Homage to Captivity: Collected Prison Poems, Part Three

Contents


Still Thinking of Aaron Hernandez
Venetian blind
It’s all in the head
What are we becoming?
Upon finishing a meal of carrion & dish soap
Cartographer
My dreams give chase
In Vein
These days
You’re my favorite kind of light
Thirty Nights of Lonesome


 

Still Thinking of Aaron Hernandez

A dream
touches
his lips
Vision
of smile
brings tears
upon waking
Terror
and lust
rolled
into one
scene:
Handcuffed,
escorted,
white t-shirt tight
against
broad shoulders
rounded chest
bulging abs.
The kiss
lingers
even after
the courtroom
has been reclaimed
by soil and pine.

They reduce a man
to
a monster:
“Killer”
His animal
warmth
goes ignored.

It is not
that
i am in love with him,
as beautiful as he was.
It is that
Aaron
is more
than Aaron
And i love
Man, who,
terrified
kills and maims
himself
even as his beauty
radiates
from his lips
and overflows
the curvature
of chest
and hip
and earth.

 

 

Venetian blind

i know a man from Cleveland
would walk to Atlanta
barefoot
for to touch
his
nether
lip.

 

 

It’s all in the head

Solemn burial mounds
of blackearth
burning
tightlight
flashdrip
bloodpulse
quickening

 

 

What are we becoming?

To say thanks
when your eyes
are pouring
anguish
can seem like such a silly thing
And yet
it meant
more than all that touch.

 

 

Upon finishing a meal of carrion & dish soap

It occurs
to me
that
most of the people
i know
are dead
or in prison.

 

 

Cartographer

Gifting
form
to all those
swirling
gestures of soul,
unseen
but felt
more than all this misery.

 

 

My dreams give chase

i walked the whole day through
hoods raw and seething
beneath sun and steel
to arrive
Falling
terrified
along beach
and pavement
Darkness
and somewhere
in all this madness
is you.

 

 

In Vein

Listen:
to belong
is more precious than blood.
10,000 nights
of futility
and to your pursuit
i belong.

 

 

These days

There are days
that find me
indifferent
to all the world
save
that small space
filled
with your body.
There are nights
that come on
so suddenly
leaving me
alone
and
i would gladly
burn my flesh
to be soothed
by your touch.

 

 

You’re my favorite kind of light

To go softly
into that place of darkness
warmth
like the sun veiled in flesh
and the pulse of oceans
against my face,
growing
with your rising breath
quickening
with bliss
as our guide.

 

 

Thirty Nights of Lonesome

A desert
interrupted
by contours
of hard core
strong jaw
rounded
chest

Drawn
to touch
like
a bedouin
to water.

Here
in this wasteland
the devils’ whisperings
are clear
as the sky.
Traveler,
feel my breath

Do not abandon
us
to their
condemnation.