Prolix

she squinted at us in the gathering dust and trapped a few hard-won tears in her crow’s feet her white hair flailing wildly her ululations escaped as she twirled and we knew in a flash that the dancer never really left — our village was not yet ridiculous enough for a dry joke her toes rapidly pitter-pattered pocking the hard ground that had become cracked like old parchment bearing a fading contract she called us wordlessly into the growing fray and we began to clap faster as she slapped her chest and grunted sharp staccato ugh-ugh-ughs that whistled though her last teeth she coughed and spat and then plucked a wind string that led back to her first dance her knees knocked together and then she flinched with a HA! and then the robin’s egg broke and the sky burst over us she took her last bow in the crashing applause plunged backwards through the falling curtains and exhaled fragrant petrichor

Round orbs of fire glowed against the night shadows Dotting four or five spots along the top of the old castle wall (were we seen?) We ran shirtless, zig-zagging down narrow and uneven steps Padding barefoot and scattering grit And sweating in the blue air Someone splashed into the water first and the rest of us followed The low moon hung above the waves was chopped into bright wedges That we slapped down with hard strokes, Pulling our way into the world I looked back a few times (I wasn’t the only one who did) The shouts and clanking behind us were now soft and warm Like a pillow whisper before a dream The friendly boat glided darkly towards us (just in time) We flopped onto the wooden bow and smiling teeth and Callused hands helped us to our feet Some of us went below deck to eat warmth and Drink yellow-hued company Cozy under a low ceiling A few of us remained topside a little longer, feeling significant I still remember the deep sky expanding in our chests And thrill winds of escape cradle-rocking and swirling over our wet skin I was cold and miserable

We have learned to love The edges of things— Beginnings and ends, Mirages, Spooky apparitions at a distance, That closer inspection Dispels— And forget how everything is contiguous soup Which drowns all meaning. Human ingenuity is this: Draw a line to make one two; Create a cage, invent a freedom; Carve me, out of us.

Accra cries in the morning light Before she rides wrapped lovingly in cloth On her mother’s back. She is watched over By white-breasted crows that circle Above the wise and wrinkled Neem trees. She wears skin dark and even as a charcoal stove And with a personality as effervescent as Palm wine in the sweltering midday heat. She cares for the white hen that leads Her timorous chicks through shallow green gutters. She tolerates the bleating of the parade of taxis That crawl slowly round her curves, And she sometimes puts a coin in the clingy hands Of curly-haired children walked In all the way from Chad. Accra can be read in the palms of craftsmen Selling masks like their faces by side of the road, And in the sweat of the unknown genius Sculpting masterpieces on the beach. Accra is serenaded in the quiet soliloquy Of the naked vagrant sitting underneath an ATM And she sits smiling beneath colorful umbrellas Selling pay-as-you go phone cards That connect millions and make some millions. Accra is a song that school children squeal Clothed in the warm love of high noon. Accra is fertile, unapologetically voluptuous With bountiful breasts and an impractical shapely butt. She is beautiful though scarred with tribal marks. She has a dollop of a nose, round cheeks And a ready smile revealing pearly whites. Accra is athletic, hard as chiseled ebony and with Skin stretched tight over abs like cupcake crowns. Today, she is the sexiest thing on the planet And she knows it in her very bones. Accra is old-world chivalry And libidos undiminished by modernity Where fathers teach their sons how to be men And women haven’t forgotten how to control them, And political correctness stays political. Accra walks like royalty, Easy, upright, swaggering and bold, And dances with abandon like the court fool With sharp rhythm that shakes off the dust Of struggle and the weight of the world. She is painfully self-conscious and soft-spoken. Accra washes twice a day and wears her best clothes Especially to church on Sundays and holidays And whenever the spirit moves her Or her pastor says that we are in the end days. Accra rains down rarely but she beats down hard When she does and she wipes the streets clean And bathes masticating goats waiting to die. Accra is the imbecile that defenestrates plastic waste And closes up shop five minutes too early— And stands too closely behind you in queues— The drunken mathematician that forecasts the lotto. Accra is the feeling of guilt that raps at your Rolled-up window waiting at a traffic light— The sorry sight of the young leading the blind. Accra can be friendly and helpful to the needful. She yells like hell and curses but never strikes. The city is thick as smoke from burning garbage And thin as the policeman hiding behind a stop sign. Accra is free as the soldier urinating on your wall. Accra is bitter-sweet and must be swallowed whole As a bolus partially submerged in deliciously oily soup With drowned meat as prizes. She can be found watching straight men Hold hands as they walk down the street, And she remembers the more than curious school boys Who grew up to be homophobes. She can be found walking through doors opened for her. Accra is the plump prostitute that winks at your husband And gives next-to-free jerks to your son and his friends After they’ve been out smoking hookah At a lebanese bar where they are bitten By skinny mosquitoes and go broke buying rich girls’ drinks. Accra can be seen sitting on plastic chairs With company looking positively morose At an poorly lit outdoor bar Listening to those hits from the 90s. Accra is a spiritual place— Where talismans worn can bring you wealth And ghosts and dwarves lurk on tree branches On the periphery of your field of vision. Where an invisible owl hoots danger And a senile grandmother becomes a witch And a cheating wife’s vagina gets sealed shut And an absentee father will have his penis shrivel up— Where the rich must have sacrificed their own children And the poor are atoning for the sins of another life— Where demons wait just outside your door And Satan recruits naive politicians Who forgot to bathe in holy blood of the lamb That you can buy from the monday commute preacher, Along with bundles of panacean herbs for Everything from impotence to back pains. Accra is a universe unto itself Where a shoe-shiner has become a millionaire Where children of privilege have lost everything Where hotels may grow like trees And the sun exposes its nut-sack and tans Accra’s skin Where stars are everlasting unchanging diamonds Where billboards announce that Aids is in fact real Where dignity accrues with age Where a gulf vast as the Atlantic separates generations Where vagabonds get high in cemeteries Where you can feel your soul gyrate To the non-stop thump-thump of drums Fading ancestors continue to beat beneath your very feet.

Step by step I measure out a night Spent looking through glass windows At dimly-lit faces seated around dark wooden tables. Occasionally, I slow down to appreciate The graceful flicking of a wrist Or the courageous placement of a palm, And my heart smiles in recognition: Camaraderie in this city of ones, Conjoined twos and awkward threes. I jump over puddles reflecting the black sky And watch for yellow taxis carrying Melancholy passengers to beds in thin rooms Where they will succumb to the streets’ muted symphony Wafting through shutters and landing beside tired ears While I continue marching alongside foreign soldiers. To the rooftops, I imagine we appear united— We all have legs, we are all careful, And lightly place gazes upon each other. I walk some more, so much myself, With a transient shadow and recoiling reflections. I keep my hands in my pockets fingering my phone, Narrowing my eyes and stiffening my cheeks. I breathe in their cigarette smoke that I hate to like Before I descend sticky steps into the subway’s void. After the humid air congeals on my skin I hop into a screeching car, And then I stare at lines and sterile lights, Pictures and shoes, eyes then eyelids, And I feel so acutely me, I feel remarkably divorced, Yet I long for momentary bondage And losing my reflection’s wide-eyed interest. My weary yawn is a silent “City, take me.”

marriage: –bedsheet tug-of-war (brrr) –your alarm saving mine (always) –bathroom time (should i leave it running?) –have-a-nice-day-kisses (running late!) –your hair on my jacket (10 am meeting) –your message: smiling pile of poo (tmi) –crowded 6 train back (homeward!) –food (…i’ll get the dishes hun) –middle couch cushion (jenga feet) –existential dread (whatchawannawatch?) –bed time (COME.TO.BED!) –super serious life-talk (can we, like, tomorrow?) –…i love you too…too much (no…don’t say that…it’s true…how much…this much!!!)dedicated to Ruthie — my heart’s rest, the dream of my past, and my waking joy

our life will be a mosaic of chance-cut pixels it will have bits of red and blue, silver bows and diamond truths it will cast a smooth glow in the hues of our days it will be roughly delved and mortared with the stories we will tell ourselves our hopes will forever run keenly over the edges let us amble backwards leisurely to discover, slowly, all of the resolving pictures that our love will leave behind

nothing is a thing that wasn’t first a process that wasn’t first a butterfly before it was pinned to cork parades and much too much to grasp, the living are not among the known decency asks sometimes for ignorance and shrouds lepidopterists are a callous breed

Reasons ago, Before “cheese moons” had yet to ripen cheesy, The sun still bore a grin Riding clouds with blue linings Over a flat world in the eternal now People used to be crayon thin They had heads like O And stood naked with legs like /\ Back when sex was just a misspelling That took two hands to count ~~~ Once upon a time, Our words became fruitful and multiplied And gave birth to “genitalia” on a Sunday /’\ By Monday, we already knew the ubiquity of balls — Telescopes and microscopes Prove the spins, wobbles, revolutions and spirals… So, when the Earth was rolled Into a hard to draw O, We found it just alright In surviving the restless onslaught of knowledge We have lost many good metaphors With a O, sphere or pale blue dot, we can communicate ancient truths — But only new lines of code prefer “oblate spheroid” Some roving dreams only find us When we sleep and momentarily forget what we know

An arboreal calm Has descended upon my daze So that, now, when I sway, I do it in place, And when I heave, I creak in a deep staccato, And when I shed, I can read limerence into the s c a t t e r And I Can see The future Yellowing All around me, As I feed myself On myself - growing more rings and More wind-blown fruit, scrunching up the black earth By the foot-ful and reaching up with splayed fingers for a shedding sky, Just to taste your breath travelled from a mere branch-and-a-half away to me.

High abandon exposes The loved child Whose whole world is a hearth. She ghosts beneath The grown-ups’ knees, As they sit on encircled stumps Around their flame With a play of shadows Dancing between smile lines As they watch And wordlessly nod And raise a toast with tiny cups - For Joy ever was a spirit best sipped ...with a kiss...

Tender chrysalis, Than another’s butterfly I’d rather my moth

With the present never so thin, And history always fattening, Each instant sensed already to be a lost moment, A sensation to be already a memory’s scent, Remembering to forget at each juncture, Building to destroy his every structure, Our hopelessly time-bound creature Binds every hope to a staying Feature— So his ears can lose the ticking-tocks And his hands defeat the winning clocks. Armed with the terminal speed of life’s fatal slope, He is still, endlessly impregnated with natal hope.

i am ready — like the salty droplet sparkling on my chin stretched round by dull tension refracting all the light that now passes through having spent itself wetting a vanishing path hoping it is still heavy enough— to let go

Fluorescent light Warm, ripe stench Dry ashy knuckles Split cuticle on an index finger Bright red dots on thin toilet paper Weird smears on yellowed tile Dried phlegm wall paintings Haunting streaks on a warped mirror A waterlogged head Fingerprinted slick on a brassy knob A heavy bathroom door Body odor wafting by Sizzling grease Sharp bacon smells Stiff knees and a bloated belly Harsh sunlight streaming in Everybody in this goddamned diner A rickety chair Moist gum touching a knee An elbow resting on scattered salt Dried brown ketchup on the underside of the cap Bitter runny yolk and a gelatinous mass of albumen Metallic hot sauce Cracked lip stings Sweaty, itchy scalp Odoriferous water A pimpled, tired face Questioning eyes Frank regret

I fall Into The Hole That bores Between your words And mine, And furl, then wilt, and Grasping lose The yarn That stitches looping thoughts. My friend, I’m not aloof. Contrarily, You loom a god before a frozen man.

Fear-some? Tonight a symbol (sometimes, just a man) A witness or suspect, Or a history Approaches Beneath lamplit Branches. In our night’s Easy caress, The black Heart breaks More often Than in a Blue moon.

a dancing collection of nanos traipsed down my circulatory system dusting here, febrezing there and making me staid again. i am strong. i remember everything exactly - how we hurtled and spun and laughed! and also the feel of the burning sword as we jumped into e-den. the humble drosophila’s gift wrapped in unspeakable loss. happy networks in prague where re-runs are archived show me winter and feel me cold. the idea beckons incessantly: we are become us. dark bits are playthings for splits - shadows exploring the ancient expanse it all began soon when were you, memory, and what exactly?

The depilatory effect of aging Grows more glaringly Into the perfect metaphor Of how the august deluge Will polish our hardness Smooth and gleaming Rounded and strewn Like so many pebbles Clacking their balderdash Running along a river bank

It’s got something to do with arousal And being, after all, just animals Too easily trapped by a bait-and-switch As sure as the order of the seasons The leveling plague recurs with new reasons For good people to burn another witch Rhythmic, swaying, obliterating waves Gliding freely through amygdalal grooves — Slogans drape like loose clothing hiding folds Look in his crimson eyes and see yourself

A gamble for All or nothing was Splitting light from darkness Whence I was born a contrast — Infinity bound, must I eternally Recapitulate bit by bit? Bite by bite, I have learned to call myself An African Bush Elephant — Yet I cannot forget That I come from the sea.