‘Prelude to Wantings & Undying; A Portrait of Self-Love’ & Other Poems

say, i am damned.

  & all i want to do is stare

deep into the mirror

  until my eyes find a cave

  in my body.

i want to fill the holes in my

  tongue with wingless birds—

something that stays after i’m

  done, my body, decomposed—

something to sing to my lover

  in the afterlife, something

  to exalt my maker.

  i want to break my softest bone

like unleavened bread &

  communion with my fears over

  a cup of my blood.

i want to practice silence

  like a grave—walk into a cold

memory, call it my coffin.

  & just lie there, sleeping, knowing

  that there’s no awakening.

i want to choose a happy memory,

  call it my burial, my reincarnation.

i want to learn the science

  of undying, but even my death

  dies with me.

  i want to do beautiful things.

& literally, kissing is the act of speak

  -ing in tongues, so i spend my last days

speaking in tongues with my lover.

  & she reckons, love is beautiful.

& yes, i dream of sunrise, everyday

  i am a wayfarer wading in the water,

on the wind, in the wilderness like

  an ellipsis after a phrase. i know

my life is incomplete, but i do

  not know how it would end.

  this is what i know—

i have sabre-toothed desires that

  lie parallel to my reality. everyday,

  i hope they become magnets

that kiss. every night, i nail myself

  to a cross & call it my crucifix—

  a portrait of self-love.

after Starr Davis’ ‘Mourning Sex’

The hymn is steadfast in my throat

like the gray in a winter’s sky.

The songs are so blue, my birds

peck my tastebuds for sugar.

I’m screaming in a room where

there are no echoes. & every new

day begins with a silence

made of steel—it does not break.

My morning workout activity

is hopping. & I hop from hope

to desolation—again & again

until my sweat drowns me into the

pool of my own absence. I’m broken

& it means that a part of my body

is in ectopia. Say, my heart is in my belly

when a trigger-happy cop points

a barrel towards my frontal bone.

Say, my eyes are in the darkness

of my blank mind searching

for a happy memory when night’s

breeze blows loss through

my window. In the city of my wonder,

I sit confined in my own woes

like a straitjacket. I observe

my lungs long for a brittle breath.

I fight my own body from tilting

towards ruin—where it desperately

wants to be. Adrenaline running deep

in my bloodstream, pulling me

into the (w)hole of surrender. Once,

I kissed the knife where it speaks

of blood & peril & I ended up, a cleft.

& in the same way, I kissed the needle

& ended up, a scar. Tell me about

healing. What I know of it is little

& brittle. Tell me what it is if not

a testament of threads?

What about beauty? How the body

nurses pain into memory. How scars

teaches us forgiveness. Here, my body

in disrepair—a desolate house

with threads and webs, my plexus

of nerves. Every touch reminds

me of the ashes of a boy burnt by

gunfire. A girl from the bar where

I go to drown myself in liquor,

light skinned and transparent,

tells me I’m too young to be dilapidated—

a house full of spiders. & looking

deep through her—a basket of rotten

history, heavy clouds in her eyes.

She breaks the news of another boy

whose bowels were found splintered

all over the street, his body holed

by bullets of unknown gunmen,

twenty-five girls abducted in Kebbi,

a church raided by bandits in their

sacred vulnerability. She asked if I

was scared about being the next victim

of gunpowder. & I tell her that everyone

in this country has a sleeping disorder—

nightmares. That everyday is a step

towards the grave, afterall. & there

was this silence in the air. & more

soberness in the beer bottles.

& we kept downing the bottles &

drowning & drowning in drunkenness.

In the end, we go searching for a miracle

deep inside ourselves, sinking & sin

-king, all we find is a miracle too fleeting,

too fleeting to be called a miracle.

Tears of joy—inside my left orbit.

I hold my lover to her word. I’m broken

in one piece. It makes no sense.

A falling bird. Gravity & weight. Push

& pull. Fall & fracture. The waking moon

on the 29th day of Ramadan. The

sleeping sun in a cloudy Alaska. Sun

rise after nightfall. Rain-fall after

water-rise. A bright eclipse—as of hope.

As of a lover’s body bare on the bed

in a dark room. Good sin. Beautiful lies.

Like that one time the therapist said

I could be anything that glowed. I touched

a star & it disappeared. Bitter truth—

my best friend is a gayman. I do not go

to church. I have a stepmother. Open secret—

I love the naked body & for some reasons

except for being an anatomist. Talk about blacks.

I wonder how Obama was able to glow

in a white world—black American or black

beauty? I am near the end of my early 20s,

I am nearly 30 in otherwords.

I have no friends. I know no enemy. I write

poetry & enjoy the human gross anatomy.

There’s a happy grief on becoming a man.

Responsibilities scattered in a random

order. Life makes more sense now.

My mother’s warnings—a clear bewilderment.

This is the world’s kind cruelty. I know

loss inside out. It made me understand

love. Love is where the heart beats

slowly fast. Which is to say love is a place.

My mother’s white eyes. My lover’s larynx.

My sisters’ pink cheeks. My father’s

airway. & yes, God’s word—I’m still clinging

unto them. Perhaps, not completely.

Unrighteous holiness. Holy war. Victorious

defeat. A realistic dream where once,

I gave in to the tears of joy in my left orbit

& laid bare on a bed, my death alive,

crawling over my body like a beetle,

its sting, familiar, but my body, immune.