hush	
don’t explain
i know the danger of living 
everyday indignities	
shifting through supernatural odds
and superhuman desire 
i know loneliness
entire worlds crumbling 
into crystal hours of night
i know irony of regret   
immune to sad songs
and goodbye speeches
and hungry looks of lonely people 
who just want to be loved 
anyway it doesn’t matter

lonely is lonely everywhere
i live in loneliness  
falling in and out of love
       with distant      heartbroken 
             planets of rage 
needing to conquer or hold 
some big dick choir boy 
or thug angel	
i arm myself against 
sunsets and one-night stands 
terrified to kiss	

once in a dream 
i buried a jade box
of protection symbols 
verses of poems 
	about that heroic spring 
	when we first met
i left the perfect solitary blues
of who i am 
and traveled long ago
enduring creation
where black unicorns bathe 
in hysterical moonlight
and kryptonite dragons graze 
on lanthanum moths    
	O how they leave 
		only fragile 
			flicker
coaxing bombs and sunlight 
from painful cocoons
a veteran obsessed 
with the salamander’s mythology
consumed by a melody of constellations
i will never be able to explain
        
	so many sorrows      
i sign my reflection in 
the looking glass
where youngbloods succumb
to regularly scheduled terror 
and exploitation 

             indifference as contemptible
as nameless hurricanes
haunting the sea
	
behold an aging narcissus  	
elliptical shores 
overwhelmed with starfish 
dying time and time again 
each song 	
an ecological disaster 
	splintered territory 
punctuated by serpent incantations
blaring television silence from radio 
programmed messages
i’ve learned to dream 
in defiance of tomorrow

i don’t want to love 
another man hiding 
at the periphery of history
or dwarf into headlines 
another Million Man March
an accident of Black liberation
or resilience 	i don’t want 
to cradle another 
love starved brother
until his downlow ego 
barricades his shameful heart 
or confusion retreats
to the back of his eyes	
making peace with misery
too desperate to escape 
        Mapplethorpe’s mask and spleen
touch from strangers
too horny to give a damn
i don’t want to disappear 
into a web of broken crescendo  	
                        cyberspace nuptials
		        whispered over smartphone apps
in chat rooms and bathhouses 
hungover with hurt

i want to feel 
stardust in my veins
unafraid of headhunters
or their weapons of illusion 
every slavish reminder abandoned 
in some beautiful destruction
or lonely territory
i want gritty laughter
a blind owl that cries 
as it pulls flesh from bone
and stares through 
ghostly projection 
engraving trochaic absence 
on invincible altars

 
Dear Lover
when you go 	when you go away
please don’t come back
transatlantic winds 	Desert Storms
treacherously forgetting
Wounded Knee and the Clotilda
terrified to speak the massacres of Red Summer 
and the perpetual wars waged in your name
please don’t  weigh the shifting latitude and longitude 
for guilty powers
threatened by every political prisoner
in occupied territory 
   ghetto barrio favela internal colony 
or concentration camp 
who dares to notice the merciless 
imperfections of an imperial sky
or cruel economy of happiness
trembling green	  mad green 
envy burning endlessly
greedy virtual cobalt green 
ecstatic blood on the leaves 
immortal green
evergreen
twisting and turning…
irate and hopeless

		hush, Don’t explain