Spoken and Written Poetry Excerpts

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There was too much soot and ash in my footsteps

Too much sizzle, pop, and burn

Too many bones behind me, licked clean by my flames

Too much guilt

And too guilty to deserve relief

So I gave myself pain instead of water

I used to watch my blood flow like brush strokes

All that shame hiding in the chiaroscuro

Draping itself across my skin like Carravaggio's robes in ominous shadow

Tracing lines with razor, or pocket knife, or shard of glass

In the shape of a great wave over mount Fuji

That was how I learned to flow

Sometimes I feel like my whole life is an apology

I'm sorry I'm here

I'm sorry I'm not dead yet

I'm sorry I didn't have the courage

Or the conviction

Or the strength in my forearm flexors

Or the humility

To just end

And I'm reminded daily by these clawing demons searching for a voice

Or a soul to lift a silence that was more necessity than choice

And when they scratch up my soft palette sometimes my uvula reacts

And my stomach clenches violently and my neck tenses around my gasp

And my heart explodes inside my chest, and my lungs start to collapse, and an age of violence echoes through the trembling of my grasp

And then I breathe fresh air as if life could begin again

Because despite what I may be, I have to live with what I've been

Your breath was life

But also poison

Your teeth hurt so good

And shined pretty with my blood glistening on the sharp ends

I'll take you with me

Where your teeth dug into my skin and left a reminder I'll never forget

I carry you with me in the scars on my neck and back

It took only a moment for you to Phoenix me in your fire

I'm glad you did

You gave me my wings again

Clipped and broken, barren and singed

But I learned again

how to fly that night

For all the wrong reasons

This riot stands on the backs of a generation

That learned self defense from traffic stops

That learned hope by watching it crumble

That learned love at funerals and grave sites

There is a riot on the wind

Sweeping over bodies that always seem to be camouflaged by the night

Over stomachs and hands branded with the pattern of emptiness

Rushing through hallways with broken light bulbs

Picking up the stench of cocaine or heroine

This riot is not sneaking up on you

Feel the streets trembling, See the dust rise

If I am ever hostage

Or prisoner

Or the unlucky son of a war that started without my permission

You may have to mourn me

But do not damn yourself for my liberty

If you do, I'll never know peace

And freedom without peace is agony

And damnation

And victory without honor

Is worth less than hungry rubble

And he loses all to think that he could have them both, and live two lives

And be one man

The push and pull divides

The thought from hand,

The conscious man from lies

The contraband of a conscious damned, despised,

Separated from the life he fantasized

And thought was real, and thought he had

Splitting his one soul into two dead halves

Leaving him nothing to offer and everything to lose

And so he has no choice but still is damned to choose

But all he can do is slip, trip, and fall

And I think back to the weakness that started it all

When a star collapses in brilliant supernova, 

It creates a black hole

An abyss

That takes everything in and nothing out

A black hole sounds like "I'm fine"

When it really means "I don't don't don't want to talk about it"

A black hole feels like a smile you wish was genuine

It tastes like tongues as they carry your words back down your throat

Sometimes I'm just a black hole

Remembering what it was like to be a star

Looking for a light I can't consume

And on those days,  give me poetry

If you've never held a gun against your skin

If you've never prayed to a blade for your blood to resurface and water the flowers

If you've never seen a body twitch

If you've never felt the tears stream

Then maybe your heart didn't stop today when you read the news

Maybe you were surprised to learn that even brown boys get the blues

Don't get confused

We may not always broadcast our suffering

But sometimes we do be dropping clues 

As bright as the universe gives permission to become

All strength, all brilliance, all power, presence, and pull

The vessel crammed to the brim with light and love

And pain and passion, enough to spill across the sky

How do we find the room for it all?

A goddess caught in calm stillness of thought

A gift for those who seek of marble and light

The beauty sought, the weathered world has wrought

And gained the will to forge new day from night

Look now, to witness grace by Grace made real

And watch while water parts and turns to wine

She waits in bliss while whispers rise and heal

And bloom like honeysuckles on the vine

How safe, the world under your gaze must be

How warm, the day at rest in your embrace

How new, the light, that needed you to see

How easily the fading dark disarms

How lovely how the earth accepts its gifts

Exchanging flowers for showers as it shifts

So what do I do when my love won’t let you leave, but my pride won’t let you stay

See, that’s the battle that’s waging inside me, and I don’t even know what I’m fighting for

Anymore

And you, you’re just a soldier with no war

So we just fight with each other

Or, really I’m just dodging bullets and ducking for cover

While you just point out every new flaw that you discover

See you’re acting just like my mother

Like when she left my dad

And she was all he had

And he was never really that bad before that

And you just laugh at my dad’s past as if it was some kind of an act

or a play to you

And now everything I ever wanted to say to you – I can’t

Cause I’m too scared to go out on that limb

And I’m scared of being left again on a whim

And I’m so scared that without you, I’ll turn into him

Now we're

Buffalo soldiers on the come back

Black bodies ducking behind registers and snacks

Even after the railroads been closed

Since the days of old, it still tracks

The theme we've been seeing 

In this scene is still attacks with the aim to kill blacks

The story keeps starting back at the beginning

See, Irrational numbers have no ending

Just like irrational hate

So we have to still wait

Hoping for a rational fate

Meaning that this irrational state

Will come to a rational place

And the irrational numbers

Of dead father's and brothers

Will eventually Terminate