On the truth in gossip

listen to the stories women
tell other women, O’
I miss my women friends
who would talk a history in a needle
listen to a name, gossip a little
that sound of other places
with a foreign taste
the ripeness of a voice
made vulnerable and accessible
I am no longer a hunter of women
I have only empathy left
In my bones, in my half-smile
You can only live and learn
In this world, there is no disgrace
That lasts forever, only heartbreak
That is extremely normal
So don’t fret, the falling seas
The falling snow, we’ve seen it all before
Listen to the stories of women
To the wisdom passed down
On hearing a name long unspoken
Take a guess as to why you hear it now
Our cries echo in unique ways
And our voice reaches the heart
At the appointed time, maybe
Centuries later, our love is recognized.

I Laid my Boyhood’s Head On The Pillow made for One

With careful fragments I’ve built
A shredded identity, pillaged by hope
Ransacked by heart-break

I’ve customized my grief
To the rapture of my outlaw-state
In glowing morning I feared

Being left, and prophesized abandonment
In which my very atoms
In the cosmic mirror, were scattered

I couldn’t help martyrhood
Like the shell of my grandmother in me
How we give our power away

And how those authorities contrive
To judge our worth, in quick months
Of evolutionary design, bitter comments

That I remember to this day
About the kind of man I am
With careful foolishness I betrayed

The self, that wanted to join in marriages the most
A wild execution of the simplicity
That marked me from my childhood

Of having been raised in poverty
Boycotted from those simple joys
I am a frenzied bargain of dreaming cheeks
Without the spice of wonderful confidence.