song of myself

When the police arrive factories coughing up all my relatives
Taillights glowing
Weaving gambling medicine bags and tobacco offerings
Marigold round vocabulary
News reports from the altars of the ancestors
Smiling, borrowing, scorching under the heart rate of progress
Okay

In the furnace of feelings
Each morning I swallow the commodification
Of my story and bleed into a cup of tea
My shadow band
There's power in the unseen
We're divided by our values

I threw the baby out with the bathwater
Veil of blues blood flower rusted panty liner
Wax of poetics on paper
The flesh can sing too
Okay

One by one
I bow to past selves
And let them be wrong about me

The coastline gibbering about names we did not declare at the border
The honest home of bathroom mirrors

You are as virtuous as your ear
Sonorous stanzas
Forgive me
I do not follow my own advice
I survey for answers I already know
And question friends who do not know me
I am with time

Languishing in the laundry room
My dresses
Cobbling in the dryer feeds my body to dance
Refresh the page
Take inventory of self
I lose faith
Okay

And sometimes
I wonder my purpose
Sometimes
I participate in my demise
I attend the funeral
Walk the chalk line
Sometimes I slam my hands
I drink until I do not remember
Yelling down and left alone
I throw back bitter shots of life to the living lecture in my head

Pity the fool
On a soapbox
With a mouthful of soap suds

Okay
Okay
Okay

And let them be wrong about me
Okay
Okay
Okay