Are You Ready to Rock?
…nobody said that what was cannot be changed. This is an adventure in light waves & new days tiptoeing across a poisoned land selling flowers to soul survivors. We smile for Tina Turner & those fabulous legs that finally carried her to freedom. We hear you, honey, walking to freedom with thirty-six cents & a gas credit card. What’s Love Got to Do With It when it leaves you brain damaged, bleeding in the snow, blind, limbless, discarded & deserted. Jerry Hall says you can never be sure your man is not gonna run off & leave you. That’s terrible. I’m not being sarcastic. I feel like someone poured acid on my face & is banding in my dreams with telephone poles.
oh oh OH
please don’t leave me
please don’t leave me
please please please
don’t go
baby
please don’t go.
thank god for that
black boy from Augusta, GA
who grew up to be a man
running down his yellow wife
beating her bloody with a lead pipe.
yet still, when I hurt
I put that record on—
when I’m in the black hurt
it goes all thru my soul
& I scream:
baby please don’t go.
All other women douse themselves with perfume, put on push-up bras & slide into tight red dresses flashing the hold card of youth & desirability. With no pity on paraplegics, heartbroken sharecroppers or stock market executives, they creep out back doors into different colored arms sending knives thru the hearts of men who owned them. & when you’re young & pretty & you can feel he wants you, you tear his eyes out with blue syphilis from the back door man cause you know you a woman who got to bleed every month & finally turn to sour milk & fat & die alone or too young or someone will put a gun to your head in a moment of justifiable passion that the judge understands (after all how would he feel is his wife fucked the gardener) & your brains mingle with the oil stains on the driveway & your memory is a mantra lesbians & nuns with shaved heads chant at battered women’s shelters.
om nama kali ma
om nama kali ma
wear your love like heaven
but don’t leave the woods
Little Red Riding Hood
& if I was you I’d be careful
of grandma too.
oh blue moon
black guitar fingers
string around
your clitoris
scream like broken glass
coca cola bottles
wipe out your vagina
detonating your eyes
into hills Red Cloud
rode across like fire,
after the infantry
burning the cornfields
of a mother’s love
who slept while
your father smeared
his dick with ice cream
& entreated you
to suck it.
The world sleeps
under orange dioxin rains
eating tuna fish sandwiches
made of dead dolphins.
no one sees the bruises
not even after I swallow
everything in sight—pills, poison.
no one asks me what’s wrong
they tell me I’m crazy
crazy
crazy
Crazy Horse
rising free against the cavalry
Harriet Harriet
Tubman
mumbling
falling out
in the swamp
comin’
comin’
comin’ fo’
to carry me
home,
not my mother
not my sister
not my brother
it’s me
he did it
to me
oh lord
stadin’ in the need of prayer,
where were you
oh lord
when I was bleeding
from the asshole
at three years old.
sometimes I feel
like a motherless child
a long
long
long
way
from home.
if gods run free then why can’t we
which way mister
which way to 42nd Street
not my mother
not my father
it’s me
it’s me
it’s me
it’s me oh lord
standin’ on the cement rock
where Mary stood.
oh Mary
don’t you weep,
try some crack
against the memory
of your mother
sleeping
while your father was
creeping.
oh Martha
don’t you moan,
let me get a snapshot
of you going down
on the dog
& let me tell you
if you don’t be a good little girl
I’ll show it to everybody.
oh baby please
oh baby please
wear your love like heaven
wear your love like heaven
maybe white men won’t be so mean
she thinks as she smears lipstick
on her thick black lips
sliding the comb thru her blonde hair
patting powder on her white cheeks
she things,
black guys are different
not like my father
at least I can feel ‘em
when we fuck,
I couldn’t feel daddy
even though he ate
up my life
& spit it in my face.
20 years
30 years
38 years
38 years
then you remember
you remember in a dream
or in a classroom full of kids
teaching the difference between
a noun & a pronoun,
you remember over a hamburger
at McDonald’s or
someone touches your breast
in a way that seems ancient,
you remember sitting on
the toilet watching your
blood drip red on top of toilet paper & shit,
you remember
reading a poem,
you remember
masturbating.
& your life
is never the same.
Finally
you know.
You know
why you felt
so different
so long,
why you felt
so low
like you shoulda
been flushed
down the toilet
before you were born,
now you know
why you went willingly,
to the back door,
whore house
& white bitch’s kitchen
now you know
why you didn’t feel
like shit,
couldn’t say no,
couldn’t ask for what you needed,
couldn’t get close
couldn’t love anybody
couldn’t get your shit together
couldn’t market yourself
couldn’t believe you could do it
couldn’t read
couldn’t drive
couldn’t stop having babies
or eating
or smoking
or fucking,
now you know
why you are you.
now you know why while dogs ran free
you stayed home,
alone,
looking out the window
of a war zone,
always smiling
or crying
over this man
or that woman.
now you know why
the sky is crying
& maybelline
just couldn’t
by true
& Corina
Corina
never
stops
eating
& Little Eva
is a crack head.
now you know why
with a job on Wall Street,
nice white boy husband
& a house in the country
she tore her
wrists apart
& bled into
the nite
dying
alone
on the
bathroom floor
you had scrubbed
earlier that day.
now you know
now you know
& now that you know,
you can begin
to heal.
-Sapphire, American Dreams
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