Conundrums

after Wasalu Muhammad Jaco

American survival
tactic: movie etiquette.

I keep cell phone on silent.
Do not turn it off.

As people file into the theater,
I locate the exit signs, glowing
in the shadows like the
mouths of jack o’lanterns.

Remember them by heart
like the sound of a drum.

Sip a cool beverage as walls
close in, in function, the seats
on either side of me taken by
the silhouettes from gun ranges.

The speaker blasts violently.
I go deaf for a moment or two.

See a demon hatch from the
eggshell of a skull, but it is
all in the mind that pinches
muscle to test responsiveness.

Not needed tonight. The show
ends without much fanfare.
Audience claps and goes home
without a prayer uttered.

By the time I am behind
a steering wheel I have forgotten
the value of life; something only
measureable when fear is
on the opposite side of the scale.

That sensation known
when a cop stops the car while
I am dressed in my skin.

That subsides as my elocution
graduates, my purple English
substituted for a purple bone.

Got off with a ticket and an attitude.
Drove slowly from there on,
my radio lying low like
a fitted cap over the eyes.

Pulled over hurriedly when I heard
sirens drawing nearer, though
it was I inching closer; around the
corner from where a young boy
caught the predicament of death.

Just walking down the street
as I would a different one because
folks gave warning about his
when I first moved here.

Gangs, said in an apathy that
could drive men to murder.

How sad. Before that boy
became a ghost trying to wake
his own body, it must have
sounded like a bomb exploded;
the limb of a family tree blown off.

That was the story in Boston.
Oklahoma City. The day McVeigh
was scheduled to be executed,
I woke early to watch the news.

Recall it being a cloudy day
without a cloud in the sky;
a haze of logic filling air.

People are killed everyday but
only mourned when unexpected
for reasons never discussed.

Those difficults to articulate.
Tears of language fighting
to be interpreted like a
poem taught in a classroom
at Columbine High School.

To understand is a choice.
Sometimes we make the effort,
others make an excuse with
the ease blood can be
excused from the body.

A heart can disengage
with the wrong story.

Have headline regard homicide
by numbers, and the morning coffee
will still be taken with cream.

It is becoming all too common, we
cried when schoolhouse rocked; turned
a choir of blonde angels within minutes.

It is all too common, though,
the litter of spent magazines.
Avoidance of bus stops. Flying
of flags from pockets sans anthems.
Mostly undocumented; ignored.

Disregard of life by any mode is
a concept that wears a suicide vest.

It is the picture that was not
broadcast on the television. An
absence of consent on one
side. The rifle taking aim
from the campus clock tower.

Spade is spade no matter why
it digs the grave it does, so call us
what we are to our enemies.

Stand your ground on that and
kill to protect it. Forget about
walking home from school through
turf wars over grams of rock.

Admit the October move to
New York City never happened
because everyone rides the subway.
The risk, you thought, too great.

photo cred: Daily Oklahoman

Some folk will always
look at you sideways, their eyes
a slant of sour
opinion, but freedom is
a forward march, baby boy.

Give cheek without cheek;
steadfast sight on glory. Christ
saved you already.
No book thrown at you can weigh
more than all that precious blood.

photo cred: South Carolina Department of Archives and History, “George Junius Stinney, Jr.”

This is how
I think it should
be done.

Keep the gun,
loaded, in the
nightstand next to
the Bible, loose
condoms, notepad
and pen, bottle of
pills that blur solid
lines, fade color.

Have a dog.
A big dog. Two
dogs, even.

Do not keep
money in the house;
the back cannot
cope with that kind of
mattress anyway.

Make sure the
house is empty.

Lock doors
and windows tight.
Keep a light
on in the hallway.

Pour a glass
of cold ice water,
bring it bedside.

Take aid to
help sleep come
easier, maybe
have a dream
tonight. Due.

photo cred: Andy Chavarilla, Young Patriots

after Naomi Shihab Nye

I did not learn it,
as I already knew how,
just as my eyes knew their
color before ever formed
as windows to my fragiles.

Showed my heart falling to
the floor of my stomach,
shattered into some thousand
reflections of cowardice.

I swept the debris to side
with bare hands; caught a glass
scorn in the palm, in the bowl
where I hold feed for
songbirds, shut hand
tightly to stymie the
bleeding deep inside myself.

Lost complete consciousness
in red like a horned-head
to the whisper of a matador’s cape.

By time recovered,
the wine of life already
trickling from his mouth.

The weight of a prophecy fulfilled
tied to the end of my wrist.

An entire existence spent
trying to avoid this inevitability,
or turn its path into my own
jaw, but seen so vividly,
as if it happened in the
dream of a god of war.

Men must be taught
to grind rock into dust,
be tested, and tested,
and tested, for the stone
I cast could be the last.

Lead slug moving death
slowly through my gut,
not the strength remaining
to draw fingers into the
intent of a hammer.

photo cred: Mark Lindquist, “Conflict”

Not even the white pickets
I had imagined. There
were no fences here.

Where the red sweater
of the word neighbor was
still spell-tested
against the stamina of a
child’s attention span.

Where it was still
a cultural relevancy
day-to-day, like
the pledge of allegiance;
fences, an electricity
only dogs with
special collars knew.

But I still knew
where my plot ended,
where another’s began,
what it meant to
trespass, all the
requisite lines drawn
by other means, other
averages of expectation.

Status quo. Do not
disturb without invitation,
because the cops
will actually show up.

photo cred: The Paine Art Center and Gardens

Silk-spun shield, it is,
meaning the goodness,
the most delicates
inside will save us
from being damned.

It remains still in
the season of death
for a time as the
queue inches slowly.

Once called on,
shakes with new life;
the renewal of a vow
made in good faith.

Blades of flight
split the walls,
open pod like a
carriage for peas is
down the belly.

The light-christened
emerges fully
from its old skin.

Leaves body behind
as another monument,
an empty gothic.

Gracefully takes
to air, wings, unfolded
and utter glorious,
stained-glasses
unmistakably.

To fathom how
angels come be,
erupt from the
cocoon of man,
an evolution
of the meek.

photo cred: Creation Stories

Oak of woman,
sawed down
in a nursing home.

No guests present
to hear her final
opera, she goes
 
quietly into the
light, all the loud
years in rear,

their echoes of
flesh and destined to
meet the same knot

of thread. Husband,
dear children buried by
her own shovel,

so it always feels
to be the one remaining
with only the past,

a mere blink behind us,
Deep South to South Side
Chicago a three mile
walk down red dirt for milk,

youngest daughter born
just a week ago, yet
she recovers in this box,

sitting like a picture, but
no color animated in
cheek; gray complexion

framed by white
sheets and the beautiful
minds of flowers.

Her own frame
emaciated by time,
each turn of calendar
not as full as the last,

small pandemics having taken
away the strength
to taste joy by utensil,

and when she can
no longer feed herself,
this happens,

loved ones come
to say goodbye, shed
tears, offer praises

for the loss of life
too soon, share meal
in memoriam; warm
but brief reprieve,

and in the gap since
last seeing her, I count age
only in retrospect,

watch its numerals
disappear like aptitude for
simple arithmetic
practiced with flash cards.

photo cred: Jordan Thomas

Whether by rope or
corner, the neck is broken
and the ghost is made,
holocaust easiest if
carried out by puppet strings.

No crime is truly
untraceable; some just have
their traces ignored.

photo cred: James Short and Lorine Hughes

The large window,
a rather dubious color,
raindrops congregating
on the glass, as if
to watch something
peculiar, and you ask me,
what a door is exactly.

I say, giving more
than asked for, that we
put labels to objects, but
it does not make them
anything more than an idea.

Here, it is escapism.

Take love as further example,
with all its proxies we
cup in our steadiest hands,
and yet something
that cannot be defined
properly unless in
analogy with gravity.

We have been indoors
for most of the day, and
can blame poor weather,
but I will call my part
in that choice the
lack of genuine interest.

Any place I am
sincerely wanting to go,
I would do so by
moving through you,
like melody, in one ear
and out the other,
having lapped the
mind for a physical
eternity, explored what
makes the blood in you
red, what its label is.

photo cred: Andrew Watson

Blackness.

A trope conceived
in disfigurement.
 
Means fatigue,
extended movement,
ever-expanding tear;
wet rupture from
a break within
the scarred body.

Indeed, slavery
is genetic.

Why some have
lighter skin. A collage
of stolen bones
and exotic lust.

Her body, historical
text. What I come from,
lines down the page,
only to be read
through psychology,
not taken as fact.

It is like saying
I do not exist.

photo cred: Gordon Parks, “The Invisible Man”