for Andrew

i. swagged-out Jesus

named yourself that mess when you wore the rainbow

beaded crown à la Stevie in the ’70s & let the great religion

of your belly hang like some Southside Buddha

with a boombox dangling from your neck old Radio

Raheem looking ass dude walking around blasting Ye

random folk following you like you were the Christ

of the night or maybe just a mirage of bass

& flesh stained with June’s turmeric—

o if the gods would let me edit & loop

o if i could stop here—

ii. ending with nothing

what do you do when a boy lynches himself

when the mob isn’t after his skin

but under it, when anything that can hold

his weight becomes a tree, when you can’t

close your eyes & not see him there—

low planet, swayed orbit

cooling rapidly? i counted the things

used to end a boy but forgot

the boy himself. how could i?

i considered it

the matter of you neither created

nor destroyed but something

we have no word for, only myth

& faith & doubt about the place

that lives—we hope lives—after the body

spits out the soul like a seed.

we are left to harvest this black fruit—

your name perched in past tense.

what good is hiding the gun

& locking the cabinet if the boy

can still find his own hands?

if anything that loops can be a rope?

i want to believe you did an Ebo thing

soaring the ocean floor to an older home

but dammit, Andrew

they turned you into dust. dust.

your whole body gray in a brass bowl

waiting to be scattered, to jewel

the wind, get caught in our eyes.

in dreams, i pull at a rope for hours

miles of rope & rope & my bloody

hands & when i get to the end—

you, hooked & laughing

so hard i wake up to the windows

rattling with no storm or breeze

or world out there at all.

iii. for the dead homie

bury me under your heft of titles:

love who makes me rude to other loves

love who makes me like me like me

rose sweet chemical in the blood

tender wind that makes the brain blush

storm that scares the storm away.

in me—a monument to your fray.

in you—a trap door back to myself.

before holy there was your grace

messiah of the random Wednesday.

a world without you is not a world.

thy terrain & bounty include my hands.

my main. higher light in a room of light.

when you went i choked the dirt.

//

when you went i choked on dirt

i ate my way to Australia, i smoked hella

i dressed in headlights & sirens

i thought about it, i put the pills back

i burned the medicine cabinet, burned

the house, burned the city, burned

the last years down to cinders & drank

yes i drank them down, i wanted to be

bloated with fact: you are not