The Poetry Marathon

(untitled graffiti)

One within the flow
As if my own fingerprints
Were to leave secrets
Of where to leave spaces in
Between alphabet chaos

Though I run with crews
My loyalty is to the
Reason we do this
We all carry unique tools
Elevation is dolo

Never for rep
Shake the cans, shaking loose doubts
Society’s walls
Become reflective
Of what really got us here

Coded ancestral
Storytelling by all means
Undo narratives
Left over for left behind
And building a new cannon

Eyewitness

The tree
never had a chance
Or an option
The wind and times decay
Weakend the limb
That sway as we rounded corner
Walking away from crackle and crash
On King Drive
across 75th street from

Where a victim with no chance
or option
Met assailants from the shadows,
Weeks before, village roots weakened,
Cut down a branch
under the crackle
Of thunder, lightning, and steel

(untitled)

The wall shatters
into a million rooms
in which we see a million dreams
Some on pause
some on canvas
Some from three steps left and 27 seconds into the future
Sum are parts of the whole
Some are parts of the hole
Some are [redacted]
Some are lifetimes as long as it takes to find the gems in the flaws
Some are the wildest special effects filled-blockbusters left over from the vivid imagination of being 15
Some are…
…just me being pressed
Some of them are voices; my voices…
…those that shaped mine; and maybe those to be shaped
Some are the stanzas that get lost by themselves
Each of these shards will cut wounds or make mosaic
This is… *yawn*
where I begin to sort the pieces

Burn

Long seconds
Own heartbeat thunder
Drowned out by hyperventilation
After toppled garbage can
And a light,
Motion sensitive,
Blinks alive
…
Wait… waiting
…
No apparent witness
“City quiet” not too quiet
To blend in
And get into it
Climb dumpster
With a world of
weight in head
Powered by rebellion
Reach service ladder
With chrome-and-sky blueprint
For billboard destination
Carrying aerosol weapons
For culture wars

Fonk Wit It

This… THIS…
is the proverbial ‘It’
Another show has begun
And all the voodoo children
sweat hard in the field and on the block
just for this night
The night before you gotta hide them pretty shells and beads
and and play “citizen” in their churches
to keep up community and face
Aw but your pretty faces under Luna and her fabulous fullness is what we really live for
Everybody is another spinning, hot, luminous Sun at a distance
In this ritual, no shade, all spotlight
This be on “the one”
That kickdrum chakra starter
Swing and sway, jump and gyrate pheromone generator
This that first and last vibe deposit
This is the boom-clack, the rest in between and the work to play…
…Hard.
This is wider than the arms who drop from the air long enough to embrace it
So high, you can’t afford NOT to fly this fly
And deep. Deeper than…
…Blue
This fonk- I spelled what I said- shimmys and thumps and wails
This ritual is communal and designed to
get you [unless yer into that kinda…]
…Unbound
Forget about days ending in “y”
and that you owe anyone
anything more than the next sunrise
Just to jam
Just to get that bootay shook
Even if you have to put your own hands
In your back pockets to do it
Now, if you please, step outside
As the gathering grows
And the DJ awaits
your luminous presence

Bad Guys

In a village-
Where there is no factory
nor specialty shop or alchemist;
Where we get after-the-fact reporting;
With nearby state border,
across which
conceal and carry more lax laws;
Where surrounding freight yards
have Open Box Car Night
There is no need for Feds,
who don’t see the real dealers
in the mirror

The Alien Fux With Them

Ignoring you for ages
Flying objectively and unidentified
Skipping across dimensions while you can barely skip a stone
Suddenly, you admit to your people
Than my people are more than a notion
As if WE are the unbelievable
The obtuse
The brilliant idiots
They realize
That it never walked, talked or…
“Zborblubtoggled”
Like an Earthling
And still have not decided whether to pet or eat you
So perhaps it is best of take your pictures and speculation over there, TMZ
We have tough and tasty decisions to make!

Tree Falls

The cut and dig may come for
Odd mold or infestation or
Old roots tangled in utilities
Some times, storm’s wrath
Occasionally the time of gravity
And gravity of time
But the question remains
Even in the shadow and glint
Of steel and concrete

Descending
Heating
Cracking
Tumbling
Burning
Speeding
Booming
Flaming
Falling
Breaking
Spreading
Showering
Astonishing
Crashing

The Hit

The next occurrence
Of several mowed down,
by poems, biographies
self-help tomes, and novels
By a perp lit by lit
With an entire trunk of books
Will be the first
Now stand aside
I am a pioneer, an influencer, a marksman of a trendsetter
With a drive-by to plot