A friend. Let's call him M was dating, I mean seeing on dates and seeing in dreams of future dates, which always involve spontaneous paintbrushes, M being an accomplished hoarder of art, trash, and other sex positions, M was dating someone from Kenosha, who was merced (his softening of murdered) by Rittenhouse fifteen months ago, and tonight M is on the floor, at our house, amid a wreckage of mugs and sense memories, angry, getting up, pounding head, and laying back down, like any worker working through this world of trauma: he saw me watching him hand-roll and said don't be shy.
A cousin. Let's call him S was flying high, as in, he was a pilot, training, until he actually got in the cockpit solo and panicked under the gravity of responsibility, imagine flight as void pregnancy, one drink too many and a hundred boatlike moms and diarrhea babies wave bye-bye anyway S vomited and vertigoed down, down until the cold white psych ward for threatening to kill a cop and his brother and himself. my family is white. when we're sent to a room that feels like ourselves not listening, we think, I deserve to die here. it's not helpful. S is in the ward now. I'm not helping, I'm with M saying to him nothing he needs to hear (not listening) because I'm pretending I'm talking to S so many crossed wires it's hardly talking at all.
I want to show both the way I crawled out, but when I turn around, it's tiny as a chicken-hole made narrow with shit. don't be shy. I used love as a hitch, let it tug me from place to place. don't be shy. so M and us we all got high. there's no redeeming my anger at S, this poem or the death it hides. this poem ripped its way out like a fart. sorry. violent: it just had to come out.
cdzhouse 