You told me that in order to change life,

I must first change myself;

To search, to nourish, to love myself.

But you never told me what it means to fall.

To trip over pieces of the gravel beneath me,

and join the weakest part of them;

not malleable, just easily broken,

not rough, just jagged around the edges.

You never told me what it means to surrender,

that the trip is just the foreshadowing of…

Electric Nostalgia

Nostalgia thumps in my chest

When I stroll by a kid who reads

a book made of light,

with a choice  to zoom in

for a clearer view of the words

on its screen of rich gloss

One click bookmarks a page.

Another click whisks her away

To a social media heaven

Where instant messages

gather to reward her youth

Nostalgia flows through my thoughts

As I remember the time…

Today was a consumer kind of day

I bought some recipes of ethnic rules

from a lady dressed in a white man’s shirt

Her black skin was like someone spilled night fall

in her pores to shadow her bruised hands

which shove labels of primitive concepts

of how to really be a black woman

In my own fingers I clutch these lessons

and nod twice in her direction

to let her know I purchased her message

She pierces me with dull pellets…

  You call my name as you light a cigarette.  I’m in another room. The scent of your intentions reaches me before your words do.  Your air is bitter and earthy, like an old war veteran with lost limbs who tells tales of lost lives. You’re lost too.  You say my name again. This time heat drifts in to collect me.  A dry breath of weariness curls around my neck. It feels like you. The man you say you were. His air lingers around me like a silent apprentice.  You said you drowned him three years…