Twelve-o-two a.m. new year doorbell
Woodford Reserve in the glass and
The End of Tour DVD on the screen
Two poets reflecting on 2016 with
kidneys and blood
Shatters, ripples, and velocity
Light switch flip and my neighbor Barron
rests on the stoop
Eyes blurred haze overlook of
well-wishing a happy new year
Wrinkled hands and licked lips of crack
decades
Conviction of time served in the
epigenesis of a man
Chat of falling bullets and the
eighteen in the Glock reminiscent childhood pop-pop
As the fire in the sky cackles star
bursts and lovers kissing
Licking the burn of packaged time
into the birth of
Mighty cooty fiyo, hey la hey on
Mardi Gras Day two months away
New Orleans, three men whiskey and
a battlefield darkness
Rain on smoke, humid and sixty
degrees
Barron raises Barak Obama that they
never give a man his due
They shot Martin and Malcom and
asks what was the difference
National of Islam, pork and alcohol
traded for prayer mats
Christianity and the C.I.A.
infiltrated of what it means
When ordinary people threaten the
money of powerful men
In brown skin and uprising dreams
and self sufficiency
Six legs and three mouths breathing
neighbors salutations
As doors open and humans come out,
waving hey happy new year
Happy times sinking in a Palestinian
roadblock and an Istanbul night club
Gunman and inebriating bodies
draining, open fire from the mouths of wolves
Canines and sheep, order and chaos,
fear and love
Year of car crashes through green
lights, projectile septuagenarians ignoring the word stop
To keep foot to the petal and
proceed through the red anyway
Because bodies do not want to look
or know, just go
Death and struggle for a living
wage to say I paid the bank today
To purchase time in monthly
increments to tally a year
Nights of Fetlife and days of
garlic at the grocery
Days of meat-plant and nights of
poetry
Yoga to lose the weight and be in
the breath
I am still Alive Eddie Vedder on my
stereo
Followed by Joe Strummer’s Card
Cheat
Oh, do I deserve to be?
If he only had time to tell of all
of the things he planned
With a card up his sleeve, what
would he achieve? It means nothing!
Open to the smashed automobile
hearts bent in dreams
Metallic in burgeoning through the
server crash
Memories of data intake,
perceptions and failed brakes
That what we thought we had time to
say
Expires, so be the catalyst, do, go
up and speak to that human
To say hello my name is
With the audacity between creep and
romantic
To be alive in the lightning
staring at the fireworks
Melting phosphorus in the eyes,
hand on flesh
Knowing that some of us will not
live to see morning’s dawn
But for those who breathe intrepid
to the mocking bird’s call
Sun blazing bare feet to walk upon
broken glass
Trembling scared as hell to say
I do not know you, but here I am
and I am willing to leap
To fling headstrong into a moment
of exposure
Drinking time’s ferment drunk, but
sober enough
To move with humor and poetry to
burst
The prisons of my perceptions and
dare say participate
In the strands of love that bind
this universe
Friendship, familial, sexual, and
sociological
We are in this together in the
fires of dawn
I see you. I hear you. I am alive.
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