Scar

This is a simple poem.
For the mothers sisters daughters
girls I have never been
for the women who clean the Staten Island Ferry
for the sleek witches who burn
me at midnight
in effigy
because I eat at their tables
and sleep with their ghosts.

These stones in my heart are you
of my own flesh
whittling me with your sharp false eyes
searching for prisms
falling out of your head
laughing me out of your skin
because do you not value your own
self
nor me.

This is a simple poem
I will have no mother no sister no daughter
when I am through
and only the bones are left
see how the bones are showing
the shape of us at war
clawing our own flesh out
to feed the backside of our masklike faces
that we have given the names of men.

Donald DeFreeze I never knew you so well
as in the eyes of my own mirror
did you hope
for blessing or pardon
lying
in bed after bed
or was your eye sharp and merciless enough
to endure
beyond the deaths of wanting?

With your voice in my ears
with my voice in your ears
try to deny me
I will hunt you down
through the night veins of my own addiction
through all my unsatisfied childhoods
as this poem unfolds
like the leaves of a poppy
I have no sister no mother no children
left
only a tideless ocean of moonlit women
in all shades of loving
learning a dance of open and closing
learning a dance of electrical tenderness
no father no mother would teach them.

Come Sambo dance with me
pay the piper dangling dancing
his knee high darling
over your wanting
under your bloody
white faces come Bimbo come Ding Dong
watch the city falling down down
down lie down bitch slow down nigger
so you want a cozy womb to hide you
To pucker up and suck you back
safely
well I tell you what I’m gonna do
next time you head for the hatchet
really need some nook to hole up in
look me up
I’m the ticket taker on a queen
of rollercoasters
I can get you off
cheap.

This is a simple poem
sharing my head with the dream
of a big black woman with jewels
in her eyes
she dances
her head in a golden helmet
arrogant
plumed
her name is Colossa
her thighs are like stanchions
or flayed hickory trees
embraced in armour
she dances
in slow earth shaking motions
that suddenly alter
and lighten
as she whirls laughing
tooled metal over her hips
comes to an end
and at the shiny edge
an astonishment
of soft black curly hair.