To: The Mother Who Killed Herself

What drove you to the corn field

      To huddle yourself in a womb of carbon monoxide, forsaking oxygen's teat?  

How stealthy was the Grim Reaper

      As his scythe leveled shriveled ears of corn on a vacant new moon's night?

Did you see your children in the fog

      While Nausea and Hallucination bashed their phalanges on your windshield?

They were dancing like fireflies in the field
      Around the summer-warmth of your heart as if
            Your shining strength would never set before nine
                  As if their tears were as morning dew on your green arms
                        As if their laughter would echo along your loving hills forever

                                                                                                             



                                                                                                                      May it be,

                               

October

Nightly sherbet skies
Plus my skin frosting equals
Conundrum harvest

September

Rain river rain rain
Arranged wedding Irene/Lee
Spring conceived today

911

Hello?

And just about everyone answered
That day
That week
That month

We were married to Death and its far-reaching ashen arms
But the sultry honeymoon phase ended and we separated
And on our tenth anniversary we are practically divorced
Or at least that's what we tell ourselves to keep on moving
Forward
Forward
Forward

If that's a true motion inside this indifferent ring of existence
Of Life
Of Death
Of Earth growing older and more irritable daily daily shifting souls from one plane to the next

Under

The covers we used to
Share secrets and stories of the day
At night with a flashlight illuminating an otherwise dark room

Huddled

So close we used to
Take our little angels and our little devils
Off our shoulders and place them atop the bedposts ready

To fight

As if they were G.I. Joes
Keeping watch over monsters under the bed
And inside the closet until our flashlight battery died and we

Separated

And grabbed our rights
Standing next to our wrongs and began to run
Around the room as monsters under a spell of disillusionment

Irene

The waves grew like treesThe trees bent like waves

The crickets chirped like birdsThe birds hopped like crickets

On tree limbs that struggled to praise through relentless waves of rainAwaiting the inevitable auspicious aurora



Everything is connectedIam still alive

Split Infinitive

It was 4:57 on the morning of August 16th, 2011 when my mother called through my door that the glory of God was coming.  She said it in her sweet suggestive voice of my older years as opposed to her all-out admonishing voice of my younger years, so I knew not how to heed her - especially since it was still pitch-black outside.  And yet as I sauntered downstairs into the kitchen, from the easternmost window there came a soft, yet resounding Latin chorus accompanied by a soft sunrise with midday intensity.  

The chorus grew louder and louder and yet more peaceful until I awoke at 3:57 on the morning of August 16th, 2011, convicted to the core, bemused as a butt-ass black boy in the garden of a white man's Eden.  God-damned knowledge wrestled with mind, body, and soul for ten minutes as I remained immobilized and prostrate on my bed. To be or to not be? The immortal question. The eternal split.  My sinuses flared softly and I cried behind my eyes.  I cried behind my eyes.  I cried behind my eyes.