czvasser Handstands

Less Than A Butterfly

I’d like to eat some eyes
scalp a head or two
napalm New York L.A. or Kankakee.
When my guts are brick I’d like to throw them
at the window pane of America
because I’ve been sucked inside out and I’m delicate
about fences housing projects barbed wire
welfare gross national products unemployment and my crotch.
Sensitized inside out to the color of Elsie’s pure products
I’d like to put hand grenades in milk bottles
so corn flakes would rip their heads off.
I’d like to defoliate central park so it would look like home.
I’d like to deflower new jersey (though it’s been done)
I’d like to denounce kansas
make window bricks from red neck georgia clay.
I’d like to suck on root quiet
settle the dust
sleep and not get up until soft was waiting for me.
I’d like to move and move and move like a dancer
out of Harlem out of Watts out of the south side
from uptown to down or the other way around
from Appalachia Soweto Dachau Main Street.
I want to get out of the hills
out of the towns
not be the buzz in somebody’s ear.
I want to be yes when my little girl wants
all fingertips on skin
honey and bees in a beech tree
a coral burst that puzzle blends part of a spectrum
electric then magnetic
a wave that crests and crashes on the beaches of america
and sucks the sand down deep.
I want to be a face not pointed at with baseballs.
No more grease paint, wet canvas
or peanut eating crowds that leave after the elephants roll over.
Spin a web so I cannot see the sun
but I will not lie down waiting to be stung.
I don’t want to be less than a butterfly.
Let me sing braids and ribbons without ropes and burning nights
and the smell of flesh curling up to heaven
as tears fall down like wheat before a sickle.
Give me an icarian chance and I will melt or fly over a mirrored humanity.

Handstands & Other Feats

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czvasser Handstands

On A Flat Stone

If I wrote your name on a flat stone and threw it into a field wildflowers would grow bees would hum hummingbirds would glide birds would walk a little slower If I threw it across a lake it would dance to the other side popping each bubble it encountered and settle on the other shore waiting for a return flight If I buried it under a black walnut tree lava would stop and compass point the gibbous moon would hide what was left of her face clouds would laugh burst and cry All this because your name was written on a sun-warmed flat stone once held in the palm of my heart and tossed away.

czvasser Afroticity, Handstands

Blades Of Grass

I should have been more grass
high maintenance 
watered from your loins
with tears

I should have stood in the front
rather than run with the pack

I should have drunk the sun
put down roots
but I was soylent green
a little red 
lots of foolish black

I may have
missed the mark
I write this for those
hit or miss
that shot  
they tried

you may never say
apology accepted
it's being a cutter

I may never apologize
after all
I was lawn.