you could call this a war

in the way only who can be seen

is alive and maybe not even that

·

August prepares its heavy gown

for our shoulders and I have

nothing to sing     but the heat

on the screen       two trends

#BatonRougePolice

#WheresTheAlbumFrank

·

Happy June 222nd

Happy anniversary Frank

Maybe Frank was never even there

This album definitely not done

Frank need to come home

This gay ass nigga gonna break our hearts again

All I want is a song

This nigga a lie

He fix his mouth              and nothing spills out

Frank might be dead y’all

Frank might be dead y’all

Another nigga gone missing

Happy June 225th

I swear he never coming back

I swear I saw him

I swear it’s been Summer for 3 years

·

A name is something you surrender

in parts               if you are lucky

I am not

much more beyond that

which traces the borders of me

into a bed in mid-July

I am not

much more than my secrets

·

Boy say Bi____________

and his tongue splits

Boy say Bi____________

and his mouth is public property

Boy say Bi____________

and belongs nowhere

Boy say Bi____________

and now none of his gods

return his calls

·

A body gets silent

and it is either haunted

or will be

A body gets silent

and everyone can sing it dead

A body gets silent

and is named after the silence

to forget it was ever a boy

Silence inundates my throat

there is more than one way

to have a boy in your mouth

·

The body is a glass home

I am somewhere       I used to live

fragile and nearly translucent

opaque only where smoke tongues

me into the illusion of shelter

I shatter/into more/me

VARIATION ON A THEME OF GENETICS

After Kendrick Lamar

In the dregs of August I watch the birds sprint like Black folk     and surely this

is in my DNA

the loudness of living amongst the living breaks one bird loose into armada

of wings in my DNA

Where I’m from is a question I can only answer in my parents’ capillaries and

thus I know only a bruise’s worth of my origin

I have 1 country and 1 executioner     they’re the same in my DNA

Tradition dictates the men in my family die of nothing but themselves      and so

I am a fugitive

percussion    child of bad knees        I sprint an emaciated hum until I’m a threat

to my DNA

Beneath my skin I keep 23 versions of the same drowned map     I am a library

of redundancies

bird lost amongst birds    I was built in and for obscurity    all the darkness is

practical in my DNA

The body is a subtle phalanx    by which I mean    I am never not thinking

about dying

Every child being born is also being sent to their death      I calculate the mercies

in my DNA