Old Shoe

Remember how back in the day
when we were young and less frugal with our money
we’d fall in love with a pair of shoes, outfit suit, tie, or toy
whatever that thing was for you...
the kind of absolutely darling thing
you know you’d likely only use
once or twice a year?
 
And how, every so often you’d take them out,
adore them, lament not having the right outfit, purse
or event to match them with?
 
And back they would go,
into the furthest corner of the closet
until life made you forget
until years later, you happen across the once shiny,
silky, smart outfit, accessory or toy
stained, torn, faded, moth eaten and rotten
 in the back of your closet?
 
Yeah,
I don’t want to be that to you.

Indecent Invitations

Pheromone intoxication

Disquieted disposition

Fearful anticipation

Overwrought

Overstimulated

Ill-prepared

Untrained

At odds with myself.

Imperialists

Locusts
they eat and destroy all in their path.

Remaking all in their masked images of bland uniformity.

They promote anti-intellectualism,
warp the foundation of a nation’s beliefs
steal the ancestral works and bones of others
Claiming them as their own
Whitewashing the history of the “conquered” for their glory,

They appropriate, coopt and rebrand esoteric,
philosophical, poetic teachings, and music replacing it with
rhythmic indoctrination for capitalists and violence,
while blaming our children for their corruption.

All in an effort to divide and conquer,
to rule over,
to dominate, subjugate and devour,

What makes you think they haven’t done that with your religion?
You cling to the religion of your wardens
Expecting mercy,
when its extreme, once again becoming normalized
exists
To own you
Body and soul?

Politicians

When asked if they are good people, 

I say simply,
many are good people
who do bad things,
to do good things,
for the wrong reasons.

Others are simply unpasteurized evil.  

A Prayer For When Stars Align

 Meet now,

Met then...

And once again

...remember when?

Some day

we’ll be well met

Wanting the same things

At the same time

When this, is meant.

A Reluctant Serving of Crow

She bit her tongue till

the blood pooled in her cheeks

giving her the pale but rosy complexion

of a porcelain doll

Fit to burst

Waiting for her string to be pulled.

Self-Inflicted Asphyxiation

You were my air

Without you

I’ve forgotten how to breathe

I blame myself

Thinking it was my turn to exhale.

Courage of Your Convictions in the Face of Failure

Some may see a challenge to overcome

a scientific mind, confident in discovering a

solution to a dream’s tangibility

Others may accept its transient nature

grateful for visions of possibilities

while most will fold, crushed under the weight

of dreams deferred

and the haunting memory

of contentment’s never gained.

Which are you?

Bubbles are Not Your Safe Space

bubbles

ethereal, beautiful

seemingly perfect

suggest a grand design

offer visions of the divine

and unrealistic dreams of the improbable

don’t live in them

they were never your “safe space”

for they are, impervious to intent or desire,

temporary purgatorial traps,

denser than will,

that burst

against the slightest hint of Reality.

Zaddy Gone

Daddy
Once I felt your presence everywhere
felt your eyes, your hand
the timber of your voice guiding me
protecting me
influencing me
filling my cup till I had no sense other than
a constant awareness of your presence.

You made a point of leaving your stamp
etched into my core with the sharpest of blades
Mercilessly
I felt your leave-taking
before you left.

Now
a universe stands between us
You, Odysseus on your next adventure
me, Penelope, marooned on a barren rock
told to go on
left senseless and adrift
anchor-less
desperately seeking purpose
without the psychic collar...

I didn't realize I needed. 

What the Hell Were You Thinking?

 When they told you they loved you
They lied
It was you who needed to believe them
Direct your anger accordingly.

Dancing with Demons

It begins with...
invitation
seduction
confession
submission
addiction
 
And ends with...
confusion
unvoiced supplications
flagellation
and reluctant salvation,
once the needle skips.

Yes, Sir and Thank You

Voiceless communications.
The body responds to queues
The mind didn’t know it knew
Instincts pulled from primal DNA
Long buried and suppressed
Liberated

A Bibliophile’s Opinion

Some books are like boyfriends

Leaving you abruptly with

nothing more than a few good memories

Others, are like lovers,

whose burning pages

demand to be read

Enthusiastically

And

Repeatedly.

When Last She Wore Green

She wore a mask daily

Not of her making

Not realizing how exhausting it was

Until invited to submit.

Drive it like you stole it ... she said.

Love me
Bind me
Possess me
I don’t want control
I don’t want responsibility
My needs, primal and base.
I crave
Teeth on my neck
Hands around my hips
Your chest against my back
Your whispered incantations
Demanding submission.
Restrain and smother me with your body
Give me time to surrender
Turn off and tune out the world
I need to be pared down to the simplest of nerves
Conscious only of this moment
Your breath and intent
Heat and strength
Hold me up
I’m tired...
Devour me Daddy
Drive it like you stole it
... she said.

Questions I asked My Mother

1978, sitting in a shoe store on 3^rd Avenue and 14^th Street
Getting fitted for my first pair of sneakers
I thought they were soooo cool
Blue with yellow lightening stripes on the side

I just knew I’d outrun everyone in these.

Looking up at the display in the window,
I noticed a pair of high heeled sneakers.
I barely remember the design, save to say,
they were clearly and simply, high heeled sneakers.
I turned to my other and asked her,
“why would anyone wear those when you can’t run in then?”, “how odd”, I thought.  
My mother shook her head and said it was “fashion”.
To my 7-year-old mind, it made no sense. 
If you couldn’t run in them, not only could you not play,
you couldn’t defend yourself either.

Walking down third avenue, past an abandoned lot,
that would eventually become NYU dorms,
but was then, basically the neighborhood junkyard many of us played in,
making club houses out of discarded wood pallets, furniture and other materials,
I noticed a few barely or scantily clad girls and women,
meandering the same two clocks, seemingly aimless
some peacocking with purpose, others looking sickly and exhausted.

I turned to my mother and asked, “Mom, aren’t they cold? Are they lost?
Can we help them somehow?”,
to which she sadly shook her head,
her grip on my small wrist tightening slightly,
knowing my nature,
she replied simply, “No, dearest,
it wouldn’t be safe for us to approach them now. 
And yes, they have families...
they just don’t want to see them right now,
for various reasons you’re too young to understand.”

“How sad”, I thought...feeling a traitor to my nature,
walking away, as my mother pulled me onward, farther away from them. 
Bucking and balking at the lesson learned....
we aren’t always meant to look, or notice and
not all are meant to be seen.

Sin Never Forgets, It Merely Hides In Waiting

 

Distance from sin
Makes it easy to forget
Falling into the trap
Of believing with distance
Comes absolution.
 
Guilt has weight
it settles into
the sticky bottom of the soul
Ever lurking
Waiting for discovery or death
 
Shit waiting for the shoe.

Mourning

“They died.”

yes, brain I heard you,

yes, heart, I felt you,

yes, spirit, I feel you,

but ...

I’d rather think on

how they LIVED ...

And ask instead, you to

Remind me

How.

Marginalized Masking

 "People of Color" have mastered the
art of masking and code switching.
a skill born out of the need to survive
in a world dominated by a 
global minority 
single-mindedly bent on 
domination in a "borg" like fashion of conformity and uniformity.
 
While racist "white people" 
have only ever had to mask their 
intent, racism and entitlement
and that they do sparingly, 
fetishizing victimhood
to be perceived as being on the 
"right side of history", 
while simultaneously coopting 
our religion, 
our music, 
our culture 
and 
our pain. 
All, like our Melanin, commodities for the soulless.
 
We mask to survive
They mask, to simulate life. 

Submissive Love

No, the good does not outweigh the bad
love does.
Love is the ballast for the scales
without 
defeat, misery, chaos and loss. 

Once tipped,
the bad proves the meaningless of professed love
words and deeds will aways align
to out bad faith actors
you have only to look.
 
If only you'd looked first before stepping into the abys of 
submissive love
For it bares false witness to love
For without your scripted roles
Who would you be?
What would you have?
How would you love?
If the first boundary, “no”, or disagreement can break the bond
It was not love in the first place.
Merely passionate enslavement veiled as love’s possession.

Tax & Ash

Trust not, love protests born in the heat of urgent passion
Trust not, love born out of one-sided trauma
For passions will inevitably cool
One eventually learns the tax is too high
The perceived prize, no longer worth the risk.
 
Pheromone hazes will clear
Like nuclear fall out
Turing endearments into frosty ash
Coating mouths and intentions
With inevitable resentments and vitriol.   
A personal Pompeii you can only pray will someday be unearthed
Studied and cherished.
 
Let calmer hearts speak of love
Grounded and secure
Less likely to give into fantasy
Less likely to give the monkey brain the wheel
Prone to driving all to Self-indulgent ruin.

Mourning the Living

Mourning the living is a special kind of hell
With the dead one thinks , “I’ll see you again in the afterlife or the next”
If you believe that sort of thing.
Romantic thoughts of reincarnated souls
Finding each other over and over again
Against all odds, amongst billions of timeless souls
Haunted by mere memories and ghosts.
 
While with the living, however, one is haunted with the knowledge
That while someone has chosen to separate from you
You still live in the same sphere
and will likely cross paths again, one way or another.
You are tormented with the knowledge of
Accessibility, proximity, access
Whether physically or virtually.
Giving the allusion that contact is not only a choice 

but some sort of magic that one invoked will lead to reunion, gratification and solace.
 
Wantonly giving into fantasies
Willfully forgetting, in that moment, that
it is the relationship that died a sordid death
not to be resurrected, save for midnight psychic 20/20 flagellation sessions.
For reaching out to your former partner would be a bit like calling the undertaker.
Having been paid, the burial complete, their script has been read
And nothing remains to be said.

Remember Your Worth

Those who treat you like a toy will tire of you eventually.

The novelty worn off

you will morph into the forgotten toy

The discarded old shoe, a useless object

Dismissed without regard

Disposable and forgotten.

A temporary creature comfort,

kept through lies and vows of forever.

But you knew that,

and gambled anyway -

Praying to be the exception to the rule

Praying for unbridled addiction

Praying for a leopard to change its spots.

You are not the “bargain-bin-barbie” simply because they failed to see your worth

Pity them, to a degree

For the truth will eventually out

and by then you will no longer care what that broken creature thinks

despite convenient apologies.

They forget they gambled as well

And the losses will present themselves

Through “what if’s” and regrets long after you’ve healed and moved on.

Thank You For Your Service

Turns out

you were just another brick in the wall

you promised to tear down

using the map of their story

you poured the salt

and walked away.

Bred & Dead

Kicked, kept

bred and dead

that's how they want us

Cattle for weak men's whims

Desperate to keep Adam's secret

so ripe with guilt

it stuck in their throat for millennia

Best to keep us down then admit their shame.

Gutted

 Gutted like a fish

our democracy, liberties and freedoms

Entrails & Offal

slick the floors of the fish market

once known as Congress