An Ordinary day

It's an ordinary day
  and men with scythes
for tongues, move from room to room;
  poets, they call themselves,
     and with imprecision
  they stare and stalk each breath.
      There are arguments between those
who write, and those who mean it
    to death, and those who plainly suffer.
But eventually - as if their
histories hold them for ransom - they
   lock themselves up, separately, without
    ever confessing to each other that, they suffer
               because life, for everyone else
        seems like an easy nothing.

Setup

Under the arbour
  we sit, two of everything;
    her the wings.I the one clipped.

Lethargy

A butterball belly, nearly
 makes me feel responsible
for all of humankind.
 I keep punching the air
   with what I will call soft coins.
And they keep returning
 as if to ask what will it be? then
drop back into the waist-basket
 where others keep on living -
whole, of everything left of them.
Rivers rise and fall,
  destinations, turn into clouds
as windows continue to sweep.

Blacks are experts, only on blacks

Luke 10:25-37

Parable of the Good Samaritan

Jesus: “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”

The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.”


White experts

Underneath black coats

Are not, your neighbors.

White experts

Underneath white coats

Are doctors.

A summit of sorts

when only,
         the bubble gum endorses
your grist on life -
          a life that makes you shift rocks
next to each other
       to make them seem like leftovers
of a mountain,
          a mountain that can breathe above all the filth.