Constitution for Boys on How a Bullet Works.
Art by Luca Nicoletti on Unsplash.
Constitution for Boys on How a Bullet Works.
I bury the skin of dead people in my mouth
Push their collected illiteracy down my throat
And watch my body rot
For countless boys that sought
The constitution on how a bullet works
You lit your hair, and you’re fire
You carry the night and you’re lost;
A child, marking the beginning of moles on sagging bodies,
Falling, failing, fading into a folded tongue
Like boys his age that sought to know a bullet‘s wrath.
Art from Europeana on Unsplash.
The People I Cover with Empathy.
In the white country of my father’s spurted blood,
I call my people by names of people they’ve lost.
I name them breathtaking in Sarkin Pawa
Because this is the only place we can call home.
When I sing, I’m no singer, not blessed
With the order of music.
When my people die, I’m no victor,
Not blessed with the power of cowardice
So I fold my name into my mouth
I gather the almost dry blood
Of my father, gather it with the mud,
I raise it to the skies, if God sees this—
This level of ruthlessness against
My people, let Him wash us.
I raise it to the sky, the clouds
Form, but there’s no rain
My people have suffered, but perhaps,
This is not how it ends.
Art from The Cleveland Museum of Art on Unsplash.
Unraveling in the Wilderness.
Light brushes through the dark of bones,
My not yet grandmother; hair in a comb
Unfurls graciously as the music leaves
Her radio and into her. The thing about
Music is, what listens is damned to dance
I’m a little too broken to be fixed. I broke
Myself. I did this; rub the knife against my
Wrist till I got a clean cut. Blood, size of the quiet
In Sarkin pawa. Blood—
Too small to swallow a life this beautiful
A life too dark to be covered by pixie dusts and glitters.
This skin against fire; water washed against a wound.
My ache, a wide gap between countrymen
And bullets. I’m too wild to love something so delicate
Call it absence, I’m too wild to know the softness of
Touch, too wild to be called back home.
Art from Europeana on Unsplash.
Good man.
The cruel world turns every man bad,
I’m not a good man, but my pulse is
one with the ache of the world.
My brothers travel in the fog,
cold in the warmth of their
skin, living a life they love
Nothing and something about.
The wind is a lintel in the back
of my head, I love all the beautiful
women I have come across, because like light,
They curl the hair on my skin into a frail.
The world is a terrible, terrible place,
Packed with urgency for everything:
Love too small to hold life, life too small
to be holy, prayers too brief to bend into a haven.
Pity is something I am, but cannot now share,
I fold back into my fear, if I have sons
and daughters for the sakes of dandelions
and carnation bloom, if I know how to not
Feel so miserable because my heart is one
With the people in the turmoil of small lights,
I will leave the city, for a forgotten village
down the road, through the broken barks
of trees, I will build a house beside the rivers’
Hungry foliage, if I rinse my feet at the end
of my days, I can be a light at the darkness
that I am becoming, better the devil,
better the devil that loves me
than everything that left me here.
