‘Self Portrait as a Urinal Bowl’ & Other Poems

Some things are made concave to speak in the shape of a jaw.

our round world, sunken on the inside & blown open

like a urinal bowl—with its clean teeth of cloud:

Each righteous white, surrounded on a hands up! drop your weapon!! order

by the sky’s swollen gum, barking its loud blue across the defenseless slate of heaven.

I lay down on the tongue inside of me, surrendering to the curve of my own dentition—

chipped at the tip with a rusting that sketches a V-line to announce its concaveness:

Duchamp’s fountain reinvented in the latrine of my mouth—edging to a rock-shut.

We urinate in piss-pots, without knowing we’re only defiling the jaw of something else.

Everyone grabs a pee pot straight to the restroom, then, performs a long syllable of piss on it;

& bystanders throw guesses at where the porcelain China hurts the loudest.

Its silent trickle, playing a trick on the walls of the toilet bowl—

that trumps the music coming from this common spill of salted water.

Our ordinary waste like a wet troop of animals,

finding a yellow purpose in this artwork pinned to the wall.

I move my weak bladder through life & its solo exhibition—wondering about the many

sculptures, modeled to hold the mess of others in a shiny show for the highest bidder;

as though the amber the piss the sicker the juice.

In the month that killed the flushing in my throat, I sit like a white dish, caved in on the inside

at the corner of a room. Neglected, except for the girl who raced around me,

reworking the handle of my arm to a damage. she peeps into me to still find

a strand of her hair afloat—soaked up like an action word fighting for breath.

I had no say in the inspection: to be stared at for more than an hour without permission.

I imagine the teenage version of myself, crystal as sparkling water,

holding the reflection of anyone that comes close to mishandling me.

Say; I go on with this threat,will I be accused of

leaking the information of their body to the world?

The glass is never emotional at what it gives back; & so should your answer.

I want every beauty that stared into the wet pit of me; painted as beast.

want whoever stained the white wall of my body without negotiation—

paid back in their own stench of urine—to teach a lesson on diplomacy.

How the lid of me is talked open; till a stranger’s

foul-smelly substance becomes my own shower gel.

The fine, seated clay, fired from paleness to a yellowing, into glimmer.

I understand the shiny dialect pouring over my head isn’t rain.

I have only drunk a lifetime of water to keep me peeing on the strand of myself.

Each morning, I lay down in self-flush,

fold my bowel into a bowl—collecting all the waste I can get.

the hole of a spoon, speaking to the hollow in between my jaw.

I toss my head from behind & thought comes to me in a backwash,

as if there is a detergent—soaping in my windpipe.

tongue sunk in, red as a flapper, drowning that black strand of hair

in an attempt to carry out a threat I never had the balls to accomplish.

the pitfall here, began from a comb running through braids, then the running

around of the girl, before I’m sought out for scrutiny & engage the inspector on eye-level.

we go face-to-face, mirroring our disgust for one another,

begging to go salty water for salty water, if sweat too is a weapon.

hands up! undress your zip!! you, my friend, is at war with a defenseless chamber pot.

There is a kind of love plumbing inside of me for everyone

who puts a pipe close to me to suck up meaning from the blast of my mind.

The heart, a treasure chest—broken into its many smithereens.

Once, a conversationalist, blessed with the doggedness of a gold miner

dug into me until she reached for sense, or something close.

Right there, in Duchamp’s readymade latrine, Brian Eno pees as if

holding a long conversation with the Urinal bowl fastened to a conduit.

the gossip, leaking into me like the consequence of a burst pipework.

I have always had the wish to either waste away or keep on housing a waste

in my small gut. I want you to occupy that pink space, be urine for me—

the way the bloodstream overrides water into pale, yellow pigments.

& how else to call urine by name, if not a wet wound running out of salt.

Bladder, punctured clean by the sharp want to speak slow but deliberate,

like a tensed argument, laking patiently on the inside of man.

In a bar where I’ve had too much to drink,

an attendant with a smoke pipe walked me to the mouth of a lavatory

& told me to hold a conversation with the sink:

The discuss begins with a loud shrill & ends in a hush.

When it’s not me hurting, it is the porcelain holding out the loud design of its

jaw to ask for an agony that is no longer in vogue.

I fill it up with all the watery ache a swelled bladder can churn out.

I love what brown music piss can make: smell, beating hard against chinaware.

How otherworldly for a boy of incoherence to birth a rhythm louder than his own voice.

in the restroom, I move like a life band of utterance. it’s giving Coldplay,

it’s giving The Rolling Stones for the way a low-pitch trickle blends into falsetto:

I speak of toilet melodies raised up to a pentatonic scale.

a professor questions the lifespan of the speaker. says, when does the Boy

grow into a man? I say, whenever the poem grows on its audience.

I want it on everyone’s jaw like an anathema anthem.

a boy of incoherence is that audacious, wouldn’t beg for agency,

knows whatever he lacks in intelligence, he makes up for in sound.

which is a way to say, you are brilliant in an acoustic kind of way.

I caste my aspersions on bars. I am the measure for sonics as it stands now.

the arrogance here, is afro-whatever you want to call it.

I am sorry, I give everything a Black context. I am not to be trusted with race.

my White friends questions when I’ll grow out of this behavior.

I say, whenever this country chooses to grow up. look, the paralytic infantility

is an anthem anathema everyone wears around the waist like a bloated toy.

I empty it all in Duchamp’s urinal bowl. trust me not to beg for permission.

I go about making the business of melody from the blast of my bladder.

any boy of incoherence knows to approach the toilet pit with that much authenticity.

In my formative year, skinny to the bone & back.

my short flesh, tied on both ends of me like a towel.

each dinner I ate came out in a downpour. Nothing stayed inside of this body.

So, they made tupperware in the shape of a bowl & hung it on my neck.

My sister, checking for when my silence is so loud, to force a spoon between my teeth.

Its stainless rust, shoved right in the convulsion of my mouth

before I got the chance to sever my tongue into half.

Her grip straightens my trembling everywhere—at home, in commercial buses,

& I coil back to being the best brute for her.

I am only a boy who worms into panic in a face-off with death:

a battle named in salt. I surprise her with my living.

like when during one of my many fits, where the doctor tears down the hospital door,

screaming at them to come take away my corpse,

then, I upped & walked out of the premise as if nothing about the war I body is being discredited.

The machine that spits our credit card, beeping its own loud dying.

The froth on my lips knows me by vomit.

Even in this white bubble of life, I still pay attention to what illness ferments up there

in the sky, where God sits motionless like a seizure.

Anyone who has experienced what whitewash of a world we live in

would foam at the mouth the way my vent cleans after religion,

the way I leak from the jaw like a tired nanny.

I did not ask for this shiny lather placed on the front row of my mouth.

I begged for that silver spoon with a privilege to afford my own medication,

dreamt that cutlery into existence, till a counterfeit was shoved down my throat.

Tell me: who wouldn’t feel cheated & rebel against this clever-by-half deal—

enough to tear down the doors of heaven,

screaming at the believers to come take away their Jehovah out of my sight,

before I let him have a taste of his own medicine.

I’ve learnt to give back in good measure, the syrup I am offered at birth.

I do not bear witness to the brute it makes of me.

I recoil back to being the best human for everyone by logic,

by calculating the distance between me & the next person, before worming into one of my fits.

I see you tucked by a corner, in that white linen, cleaning the hem of your dress,

rinsing & tying the stained gown to both ends of your body like a towel.

I am sorry a spit can be that vocal—

it touches someone where they feel the most unworthy of themself.

I apologize for the downpour, for your presence

near a plight that keeps foaming in maritime rage.

The spoon is far down God’s mighty throat; I made sure of this.

I want him fed in the way that is baffling—the overflow of a jaw.