Listen Different

in all our unfiltered emotion well being

again

closer when we emerge

in a nest of Daffodils

Tuesday - 6 weeks in.... And when the names Fall from me East of my throat As smoothed out as gargle Agitated and spat out so simple That they moth a tongue to eat itself from the inside out Hamilton, Bland, Ezell, Trayvon, Tanisha Thursday - After dinner 7pm I'm not good at names Long names are the worst Prefer faces Lines, frowns smiles but all the faces Fade into the sound of a thing that didn't exist till it grew bite marks Under their skin and became the "were" of all the "used to be" sentences scratched into the lines of obituary columns So I'm back to Trying to remember the names Crutcher, Mike, Garner, Alton Wednesday - 12 weeks after my 2am post on twitter She kissed his cheek Told the truth of how she felt about him How her god is blacksmith Hammer and coal And his flesh fire like hers can not occupy the Same space as her She Upset at the way life held him so She boorish wind Ignited a force of love So much harder than promise So thorough the embrace the greeting she gave his right cheek came out the opposite side Crushing his jaw Unhinged and clean The same way she entered. She said in her memoirs that this was the prettiest violence Shrapnel could paint this moment with "Not so pretty anymore Moor" was her closing statement He is now just as she wanted him unnamed and silent Dante, Akai, Tamir, Jerame Friday - 9:00pm, still light outside and humid af. The names still not so good at them anymore. Read my bible, watched the news and called the serpent a cruel shade of blue that evening. Even asked the sliver why it was so eager to spell death with such dark vowels. Asked "why so particular bout its swallowing these angels whole" like that Like it was something considered and hungered for . He responded yes that he worshipped the ground they walked on. And had a duty to protect it. The ground that is. Later I forgave the dirt for holding them so close. I'm close enough to know its the only real safe place for us Walter, Freddie, Eleanor Saturday. - full moon but not many stars. Night Sky looks like freshly fallen ashes All these names to remember Passengers on a healing tongue and i can't hardly taste them anymore Tuesday - Day after the day I almost gave up Had a dream last night About these names again. and they all came upon a house The same house With one exit No windows And a small closet where Each closet Was A room Each room a casket Each casket A Wardrobe of vintage things That became worn put on and then hung up again Gregory, Samuel, Christian, Eric, Laquan, Yvette, Jamar, Shareese, Ramarlay, Amadou This morning 6am Gotta call out to them call them back into the faces that wore them Gotta remember the cracking The split my lips made when they fell on my tongue and were drowned forgotten

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGldndvsL3Y)

Self destructed Him She said yes Yes to love Yes with him But him Pompeii beautiful With lava fingers can't help but consume She charred Ashes couples flame with passion With Him She mathematical this time Him Broken algorithm She Loves the odds Loves in numbers Him Numbers his loves She Nurturer welded in hope Him Fluent in empty Will naked himself Vulnerable She seedling Will re-root obituary in her eyes Will make funeral out of limbs for him But will convince herself breaking them is for her Him unfurnished man Gutted by the footprints decorating his neck Will suffocate she to forsake him And she unfamiliar to the smell of love Will welcome its arrival as care and he will Serpentine this into pain She swallowed Like hurt is the whisper song of quicksand She to love Is to be consumed So yes Yes to Him She said yes to be as deconstructed As Him

Boll 1848 then.... I remembers the heat the smell of dirt and musk the songs yes the songs... They'd call them spirituals but seem to me was the boll that made them praise like that... The cotton whispers a lullaby in the palm Soft like you'd imagine how heaven would feel if'n you could touch it Rhythm between song and sweat Mamma always one row head of me since she gots such long arms all the while George strapped to her back perched up high looked like she wearing a saddle sometimes and he was trying to tame her still Her ripped bonnet Head raised up then down and side to side like that looked crazy Especially when the sun was hot It made you see things things that wasn't so ya know that midday July hot The sun standing on your neck making your bones thirsty and drying up the sweat just for more to pool up on your forehead then boiling on your skin before crawling into eyes It'll cut them red and blurry like poison poured in em over and over again That south sun would make her shadow dance in the distance like I was dreaming them in front of me Sometimes well most times I'd imagine them fading away in the distance As I be runaway nobody catching me running from here from the screams and the blood and cotton the heat and all the things I've heard folk say the Ohio river could fix for black folk Didn't know much bout the river cept it knew the way to negro salvation wherever that was George was a good boy tho Only cried when he's hungry and he wasn't hungry much I swear somehow even at 9 months he knew mamma needed to meet pace with the men Mama needed to keep up More women then men in the fields now since master took a liking to slave fighting Mosta them never came back from the house once they was called Then got the nerve to get mad when the bale ain't full in the morning Don't make much sense to me cuz we'd be made to work the fields to make up the difference but we is sooo small fingers tiny hands can't hardly pick no cotton makes no sense to me but they keep telling me I is to young ta understand the world Anyways the men The few mens that's left The ones there still on accounts they wasn't so strong They'd tell bout how daddy had hands so big he'd manage to hold onto two rows between his fingers before they'd be buried back into his sack "Now your daddy” They'd say “He could pick like he running a race Damn near picked the cotton before it was ripe” Too damn quick Would pick whole sprigs in one pull and have his blanket open fassah than any nigga here He'd empty his sack twice times before anyone near got close being ready ta open theirs "Lawd knows” he was massa's favorite till....... Then they'd stop..... Till what!? But they always stopped at "till" cuz by then momma was giving them a hot stare with such venom worse than any whip could muster Don't know still what comes after "till" I was too youngs to remember I guess always figure'd one day she'd tell me Maybe one day when the empty wasn't so full or when it stopped hurting If it ever stopped hurting I suppose.... Gotta be symphony with the motion or the boll would praise the voices with blood scars...... "the boll will remind you gurl! You'd better take your time Move baby with the song baby Don’t just sing it baby use it understand? use it! Womens outs here's only good for one thing but we is gonna adds one more to that list Come on baby girl Me an' my partner can Pick a bale a cotton Me an' my partner can Pick a bale a day Had a little woman could Pick a bale a cotton Had a little woman could Pick a bale a day Momma had ways of saying things Ways to warn you that soothed and stung all the same To be continued.......

His siren Sounds like conjugated great grandfather corpse Not sure why his tone feels slightly beyond reach Can't get what he's saying at first just that his lips look like they were made for dark winters and ice storms I've never laid eyes on this man before tho Not sure why this is don't know his character or why his vernacular spills out of his chest so crudely or understand the why of any of this but somehow to me to my ears it leaves a residue painted on skin thick matte suffocated His tongue appears lash and sun dried leather I ignore that nuance again convincing myself that the ghosts of all those black children screaming inside my throat are normal A symptom of myself, I suppose Not sure but as his glance sizes up my wrists I can see the ghost of nigga haunting his human this kinda dialogue seems to warrant using the n-word He doesn't say it but it's in his archeology dusted under the ruins buried in his breathing waiting to be unearthed from every loose syllable Spat out his mouth But that's me Right ? I know it's conditioning My conditioning so I try to push the blood backwards but I've been programmed to manage this playbook with trepidation sorta like chewing a mouthful of shot gun pellets Nonetheless I try all the while thinking I've never laid my eyes on him before But this copper taste when I respond to his query feels very familiar. "Show me your license and registration " The taste is undeniable Old pipes Like a wet basement if basements could leave taste But that's just me Right? I wonder if he realises I am blacker on the inside than my enunciation portrays. I wonder if I speak slower would it be seen as intoxication or agitation I wonder if it matters I wonder how soft the earth is by this roadside how quickly it could grave me remember how easy it is to be afraid I wonder if that actually matters I wonder Sandra But I'm in a major city this ain't Texas I still wonder Sandra I wonder what my daughter will look like at 18 I wonder if that would matter I wonder what it might be like to have to raise a son here, now, this decade Still I push it away Don't judge a book by the swatchtika Right? We are proven before guilty Right? I'm 5 thirds now Right? At least 4 fifths human A picture of modern progress Right? But autopsy photos are the new snap chat for men who trade lives like him whose scorn sing like a blend of scars Men who Sound like the harmonies of great grandfather eulogies hymns and the songs we've seen bellowed from the cries of plantation widows Not sure Who he is know nothing about the man but I recognise the language his uniform speaks

She will never really know the mechanics of her own struggle never know that the splintered manger holding her nightmares at bay was called oomy Only that a corner of a woman who knew her own exit chose to name her orphan She probably will not know how easily terrorist was mixed into her breast milk Or how hands could caress and slice and conjure and aim the same But She will be told Someday by accident that she is just Barcode body bag tracking their unmarked graves in her bones And Years later She'll be left wondering why they thought it easier to war-child their daughter Erased in a name called Malik sister in law to Paris What legacy has been left for her except a burning tongue and questions searching guessing Knowing only that her steps make no footprints for her background long removed have just cause to be erased So she will walk facing backwards ,to watch her own history happen And more Years later her flag will delete her Will say it cannot hold anymore red it's half mast Unless of course it belonged to her last name And years more the bernardino aftermath will be wind pushIng leaves from a empty doorstep Where windows that held a thousand faces are blurred to extinction But to her She will remember She will try to resist the urge to grow into the shrapnel skin left behind for her She was just single tadpole swimming an abandoned moat a 6 month old teething brimstone unknowingly witnessing how to erect obituaries but nonetheless orphan means the same in any language and being born into concussion made her a child of genocide of the fallen terror an offspring of martyrs not ever allowed to mourn her parents for fear that her tears would read jihad.

Ps. I should have wrote this poem a long time ago

I see you Learned how your serpent sleeps Weaving Slipping into society like a diseased hereditary I now know enough about how you lay dormant and studied your sliver Your strike Trying to taunt me Lying about your shape, your size Asking for conjugal visits with my ego I see you predator With your attractive pricing You ain't really as cute as you think you are You're actually less than Less material Less haberdashery Not enough textile for these manly thighs You can't contain this ass It is of history and royalty You are but a mere serf in this kingdom of ass The truth is You don't really have any friends Which is why you hold on tight for dear life You’ve just got followers You need the companionship The closeness Like a virus,  you need to replicate to survive But I for one am unwilling to be lured into your web of threads and bold colours No matter how stealth your touch How relaxed your fit I've seen others Seen them magic'd away Watched them appease your religion Seen them attempt separation till eventually your grip weakens and the holes in your character let their true nature peek between the seams We not strong enough to handle this type of orphanage To be let free into the world after being Held so tight become So ashamed Like The view behind this velvet rope is a self portrait Well No more Fux you slim fit You ain't got nothing for Me Byaaaatch

We are after all Just soldiers Only Lost fighters Just Veterans stalked by suicide A forgotten battalion searching for the everyday once more

Haiku: Achieved a freedom Sort a different kinda free Both were too early Preface: I don’t want to make this pretty. I don’t want words to capture the pain, the unnecessary violence of this mistake of men. I don’t want this poetry’d. Its shit… More than just sad It’s f_cked its, despicable, ugly, unholy, alien Didn’t really know how or didn’t really wanted to write about a dead 2 year old Whether killed by water or bullet, or socialization, or policy, or poor, or politics cuz it’s not about the babies It’s about Men and power so this is just some stuff on paper to be arranged however, whenever, what ever just getting it out of my head because it is festering Aylan Aylan Aylan Aylan The quarrel of men will write your unwarranted eulogy Your portrait now a flag to fly half mast for change Fuck change… we shouldn’t be able to do things that erase our young Politicians stealing the last inhale The Underground Railroad here was never made waterproof Neither Cubans nor Haitians But there is only one north star to follow for freedom Harriet knew, his father knew Knows now that “everything I was dreaming of us gone” Power in the hands of propaganda Earthquake tongues move plates Like holding Pangaea in a press conference Who are we to create these borders, these rules. To split people into conclusions We are but human ….. aren’t we .all of us Power is a virus Greed is the host And her her Womb already praying for freedom Before occupation Occupations Wanting to occupy space in the first place Is the fucking problem Blood and salt water Running from a country eaten by war the blood running running running from the heart instead of to the heart Politics tangled in the fallopian was choking before the strangle of salt water The quarrel of men Wash up on a Turkish shore Instead of in their own backwash God has many names I hope Aylan knows one of them