"Tribal Prime"

On the cusp of belting out the Lord's Prayer

Spitting blood spatters across aeons of times tables,

Multiplying two infinities by pi,

It's a miracle I'm not dead yet.

It's confounding I haven't quit.

These dangling hollow foreheads of

What I could have been thinking, feeling,

Doing.

It's strange that I chose this.

When I try to play percussion on these fractured craniums

I hear the fullest sound of emptiness,

I feel the beat of defeat

Pulsating through my carpal tunnel

Syndrome. Break it over and write it off

As nothing more or less.

Nothing more or less

They drool perfunctory causeways of

A branched out deference to apathy

While God spills rivers from his salivary reservoirs.

Would you know dizziness

From a kid like me?

Or absorb all the wisdom

From ticking-time bomb

Answering machines?

Only versed in the words they know to say

That would excuse their extended absence

And permanent withdrawal.

Yes, those so-called lettered men

Will have a hard time scalping me

Because my head hurts all the time.

Play African bongos on my skull,

You get a bluesy contralto.

Play tabla banya,

You'll get a reverie.

Bludgeon my head with the Bible,

You'll get nothing out of me.

You'll get nothing out of me.

Prick needles 'neath my skin

The blood will run thick,

Thick like the dove-tailed archways

My father left out of.

All the times I babbled love and sensitivity

Didn't make him stay

So why try palpable solutions?

Perceptions become more painful that way.

I'm tired of the hurt.

Hurt in its pin-striped suit

Pinched and plugged

Live corpses to stitch fabricated

Cloaks with a wool-like itch.

My legs are sore from running,

My back whipped by hot lashes and cold blows

To know why skin is chapped and cracked and unprotected

As the Sahara Desert

Or the Siberian tundra.

They are suspended in a pendulum race

To the ill-conceived finish line.

But not until the wind picked up one day

And I had wings,

My cloak billowing, begging to lift

But failing to sift

Through my weight in the hips.

My hips weren't moving,

There were roots roped round my waist.

I was made for the earth,

I will not hurt anymore.

I'm going to snag red lipstick and wear it out

To have war paint on my face.

I'm going to raid salvation

And get my fullest fill,

Drive the demons out from the cracks

Where I always thought it was warmest.

But if it gets too chilly

I'll dance around fires and burn.

This body is a forest

To be laid in the arms of a flame

To bear long walks to sleep in

Renewal, a fine linen donned by a maiden.

She is of the ground, her feet fit

For the ever-present cushion.

She sinks in comfort.

Wherever her body lie

I will be,

Even if it means digging craters again from my childhood

That were only glorified sinkholes.

I may yet reach the mantle,

An intense geological romance.

I'll be swinging rocks past my forehead,

Watching waves ripple in ponds.

I'll be a half-singing half-wit

Echoing a war whoop unsung

Under Heaven

Yet above the grave

In its tribal prime.