the day Mama was born

I rushed breakfast of cake and coffee. My morning was drowsy like the sun that day. The crispness of my routine painted the air, the portrait of naiveté. I didn’t know. I didn’t know why they came. Why they hated, trying not to hurt. How do we live the way we do? Made in somewhere other than America becomes a part of my story. I was burned into history, but I’ll trade the world not to be the center of attention, the center of this mausoleum they name after me. Keep your war, it doesn’t include me because I’m countries of cultures away; distant from your standard and regulation. Americans classified by hyphenation deserve to lack patriotism. Punctuating hyphens cannot merely connect the lack of lineage. By the very root of the word, I’m in bondage, tied to a faith, I do not know by name. Posting missions in every landscape, in order for God to be everywhere, I christen your future, hissing over your past. Today, the flea weighs more than stock in the market. The unmarked martyr involuntarily sleeps because the city chooses not to. The price of inflation, like heroin smuggling; is the current event. Addiction is still over-rated. Your news revealed pictures that resembled my backyard. It’s been now made public that home fronts will lose their shelter. Repetition of crowded smoke clouds out people, hollowing out the souls. Empty borders refrain from further headline. The world is getting b(itch)ackslapped; whose sides are we’re on? The intelligentsia becomes couch potatoes while the underdog writes the script.

litmus test

Life as real as TV broadcasts pleonasm

Trendy narcissism speaks louder than quiet thrift store scrutiny

For what initially seemed empowering, naïve followers multiplied

And trailed after goods that advertised the millennium

Believing the other side was green

Reality was blown into little pieces

Walking the soul, like the dog

Gentrifying the neighborhood the same

Puffed smoke from their cigarettes between channels

Routing their threaded profile towards achievements

With billboard poise, wife beater tee shows muscle

Sweatshop grief mutely endures

Capped-tooth smiles disguise two-piece vanity in show tune happiness through

Psychic sex phone cords, installing that lost kindergarten confidence in the receiver

Greened pupils watch love ignite orgasms as

Duty merely genuflects

Reggae twists lock into peepholes of ecstasy

Holding open their orifices

As silver-plated rings gleam turning fingers

Into malignant sticks doused in stardust

Painted spirit is peeling at the ends of moral weight

Hidden between sheets of acidity

bilingual

nine stories high. nine generations deep. nine

strands outside of my head.

hummed questions and quiet response

information station and murmured details

invisible dedication and blind amour

leather paper and glass steel

hot, back-browning sun fading into artificial air

endless fields turning into a closed wall

fluorescent eyes glimmer like light peeking through slanted horizontal blinds

blinking people display or expose

me, I. self

black, period. running

my ancestor

black, period. running

I would like to thank capitalism, Europe, I haven't forgotten about you.

"manage the intelligentsia"

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