Poetic Perspectives: “Ignite”
Smolder the brick until it breaks in half :: of my siblings hate me now:: is the time to reach for their hands:: hurt from saving everyone:: is lost including you: are not screaming enough:: is enough: with all that performative shit:: gets real when you’re black:: is gold: is skin: is dancing :: is recklessness:: is blackness:: is laughing over a good meal:: is filling:: me up with rage:: can be soft:: like heat hovering in our throats: are precious things : are really hard for me right now: can you understand why we are the way that we are: lungs are capable of love: can spread into our stomachs: are full things except I still feel hungry: isn’t close to the word that describes it: must stop: it must stop: it from invading the light in front of us : plus you equals infinity : is finite because we can only stretch out limbs so far: from home we are : stranded in sand: turns into glass you know: why no one loves you Quincy : is not my name : is burned onto skin but not crystallized into matter
Into tangible sweetness
Into bone
Into reality
I never heard it
The sound
The music
I’ve waited for the moss to turn gray
And yet my mind is still hollow
Some days my muscles ache and movement lags like salty molasses gliding across styrofoam. Some days my nights turn into cold nightmares dressed in peach perfume. Most fog-filled afternoons consist of my eyes tearing up and brisk air reminding my lips that it’s not over yet
But I will wait
I will wait for sun
I will wait for combustion
I will wait for fire
The morning can only hold so many promises.
I peered into the backyard
And saw our pool risen from dead
mist gathers above the ground like treading water and thick sand My hands grasp for metal
But I’m met with dewy skin
Remembering that my name is its own
I call for him
I call for sound but leering above stands infinite light
A column of diamond
I wait for it to embrace me
The wind singing its song
My eyes glitter in the shape of pearls
My chest lifts toward the shape of God
My breath begins to densify
Hands shiver like tectonic plates
I become the ground
Sight loses its definition
My fingerprint loses its definition
The skin smoothed over
The supple water laying in my eyelids
Plummet towards dead grass
subtlety is the difference between sound and breathe as wind turns into machine
I become something to listen too
I allow lightness draw my breath
The color has gone too fast
Smooth fabric dances into the shape of an animal Its form envelops my vision
I don’t know what it looks like
But I hear the sea rushing so I let a whisper escape my lips “Who are you?”