SOVEREIGN EROTICS

Here's a link to a new anthology I am currently a part of, its an amazing collection-the first of its kind and I am very proud to be a part of it

Minotaur

what bullshit
the government
spewed about us
while licking clean
the land of milk
and honey
and just how many
still worship
that golden calf
we call america
just raise up your flag
new Athenians
you'll never understand
this land
will never be just your land

for centuries
they've scoffed
and blew smoke
up their own asses
telling themselves
that we were the heathen ones
the savage in his loincloth
making a Minotaur
out of us

and they still know
how to maneuver well
in their labyrinth of lies
in this land of cow shit
attracting
the lord of the flies

there is a truth in fear
you've just got to know how
to shape it
you can manifest a destiny
you've just got to know
how to rape it

will we ever be able
to separate
the myth from the bullshit
O America,
Pasiphae,
--will you love your mixed blood
or kill it?

For The Girl Who Painted Roaches


We grew up in the same
trash heap of poverty
scavenging for any kind
of affection
but often we were hated
for the way we looked
and got the wrong
kind of attention

they say roaches
are afraid of the light
but it is not because
of some kind of dark
sins they need to hide
how often did our own
fears send us scattering
wanting to hide inside walls
whenever someone came to punch out our lights
or from the names we were called?

this is for the girl
who painted roaches
when she was a child
and roaches have wings
but never use them to fly
they were her toys
and perhaps a source of friendship
she learned to accept them
along with her hardships

and were we so pest-like
that we were often left underfoot
by our own families?
this is for the girl
who was left to die with the ticks
tied to a tree
and this is for the struggles
that tie her to me

she painted roaches
and colorized her poverty
a young Black Native girl
stuck in a black and white world
someone had to paint it pretty

UPDATE


My poem Kid Icarus has been picked up
for an as yet to be titled anthology
due out sometime this year.

an afterthought

i am a pharaoh
painted on a casket face
and i dare not crack a smile
for if i do all of the colors
would bleed
and that would be the end
of pretty little stoic me
not much remains
behind my garments
you can open my mouth and see
there is no mention of you
and what was sacred
is shriveled up
or embalmed in canopic jars
waiting to be ransacked
it is just me in my apt now
the heiroglyphs
go unnoticed
--left to the afterlife with my cat
the other was looted
thought of as some kind of valuable
though nothing is eternal
just remnants of a time lost
are wrapped up loosely in me
of something african
or perhaps asian
--an old mystery that cares not
to speak of itself
but you would not find me special anyway
because my resting place
has not gone untouched
vandalised
several times
no more diamond-encrusted shine
behind my eyes
no sapphires ignite your interest
no gold-plated chest
just a whole lot of emptiness
and when you find i have
gone to ash, to dust
will you think of me/you?
and what we all go back into?

i hope in the next life
i shall never meet you

Here's a good review in Rapid City Journal
that I was interviewed for
Shedding Skins Review in RCJ

Janus

why not shut my eyes up on me
god of gates and doors?
with a stinging wince
i cannot bear witness
to my life anymore
---to any true meaning
i have shut down
at thirty
but am somewhere past fifty
now it seems i can't
even have a simple rage
the pheonix flew
but walked back to the cage
my mind falls like feathers
i pop a pill
---one good idea,
perhaps two
manages to permeate
through the gilded lids
"not good enough"
some demigods say
wants more purity
wants the removal of foreskin
even the oracle lies to me
---says just a little more suffering
and you'll be pure prophesy
the furies
the minotaurs
continue to bullshit on
courting the debutantes
who have all dyed their hair blonde
meanwhile Medusa
spits out bad poetry
i see the weight
on atlas's corroded palms
and so i lie
down
with my makeshift
laurel-leaf crown
i have overpleaded
to many gods
amongst the ashtray altars
been reborn in the
beer-drenched waters
and Venus with her clammy hands
was a sugarcoating bitch
i could not bear to stand
Not even Janus could
give me a new beginning
so when he turned away
---it was even more
insulting