#thesecretsongs

There are unhappy women here. And they take regular, indulgent dips in denial. Their nonchalance is like plaster in the place of cement. All it takes is one swift kick to dismantle them. And there is something holy in their hate. Because, of course, it is obvious they hurt. With their stubby fingers, adorned with paint. Their fingers that cannot reach their elbows. Their fat fingers that reach for men who will not love them. Fat fingers that reached for sons who won't love them. Fat fingers that grasp things as though they fear those things will leave them. And all the while, they laugh with the choke of tears and a rubber cement nonchalance. And a medley of disgusting instruments that play false music.

The Black thought is ushered away from existence in a cloud of black smoke. Meanwhile, white prevails. As it has always been, and even before me. He rolls up his sleeves and adjusts his collar. He gathers his papers, he stands at altar. She chews and pops gum. Another rolls his eyes, crosses arms. He opens a mouth that will fix. He spews a thing that hugs tears to their eyes. And it becomes so, the fix. They roll up their sleeves and adjust their collars and stand at alter. And they build. Their skin looks like chocolate milk. He stands again, now before many more. He opens his mouth that will fix And a clean shot pierces his mid-sentence, in a cloud of green smoke.

Born of a one sided orgasm, I am shifty. A schism and held underwater, in between two blankets. I am no production, no great fable. For my disease, there is no identifier, no bracelet: castaway. I am a series of walks back and forth, Here to there--- pacings. Made up of tiny heartbeats---pit-patterings. Yet, I am the staff that split Moses' ocean. I am the disgusting burden in his heart as he drowns his brother again and again. I am the stagnant water that enters lungs, coughed up by nobody. The nearly perfect evening, where the clouds obscure the flamboyant sunset. The bastard child of madness, the one who teeters, straddles a sharp fence. I, who am terrified of my greatness, trade prospect for prospects. I, who will etch in stone the certainty of my death, embrace the dark box of knowing. And every morning, I inhale my awakening inhalation, as though I did not throw myself into complete unknown-ness the night before. Every morning, I manage to feel better than the day before. And to find something to laugh about.

Where it once stood, there are now clouds. It was once perched on a windowsill beside a singular pink flower in a white pot. Beyond, there was a blue sky. And before, a polka-dot curtain. On display for the passerby. The window is now blown out. And there is no display. There is nothing. It is now mingled with a white sky ready to open.

And even men who don’t belong to their identification, try to squeeze their heads into the too-small Hat of Imitation. It’s sad.

This other guy's face was flat and creased like a dirty, old map pressed in between pages of some forgotten book. And he had this brown ring I didn't care for. When he stood up, there was sickness in his air but hidden under something. He looked at me tiresome, but he dipped it in pride. He knew I knew something about him. But neither of us had anything to tell.  And then he stepped off the train. And I was never to see him again. 

Her heart was the windiest city because it blew all my trees down. My internal houses bent to touch each other and cracked. She made me into somethings that I could never return to. And I lied and cheated and stole some things.  She wanted me more than any thing. So she took me and raped my Self. She blessed her way through my life and left a black fingerprint on me. She fed me drugs but I took them. I exposed my palms and she dropped them in. And I took them. I began to sweat. On the phone that night, I hung my head off the edge of the bed and cried to her because I was falling in love. But something was wrong and I knew its dirty identification by the way it gripped  at the tips of my rib cage. A vat of poison. Her voice was the stuff that I drank to the renunciation of Self. And she said "that's how love is supposed to feel." Something inside me knew better. I twisted in my pools of sweat. A fever like nothing ever. I clawed at my skin because  I itched like nothing ever.  And all of it approved by "that's how love is supposed to feel." I believed.  And for a while, I began to see dead people, all looking like me until I breathed. When I hung up the phone one night, she threw back her head and shrieked like the melting witch. Her talons in the parts of my back  where my wings grew. I began to sweat. I vomited dirty fluids. until I returned again. I threw down the Self that hid me away in blankets and then I Stood Up.

It's so hard sometimes to tell that people's bodies end and  other bodies begin. Like one, long body horizon, they stretch from border to border. People create their own linear divisions among the skies. But people harbor their own sunsets. And sometimes they are their own sunsets. They keep their universes hidden. Beneath all the sameness. But they seek those who shed their skins.