Five Reasons for Spending the Night at Bobby’s

1. He wanted Madden 09 for his birthday; I bought it for him…

…with the money grandma sent for Christmas, excited, front of a crowded big-screen TV, Bobby tank top and boxer shorts, me in black sweats, to sleep in, we both bare feet, we scores, we jumps, he slaps ass, NFL style, masculine, consoling me. I thought my stripped toes would confess my blue-fire orchid scream, I am only my spat fingers, and my patient red diamond abides.

2. A big snow-blast tonight...

…so I run to him, ahead of the cascade, ringing bells, I am black Santa Claus with the forty-ounce sack four filled with Old Gold, and Acapulco Gold smoke on the bed behind me. And Bobby’s landlord keeps the heat on high. Fire weed against walls, against butter, against black skin. I fall asleep in the middle, after booze from bottles, and talking all night about football, about boxing, about cars, and about girls. Bobby pulls off my pants and socks, he throws a huge sleeping bag over me and nods off across the room, crooked, in his favorite chair; talking to a lady-friend on the phone.

3. That funny clicking in my engine…

…in my drivers seat, Bobby is under hood twirling wires, wiping dipsticks off, smudged tattoo, dark brown skin spinning, crumpled paper pocket numbers, flying alley dark showers. He is shirtless and worried about who will be the Jets new quarterback. After the disco bump, after the h-bomb sneak, after the dim slippery; approaching a grey like a drip drinking bar.

4. Its Payday…

…and I’ve got the green tree grow. We are the royal leaving limousines, names.

I am the mirror. Bobby looks, smiles, and he tilts his head. Barstools ride and red wine glasses, dancing rooms filled and jumping, like children chasing ice cream trucks. Bobby has the sun (I thought the sunlight would tell him) and we become a ride, a drunken taxicab, a noon-brewed coffee cup, and a wet shower towel (Bobby bathes in pools of green daises.)

5. Because this is the day…

… for Bobby to open his windows. I am the purple blood bloom. A genie rose from the burning flower between us found Bobby giggling, found my resting face, “Warrior, Spear, Kingdom,” and we are on a hill above a rolling river, we become the water. We become peeled orange sections. Thank you for the wet mouth, the glass wine, or this black boy, the pulling dreds, (his toes his ankle) and soft cotton underpants, and I a calico alley cat in spike red shoes searching Bobby’s chest for a warm heartbeat.

Forgiven

He bathes for me

on the tops of mountains

under full moon sky fire.

He pulls off clothes for me.

He raises legs and points and curls, and points and curls, and points and curls his toes,

an arabesque,

honey blue music drag, naked,

deep dances under midnights’ sliding black satin.

My bare hand holding him,

on dark corners, his night beauty spilling

rubies from his veins and repairing contracts torn

and tossed from my table.

I Crack Head

In September of ninety-seven

cocaine cut me a loose coke said, “go take you

a bath.” And then laughed at me as I dragged my evil body

up from below the tilted bridge. I was not more than naked really. All that was left

was the smell of blood on me, like a left-out package of ground beef grey

surrounded by swimming eggs and more pregnant flies.

Vote No on Prop 8

You and I are fucking

but we are not fertilizing eggs still

I wait at frosted windows during snowstorms

and warm up pot roasts (with my faggot ass)

that tasted better at six-fifteen when you should

have walked through the door and stomped grey slush

from your foots and said It’s cold out there

while touching my mouth with your lips do you see how cold my mouth is

our faces are frozen together.

Stay at home Mom

She discovered lies, an asp wrapped around her marriage.

She stole an internet love look.

She met two black strangers in a desolate parking lot.

She fucked them both, hidden behind rusted leaves.

She came home, woke her husband’s left-alone flaxen baby girl.

(the infant had slid out of her seven months ago like a green turd)

She fed the brat’s sniveling pink mouth with milk from her soiled sticky breast.

She drew gravel from her nostrils and spat on the boiling beef stew prepared for her spouse.

She served his 6 o’clock meal and slippers dressed in a crisp Donna Reed apron and smiled him a kiss.

The Crack Head

We ran low.

While smoking over Murt’s house

so we sent him out for more but he was cut down

By five pieces of lead spinning quickly I stepped over

his staring eye after blood running down the street to trap

the fleeing gunman to beg him please sell me two more.

The Ghetto

Maria saved her own and her three beige children’s

yellow project piss in large Hellmann’s jars,

and threw it out of her neat third floor apartment window

at the crack head bitches she heard

loudly sucking dick at all hours of the night.