“I seen it lots of times, I seen it, just from being on the street when something was going down, I seen kids get killed, a few, my buddy Jules got bucked, this gang he was down with, I mean he wasn’t even down with them when they started beefin with this other gang, but one day, it was hot, I remember it was real hot, 

In a land where you will go but from where you will never return,
Little Black Cricket, you’ll follow music inside a mountain 
with the other children. Then the rock will be sealed

Sometimes you wait a while for the bus—
the bus of happiness
probably—just now passing the fried pie hutch

We were tuned like two crystal sets to the race stations
where we heard the saxophones of the Black Zion.

In the dark we crossed the borders of the Caucasus

Today we are going into shelter,
we are going underground to discover the passage that leads
to the next world. We will be happy there,
or we will not worry about happiness; we will make neat designs

In a nearly empty off-season cafe, just across
From the row of grand Saratoga hotels, I lost faith
In the elegance of the facades fronting Congress Park,

after Nicole Sealey

o bitch. my good bitch. bitch my heart.

Sometimes love’s vagrancy (whatever you call it) 
overwhelms all but the most robust subscribers, 
and, dishonest as it may sound, the whole cramped enterprise 

cotton sweaters with the American flag, Oxford shirts, and riding boots.

I came to Alabama for the dreams

   of Sun Ra, who said he was born on another

impossible, uninhabitable bottom land and unreconstructed