Photo by Alekzan Powell on Unsplash
poem: DEAR LANDLORD
after Bob and Boots
Please don’t put a price on my apartment.
It’s yours more than mine, though. You can’t
help but exploit that.
So I’ll help you along.
I know your histories of arson. Your predilection
for insurance claims. I’m no dummy—
I know hiphop was born from the sepulcher
of a burning Bronx. But let me do
the burning. Let me clear the place out and gut it.
It’s drafty as fuck in here, in there. I am both
former tenant and present squatter.
If rent is what I owe, let’s cinder that w/ the rest
of the property. Do it properly. I can tinker w/
wires until I’ve got flash of fire or flash of electricity.
Cut the circuitry and splice the lights on.
I’m cold lampin’ w/o the heat on. It’s Thanks-
giving, dear Landlord. We’ll make our own heat.
poem: Love Affair For Real Heads
You can’t spell structure without suture, so
for heaven’s sake stop stitching me up. No
band-aids. No white supremacy, flesh-colored
quick fixes. None of the dullards, dotards,
or reformists can save my corpse from rigor mortising.
You can’t warm me over with campfires
or barrel-burns under interstate bridges. I won’t
be warmed-over, or warned for the last time.
What will stiffen me solider stronger than riotporn
is you not staunching the bloodflow,
seriously. That’s some snitch shit. Fink. Don’t fuck me.
Even think about it and I’ll never be yours.
This here is a gesture against being sustained.
poem: White Riot
Why won’t white people take crowbars
to Panera?
They have the numbers
and the capacity—somewhere deep within—I believe.
The pane-glass will spiderweb shatter
something so sublime
perhaps Artforum will cover it.
White people with their cachet and their clout
and their cholesterol and their children:
they should do something.
This is nothing new. I’m not that good of a poet—
not revelatory; nothing
revolutionary here to these thoughts.
Joe Strummer sang about it in 1977:
Whiteriot,Iwannariot Whiteriot,ariotofmyown.
He called white people too chicken to even
try it.
He’s not wrong.
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