of
all that's worth it

tell falsehoods
that are waiting
to be true

So when I'm stacking rocks
atop these pages,
don't think of all the nature
left disturbed

remember how I laid
them for the ages,
this path was well-warn
once, then not returned.

Black Pearly Gates

As if the pains of my dear freedom's master
could be forgotten with a paper slip,
like wounds and scars, so cast in fleshy plaster,
would wash away like blood flung from the whip,

So when you beat back ghosts of the land's burden
remember who still benefits, who lacks;
when trumpets play, when pearly gates do open,
the whip, the chains, the rope, the scars, the crack

because to work does not entail title
the land that was once yours is yours again
like horses lead on leadened bite and bridal,
it smothers bodies but it calls us "friend."

Oh, Now my flesh is gone; in death, I'm free
and Peter blesses all in Ebony.

One Poem Away

We are all one poem away from greatness
because many of the great poets that we know
only have one great work to speak of

We are all one poem away from greatness
for when we read the works of masters,
we soar among clouds, in the pillows of whiteness
between the letters on the page

We are all one poem away from greatness
the psalms and songs of ourselves only
come to life when we wake them with
your pressing eyes and pressing lips,
the beauty's kiss of cognition.

A Taste of Me

Sometimes I hook my thumbs 

Under my eyelids and flip out 

My eyes to dunk them in water 

Like tea, to drink up what I see 

The blue tea tastes of tears 

Like childhood first-aid 

Like father-less afternoons 

Like cherries too ripe for a pie 

And I take my tear tea 

And spill it in rivulets 

In the white-cubed tray 

To freeze, for my children to taste

A Crack in the Dam

I hear it start to split
that crack in the dam
and I'm sure that the
trickle will so begin to flow

but before I go, watching and
waiting and anticipating, I want
you to know that I imagined you
being pulled from underneath

being pulled from atop the
silkened surface like a scarf
on the furnace - whooosh -
the suck will push and pull

you down and then out,
your body flying from the
sideways waterfall that sprays
out of the grey concrete

and there, with thousands of
gallons of water, I see you
flung by God's watergun
out of the crack and into

the verdant valley below,
you go, where no one
will ever hear you scream.
and I smile.

Heavy-eyes

Sometimes, like now times,
I can't keep my eyes awake to write
behhins rh wheel

I have't een reading or writing.
i have eebn thinin aboht wbat
it takes to be the kind of person

who cab write, or work
or teache with their eyes
close and my ches

and my body is eeting more deifintion. Alseep
again an dthtis side is more right
I dn't work outanymore

we box in your garrafge
we dance a dance of uncoousus
and awakenesss and three'guy are ther, which is ust enough for me

my life says fuck that
and I'm off to see something
free ad burn nu asleep

The Loneliness of Adulthood

Thumbing back through the poems of
the past, I find another person looking
back at me

one without a wife
or a house
or a pain in the back where

he sits with his legs by
his ears, a moldable boy
a college boy

tanned from ideas
who smells like sex
and the sea

and now my breath
comes stinking from this
page, of whiskey and lonely

only left is the hollowed out
heart and obesity, the echos of
hope from past pages

Designed to Fail

Today I picked up  a
poem that is all
about a Daisy and

the Daisy appear
in my hand more
radiant and alive

than it had ever been
in life, because the
human lens, it lends

to something that
is more profound
than nature alone.