Somniferum’s Refrain- Bleed Me, Disremember 

I am naked ladies
and forgotten ports
worn out malas and blackened
cumin at the orphanages in Nepal

I am a concubine’s pipe, pressed neroli petals
between pages to remember something sweet and fleeting

I am machine guns for sale next to the
Julie mangos at noon  I am Call to Prayer
where it is not allowed, and  am screaming
In my quiet austerity

I am a broken down bus going to Bogotá
to get medicine for my dying People in Caracas
I am named Muteni because 
I am the younger of my twin sister
In my village of Ebola, still thriving
Though you think me dead

I am Ndade. A stone, a silentman
I say nothing, but you want to keep me for luck
Don’t look  in the skeleton closet
You may find me there
I am the town dump
I will not be recycled
I am the crocus rising
come harvest my red stamens
hide the stains
go ahead
you paid enough

I’m the kaleidoscope of the ayahuasca
and you’re in it now
Also the secret petals, leaves, lichen
That’s keeping you linear when you cannot rise
clawing, clawing
In the caves, canvases, canopy of the bush,
vastness of the plains
jaguar spin of the eye
This is too much
I know
the plates are still moving
ride it out

They tell me
No
you are a woman of mugwort
darkened cherries
chewed strange gut
quill
and wafting prayer
beautiful
enduring
a gentle creature
river flowing
straight cut, white hearts
following ants in summer
shake of the rattle within
tongue to the sweetgrass
water
howling that way
a heartbeat

…cedar the stones
get back here
we want you
like this and like that
we know
we’ve seen it
in print
beads fall from pages
when we read it
no matter what is said
or by whom
it is sounding sacred
don’t horrify us
with these odd tales
we have to rethink this now

You have it all wrong
I am dead ivory and
The mummy’s bundle
So overly examined
I am  moccasins behind glass
Incased with a bronze label
Saying some kinda thing
Don’t you know me
In my coffin
The detached calyx
fallen from the new spring
collection of hemlines and innuendos
whispered about so and so and the newest hybrid
roses planted in between broken vows
and gossiping neighbors

I am a hollow point and am so overkill
right now
yes
the situation is out of hand
inappropriate
unacceptable
amok

Skin me
or
wash me away
You have already named me
the river phoenix, ash, crude oil, papa’s coal
instruments of inspection
have entered
trying, trying
tooled and deconstructed, branded, and owned
hush now
I too am trying to examine

…am
ulexite peering back
I am hundreds of years of indigo lingering
and the echo in the raided tomb
there is nothing left to steal
except
the lotus and attar
I still permeate all the caverns
just a scent
and I am  wondering now if air can be stolen
then sold at auction with cattle and old mirrors
the first handgun ever made along side a cradle board
“Special/Sunday Only. Half Price”
or perhaps at black market
where they sell kidneys and babies
wives and sisters and green eyed boys
too beautiful or too wicked
rise
rise
high and highest, tell us how it is
pump it up
time is short

I am that coiled ostrich fern, insignificant, yet
your last meal before execution
And yes, I am still here
I am black marble and I didn’t
Break they way you calculated
Cuss me
I am the hardwood, my lines would not give
into your german tools easily
you chipped my nose off
it now lay upon the threshing floor
which if fine by me

I am mute and have
no proper ways or graces
I am chained to a table
of carefully arranged petite fours
huge piles of beef, a brightly lit overhead 
as the verse is whipped from me 
back into my box of sage
and prayer and hide and feathers and bone
so that some are able to safely say
“I know you.”

Flood me
with my brothers and sisters
lava flows though my veins
I am contraband in every tongue
they have bled me
with their unskilled hands
I weep black in the cold air
my medicine
useless to them now
ships empty in all the harbors

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