The rapper chooses his vacancies. Room does not
choose the rapper. The rapper walked into rooms. or
were dragged into rooms. were dragged
into rooms. Or we walked
into rooms. The seating charts of airplanes
look like the Middle Passage. Then we boarded the plane.
were dragged onto the plane. The plane
was dragged from us. Much like
the grocery store at night where in drag, the lights of we
dislocate. We remove ourselves from the store by
cuffed security. If we are a being,
then lightning has struck. We stand in the rain.
The lightning is big, the oppressive sky. It stood
us in wet. Between the door and between
the body, the mind is a temple at the end of his gun.
I brought my temple to his barrel in bliss.
His gun did flips. His gun was loving. He was
the kind of master who didn’t trigger. We
was the body beneath all that. We, my body, got quite
beneath them. They dragged their bodies onto
mine. We opened all mouths to talk.
Genitals shackling, black over black in
the temple of take, the supine divinity.
The slaveship dance. The choice couldn’t be, dear
prophet of rap, a choice against
monster or its poisoned tip. The slave
is a dance and a rope stood still, in its choice
of whip. its choice of lynch orifice to swallow
its sawed-off dick. Which pinkish meat
flesh, devour. Which exit to design, which
disemboweled master. A stand which
stood, was still or removed each larynx.
with stood machete each bludgeon become. To fight
with clarity is a kind of abstraction.
a tongue its cruelty. Eternal is choice.
To stand in a rage losing. We are
losing our democracy. Other people
decide what to do with their bodies. is a stand
to still until its pillage, and the laws
for long. But we choose, we
choose: if the sun is hot if the tulip
withers. We choose if the assault
is rifled, if the men come in stink.
We choose if the cum is drenching,
if the torture is daily. We choose
if the land the land is green and owned.
If the hunger, our stalkers.
our cops with fists. Whose
stalk is pushing back on lightning
the seasick air as it chooses to purge
the soggy wood of the hold,
and stay the enchained.
engorged white men rather
than reaching to the chokehold
and unscrewing
their sockets and filleting
their mouth. The water is coming
apart under our boat’s silt
is useless. The body we submit
and stays and refuses
to give way. withstood
so could get dressed.
and choose what lingers
in order to get home.
what crawls in the muck.
what washed beneath in seawater.
