Shall I Tell You?
Shall I tell you I am disabled?
That I no longer can fend for
myself? Or shall I tell you
I now write the poetry you
mocked me for because
it does not pay the bills?
Katherine’s Coffeehouse
The Gestalt of God (A Philosophical Draft)
Let’s set the record straight.
I do not claim to know what god
might be, nor do I entirely get gestalt.
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This One, Too, is for Traci
I did not know what I would write this morning as the treeline
got etched in wisps of ivory blond—until I remembered
I did not get to properly grieve you. Not really, anyway. Sure,
I wrote you a poem. Sure, I teared up now and again, like I am
now when I think of everything you did and offered, but mostly,
selfishly, I miss your listening,
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What You Would Rather Hear
What would you rather hear? That six or seven
or twelve times or more I actually had ideation,
or that I walked away, instead, unharmed? That I
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**Backpack Part II
It’s not that I shoulder a navy
pack on my disintegrating back.
It’s not that I have swallowed
the kind of pills that retch
even the rage out until
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*Lincoln from the Grave
Oh to be unconditionally loved when dead,
division dissolved by the peaceful inevitable.
Oh to the victory that made us one,
the blood of battle and repair
no longer questioned as worthwhile,
immune to “what if?” in its sad reality,
replaced by “what is” and “what was.”
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The Wisdom of Ancient Things
I return to that Place of Peace,
and the wisdom of ancient things,
the one that reintroduced itself
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Ode to Charles
See, you were the only Black kid in the whole damn school,
and the teacher had to split us up because of how hard
we laughed together.
You Made Me Feel Illegal
This (unedited) poem won first place in a contest on The Political Poet. And while I am grateful, that’s not necessarily the important part. The important part is the way this debate spun out of control. The way citizens were encouraged to gang up on other citizens as the county turned a blind eye to hate groups and racism.
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Advice Giving
I am not sure what is more important: to tell you how I used
to narrate my life in my mind while I walked the neighborhood
as a child? How I never moved my lips, but somehow
made more exciting that single horse farm on the corner,
the one without the palomino I imagined should have been there?