Drunken Laughter

You seemed so familiar to me

because I had heard the sweet symphony

of your laughter before

It was a night not too long ago

and I desired you immediately.

It sort of rolled over to me

parting the thick clouds of smoke

up and over the loud colored suits

and bright bursts of glee,

and broke crashing into my ear –

startling and wonderful like

a wave crashing against a rocky cape.

It then settled and dripped slowly

into my blood stream

intoxicating my senses and

nestled at the threshold of my intimate places.

I wanted to settle down with it.

I wanted to run it through my curl hair like hot oil in the morning shower

and breath it in through a mouth open wide like menthol before bed.

Let it blow gently over my shoulders,

caressing away any burden

The sound was full and satisfying

inviting and delightfully suggestive of a strength

It reminded me of the Monet that hangs above my bed –

dizzying

with color and a mixture of depth and light.

It was both hearty and tender

I wanted to stroll with your laughter…

…tickling my toes like grains of sand.

It was a sound that encouraged a response,

so I let loose a laugh that could only reflect my mood

drowsy and floating

blue-gray

slowly slipping from my thick lips

and spiraled up around the exposed shoulders

of the women giggling into the chests of their dates

and diffused gently into your emerald-green bottle.

Inviting you to drink me in completely.

Not wanting to let your laughter disperse along with the crowd

I folded it neatly into a blue-green napkin

and placed it in my clutch

And since then

I would dab

dab

dab

your laughter

behind my ears

in the crease of my knees

in the small of my back

and on the places that make me womanish

each and every time

I needed

to run loosed

over grains of sand

or rocked gently by the waves of brown, strong arms.

I would unfold your laughter in to me

01:32

I met you by way of a passionate, feathered fountain pen.

Hearing you in the precious notes

of Nina Simone and James Blunt.

But if time could stand still

I would stop the clock at 1:32 a.m.,

hold my breath,

and dive deep splash into the light

Of your book of letters,

corresponding with your day dreams,

while you watch me do breaststroke alongside

righteous rocks and soulful seaweed.

They say a way to a man's heart is through his stomach,

well what about a woman's?

You seen "Como Agua Para Chocolate?"

Obviously you had, because there was something

inspiring in your cooking.

Something in your Egyptian dark eyes

Something in your long fingers

Something in the way

you asked, You okay?

Slowly,

pressing reverently

lips onto paper --

politically, or roughly

(as when you recite poetry) --

despite the unjust

callousness of cement scraping

the side of your face

and if the revolution

you spoke of so passionately happened at

1:32, (because I'm quite sure it did)

I was your

expressive vessel. I was your cop killer.

So laying here,

as I am gently rocked

by buoyant blue moon rays and your brown arms

please breathe a succulent sigh of freedom in my ear.

This is like something out of book

I like how you didn't say movie.

Breathing

she blinks and thinks that this shit ain't all that bad nigga

I know you think that you got it all…

but as this shit hits the fan and cracks through

the support beams of a single mother's dreams

her rusty red brown hair beems

as rosy cheeks get kissed by old men

who look like Saunta Clause on the hard.

woodn't it be great if we could ejaculate

the gifts that would be in our stocking this year?

Yes Breathe baby

Spinnin crazy and windin' durty she lets it all out in sweat

Breathe Baby – fuck it all and breathe!

Dedicated my ecclectic array of HomeGirls

swirling amid daydreams and banana peals

sasha sits still, silently

in a window seat

reading on beauty

and love

humming to the tune of the air being pressed

through a thin crack in the window

buzz goes the bee

buzz buzz goes the yellow honey bee

annoyingly, a retarded girl is talking to the

back of her head and

Sasha wonders if the mentally chanllenged can comprehend

that her color is a rinse and not permanent high lights

cause god forbid

if she was trying to be white.

this morning, unlike all the others,

she can't get the funny notion out of her head

that yes

she does have cute ears

and although her father's nose was wide

and fat

that's cute too

and so are her baby-like fingers

and vienna toes

and thick calves that he once was so in love with

sigh, no buzzzz

she sits silently, besides the humming of course

buzz

and courageously caresses her chubby belly

You are accepted chub – for you're cute too

she watches her breasts, bumping

up and down

ever so slightly, as the bus bumps

up and down

over neglected city streets and dead animals

they're cute too, her breasts

not the other things

the young intellectual.

across the aisle

3 rows up and sitting in the

aisle seat.

who carried a messenger bag, wore some sort of un-extraordinary jacket

and insisted that he was reading,

listened caustiously to the conversation

the two young women in the back were having

or at least it was between the

young woman and the other woman's kitchen

loving you ooo

is easy cause your be-u-tee-ful

OOOOooooo

your hair is pretty ma'am

Pri-T

betcha he thinks so

betcha he does

he does ma'am

he does

Who?

the young intellectual

or the jock with a tongue that might as well

be that pink vibrator you got for your birthday

(he was right that night wasn't he? can't no body do that like him?)

or the first love, who will always have you,

like a crackhead,

searching for that first high

or the frat boys – who have all sort of turned into one big party Hop

or rico "motherfuckin" suave

who thought he was un regalo de Dios

for all us sees-tahs who couldn't get what we wanted from a

Black man

or the new guy

who, with all his shining-like-sunshine potential,

is hopeless in his efforts to break free from a lost love

or is it you

reading this poem, of sorts,

assuming that you know Sasha well because

you share coffee and pb&j sandwiches every-other Tuesday

or caressed her behind her ear

or tickled her sides

or her lower back, just above her ass

cause u knew it would make her giggle and shake and horny

or smiled at her while she was making

the best

sausage, egg, and cheese sandwich you ever had

or because you saw god on her ceiling

or because she fell in love with not only you, but your son

because she made you feel like,

for the brief moment she massaged your back, or whispered your name in your ear,

French-kissed your dick,or made you a "special" meal,

being a Black man was the best thing ever

a true regalo de Dios

you assumed you knew her,

you assumed that you must love her

But Our Sasha

sits buzzing

ignoring the retarded and

envying the intellectual.

She believes that daydreams are

our way of translating our past and future.

going over her to-do list for the 7 ½ time,

trying to figure

out if she left her keys in the house for the 12^th time

and enjoying her secret hiatus to the real world

buzzzzzzzzz

I got love for my homegirl Sasha

sashay my sees-tah sasha

turn up the fiasco

and drip some scott down in your soul

climb atop some hill

and let luther make that house a home

cause they all got love for you Sasha

Buzz buzz

Sasha refuses to sting back

Love note (in parentheticl parts)

Today I thought of you when the wind carried the whisper of your voice to my ear. It tickled, resonated in the way your breath does in my intimate places,

or in your speech during love making,

or in the way you recite poetry. The wind stroked my thigh,

making my toes tingle

and muscles flinch, and so I carried the wind

with me throughout my day; as I do with your breath after we kiss.

It cushioned my paces.

As I hummed Ne Me Quittez Pas

to myself on the Trolley,

on the way to turn in my paper on

the discourses of Aimé Césaire, a small child,

who reminded me of you, smiled at me

through the window of a teal minivan.

The young boy and the wind made me reconsider my own feelings about motherhood.

Feeling tired from our previous night,

I closed my eyes briefly as the whir of the air conditioning

and the hot son on my right cheek

cooed me to sleep.

I dreamed of a protest – gaining momentum

– you in the front, guiding your people, me by your side

toting your book bag and your AK, a moleskin journal, and a camera strung around my neck.

Summer at Plum Rose's (dedicated to my gradmother)

Tree lanterns, burping blue, ladybug red, orange-ripen gold, firefly green
Swing above
Me in tree swing, grilled food, and jubilee
Tree lanterns: glow green, on off, on off
Shake it little baby
Never raining,
Sweet smell of matured wood and cut yard
The red and white shed in the distance
held my baby pool.
Momas, get the bugs out, I can’t get in with the bugs.
Gravel roads,
boardwalk and beach are near.
The tart taste of salty coral and seaweed stay on our tongues,
flavoring our squeals of joy.
All floating together with old cows, old ladies, and pinochle.

House, white with royal blue window panes and sun porch
Great aunts and uncles swing by, making holes
in the screen door as they enter all on
one floor, all in stained-wood panels:
Guest room, small brown wooden statues,
the elephant with a real ivory tusk missing
Was my favorite,
Living room
Family Room, with swivel arm chairs
Kitchen --
Sitting in my tall-chair getting sly sneaks of coffee on a teaspoon.
Come on Little Girl Let’s Play.

She smoked then, but I never remember its smell
Never pungent from her spotted with sweat, floral cotton dresses
Or in her Clairol brown hair

Karie’s Purse at damn-near-40

Portrait: Karie’s Purse at damn-near-40

Groceries: ½ pint Blue Cheese

Balsamic vinaigrette (organic on sale at Eddie’s)

Wine (Reisling – blue bottle?)

Lettuce and peppers (spotlight bag)

Onion

Skim milk

Peanut butter captain crunch

Wallet (Toni at 7 with pony tail and pink polka dotted scrunchy; nordstrom charge; gas card; “bonus cards” of all sorts – like Giant or Safeway; 4 10’s; 1 20; 3 1’s; 3 quarters, 7 pennies; platinum visa, melted Starburst in change pocket – strawberry)

Snot rags and napkins; 2 pens (holiday Inn and Cravium CR, both black ink); diet coke (unopened); 11 pennies; stave-like mini Pocket Rocket (in “performance peak pink”) stowed away in the zipper section

Index card with Toni’s dorm address (is that a 4 or a 9?); Toni’s spring semester transcript (she’ll have to repeat CHEM 141); Toni’s jungle orange bangle with the horseshoe charm)

3 Tampax tampons (green label, super), 3 Always pads (yellow label, regular), 3 Ibuprofen (orange label, extra strength)

Empty bottle of lithium (sticky yellow Post It! note – Don’t forget to refill by the 5^th)

Self-Portrait in a Bay Window -- Two Versions

This poem is part of a series that I am putting together based on the lives of three women, grandmother, mother, and daughter. I have two versions of this poem. Which one do you like best?

Self Portrait in the Bay Window

“It is better to say ‘I am suffering’ than to say

‘this landscape is ugly.’”

-- Simone Well

a rat scrapes viciously at a small hole in the grey-black garbage bag

That little fucker forgot to put the God-Damn lid on!

As others crawl in and out of the crack in old Josie’s back porch;

Suffocating the little row house with peek-a-boo shades and boarded-up doors,

the brown bags containing even browner bottles

and the guard railing over basement windows,

the street light never gives way to the comfort of the night;

it keeps things loud and pressing

and the scraping gets under your skin

sleep is kept out with the night,

every thing a smoggy dim orange

pale, deep-peach colored splotches of weed in cement

basketball court with pothole waiting to swallow the

good-for-nothing little black bastards that live East of the Blvd.,

and the only thing that makes up for this stifling haze

is the occasional shimmer off of the hood of a freshly waxed Beamer

stars of the ghetto.

Self Portrait in the Bay Window

“It is better to say ‘I am suffering’ than to say

‘this landscape is ugly.’”

-- Simone Well

A rat scrapes viciously at a small hole

in the grey garbage bag

That lil fucker forgot the God-Damned Lid!

others hop back and forth.

Choking the row homes with boarded doors and

the windows with guardrails,

the streetlight withholds all nightly comforts:

It keeps thing loud, pressing,

noise crawls under one’s skin,

sleep – kept out with the night.

All things a smoggèd orange,

deep-peach colored splotches of weed in stone,

the b-ball court’s sinkhole

sucks up young good-for-nothing Black Bastards.

Shine from freshly waxed cars

are shallow things that save them from the haze,

stars of the ghetto, twinkling through the fog.

Portrait in the Bay Window

(final edition)

“It is better to say ‘I am suffering’ than to say

‘this landscape is ugly.’”

-- Simone Well

A rat scrapes at a hole in a gray trash bag –

that little fucker forgot the God-damned Lid! –

as others crawl in & out of Old Josie’s porch.

Choking row houses with peek-a-boo shades,

boarded-up doors, brown bags stuffed

with even browner bottles, and guard railings

over basement windows, the streetlight,

keeps things loud and pressing, a scraping

that suffocates skin, shutting out sleep and dreams

along with the night. Its smoggy orange stain

on weed-splotched cement and the b-ball court’s

sinkhole waiting to devour tomorrow’s good-for-nothing

little bastards. East of the Blvd., the occasional shimmer

off the hood of a freshly waxed Beamer is

is a Northern star, twinkling through the fog.