Authors: Saul Williams
a frozen rock
in a hot spot.
me
breaking through to the core.
my rivers are sky and sky and sky
a little golden girl barefoot on the creek plains
arms reaching to the sky/waiting for the storm
giggling with the wind and the rain.
a perfect peach.
my outstretched hand
hol
ding for you a sing
l
e dr
o
p of de
w
.
IV.
i
am
the fish that swims both ways in the river.
-they say because i'm not sure of my direction.
-i say because i wanted you to catch me.
you are the land that
barely breath
es.
-they say because no one had watered your garden
-you say because you were wait
ing
for me to soak into your soil.
we are the trickle the sprinkle the geyser the gush
the creek the crawl the river the wider the ocean the awe . . .
-they say it's because opposites attract.
-we swirl in our whirlpool and laugh at the moon.
The moon prowls 'round
stalking at a distance.
She is a tank.
Her silent rumblingsâ
pass through no-man's land and
rattle our atmospheres,
the crust;
blue surges,
neap and ebb
,
bend outward our walls
till tiding break
the fasted lines
and we awake
to wave our sullied underclothes
up feebly
at the sky.
And so what that we sewed lashes on the eyelids of the moon?
dilated the sky's cervix and climbed high inside Her womb
In June, I was Oshun, and I applied the night's perfume
to the hollow of my collarbone and invited him to prune
away the shadow shroud I plied upon my loom
And so what that we ignited violet branches in my room?
shook the blooms asunder, blanched the thunder with our tune
We were titans hiding in the shrubs that line the tomb
of Babylon, playful in our nakedness we prattled
daft about how craftily we painted parallaxes
I watched him raptly humming he'd already won the battle
contemplating atoms and his brandied Adam's apple
But no matter had we splattered the canvases of Saturn
built pyr
a
mids on Pluto, or graffitied Venus caverns
He sees me no
cosmic
sovereign though I jewel his crown with stars
A glitterfaced
infatuate
catching drinks slid down the bar
So no matter that we flattered ourselves splinters of the fracture
between the ribs of Eden and the breath of heaven's blackbirds
I am gigglethroated gloater
straddling
to ease his backhurts
licking ligaments and knees ripped on
the edge of
April's laughter
And so what that I refuse to glue back the glass that shattered?
I am prismskinned remembrance staining days with my refraction
We are all
mirrors
We speak
outbursts
& job interview
Logos on our
tongues
One movie quote away from laughter
One text message away from crying
Lips
riddled
with bilingual subtitles in the language
from a world we are not from
In thee business of selling the priceless
Merchants of
imagination
Only good @ what we're good @
Only want 2 go where we never been without leaving our homes
Occupied
without occupations
Believe in books from a time we didn't live in that break belief into fractions
And All we are left with is long division
Down the middle
The heart is a riddle
Perspectives a weapon
Out of shape
Exercising ego
till it looks like confidence
Confined
2 where our pasts have been
Late
2 a meeting with our futures
Instruments
out of tune creating our own time signatures
Out of key
But open 2 becoming our own favorite songs
Dream
s sound better when unexplained
Clouds
look nicer when you're not flying through them
Facial features
feature our
parents' flaws
Microscope your every
breath
Look closer
How many lives do you see?
How many lives do you live in a day?
Paralyzed by
the thought
of who we will be when we are not here
Is being ahead
of
your time choosing 2 be a non-factor in thee now
Juggling questions like the answers are up 2 us
Gravitating
2 a place with less of it
Look at me looking at you
when
looking @ me
How do we look?
We ignore each other because
we don't have anything left
2 say after hello
Unsure of what beauty is anymore
We look in mirrors 4 a story we've never seen before
Ask stars questions we are the answers 2
We are flowers beautiful without ever seeing a picture of ourselves
Watered by the moments we love ourselves
Caught in
We love we
we love us nots
What is more beautiful than we?
We
are hellos we've never met
Faith without church
Fear unlearned
Life without worlds
poetry without words
poems about birchwood
are
bullshit
unless forests of mercantilists burn
tied to tree trunks, skin smoldering
trail of dental records, inheritance
in flames          motherfuckers
kicked in the nuts postulating posturing
tweed tenure track post-poetry imposters,
we want poems that dance around the ear,
machete and tech 9
pressed against the temple
poems
that will kill someone / tonightâdemigods
false idols, crack Donald's Hall of mirrors
no horses head
genocide
      just assholes
squeezing gates
of definition
tighter. they
never get
fucked
. they only give department head:)
we want poems that tie Billy Collins to a chair
and
beat him. we'll see how pretty, witty and
meaningless
it all is: a million stanza march ready to flood his organs
alternate multi-cult cannons shoved in his paternalism
backfire prosody until his blank eyes' black
we want poems to stop lying
in showers of middle-age heartbreak &
cancer. fucking grad students ain't noble.
poems that grab
New Yorker
subscribers
by their neckties,
hang them in
Morning-
side Heights, Harlem, West Wicker Park
River North, University Village like piñatas
summertime
shooting galleries
, gentrified
chicken shit
w
ax-t
h
at-ass mus
e
um displays
of quaint colonialists discove
r
ing a caf
e
.
white poems about whiteness devils & white
powder medicine
men
. poems that stole everything
we own & won't surrender. 40-line reparation pathologies
to jazz writers
who
beat-bopped a century of plagiarism
who beat-box between line breaks, who
cop
language
break /ups and think they in         OH!     /vating
white poems / little dick slavery poems
blueprints
rolled on the table
in daylight
poems that cut school funds / a(f)firm
white woman
a
ss/
im
ilationists, dic-
tion bigots, cracker
gun barrels
, white poems
w/ m
at
hematic
inconsistencies
, voter fraud
interest-rate hikes, red lines
&
red-stamped
bank loans. poems that
smother
children
in knock-off handbags & Nike shoes
poems starved for attention. a white poem
that destroys a white world that eats itself
rather than consumes
the Other
   finally
a poem that will grab the king's keys & stab
fair maidens and game wardens repeatedly
the royal court bloody, shocked & clawed.
I'll kill your baby.
Then, I'll come for you.
Wenches awake jaw-drooped,
weltering from my machete-clipped wings.
Submerged in vinegar sweat,
clenching Christ crosses, they
moon-chant
:
Night Owl, Night Hag: You Can't Scare Me.
Night Owl
, Night Hag: You're The Enemy!
I'm their martyr
peroxided in scripture
,
now
the
heresy who rejected Adam's body
atop. He cleaved onto Eve
who still left him foolish. I leave men wet
with dreams of women with bird-taloned feet
taking flight greeting angels at the Sea.
Docile
Marys fetter selves to rock,
dirt gardens, preferring the sting of stones
inscribing
maid
on their backs.
Their daughter
s
invent Bloody Lillith
with lights out, terrified
my
likeness will burst through their mirrors
:
Who second-sexed these servants?
Dared they lie beneath men
& raise boys?
Who exiled me from
their
tongues?
I
cut throats
& uteruses
If I, who denied beneathness,
am now beneath,
why not slice open
their bellies
& score
their
wings?
This a bus with wings
Flying me high above the earth
I need red clay forgiveness
I need a nina simone
gun
With no
bullets
Just
fire
Just freedom
I bite down hard at my bottom lip
To remind myself of the pain
To feel something soft on my
Body filled with concrete, metal
And somebody else's needles.
I am a shadow of myself.
I am the after-hour party
The next stop is my stop
Any stop. Just don't stop
Keep driving bus driver
Till we touch
the
first
Cloud in the
entrance to
Heaven
.
There has to be a safe place
For women who had a yesterday
And a series of uncertain
Tomorrows.
This window is
the
entire
World
. Maybe the earth is
Flat
and square
after all
.
Maybe I would stop running
In circles if I just went to
The
edge of
this mutha fucka
And jumped.
This is
better
than
jumping
.
This is a church revival. Ooh. Baby.
They could never save me in those
Pretty places.
Too much
stained
Glass. I need to be able to see
Inside.
I wanna hear my
God in
a simple place.
The loud speaker
at a drive-
through menu.
There u are.
I can hear you talking
to me.
I love French fries. Always have. I can
Fix a lot of things about myself. That one
I ain't changing.
Changing. What the hell is that anyway.
We all the same from the moment we are born.
Aren't we?
I'm moving,
but I'm still me
. I don't have a
Costume
. Not for this life. I will ask God
For a new one next time around, maybe.
Change is good. Things we can't control we
Name good. Getting high is good, when u can
Control it. Check that out.
I just want to eat and sleep for a few months. Wake up
As a movie star in a different movie. And maybe more meat to cover these bones.
This is not my movie. I had to convince myself.
So here I am, a jar full o
f empty promises
and letters never sent.
I couldn't hold him. I didn't know how to hold him.
Who was gonna hold me? Huh?
Why we only
born
with these two hands anyway. Explain that
Shit to me. Women need more than two. What if
Someone
cut
these
off
. It happens.
Or arms. They can just fall off from exhaustion.
What's up modern medicine. Help me grow some new arms!
Why can't we just grow new ones? Humans ain't so special.
Can't just heal our
wound
s by a
touch
or
a
kiss
. That's never enough. We gotta take pills
to fix Our brains. We so smart, we don't know how
to think.
Without some help.
That's all I need. A little help.