& You Will Fade to Black
Mulatto boys don’t look much like their reflections
in moonlight. The windows of empty cars call you
a catfishing whore of a man. My God! How to explain
walking home with bruised cheeks & a broken tooth
hanging loose from your mouth on a star-starved night?
The lazy architecture of your body pledges to be your undoing,
to collapse under your weightlessness. But there is something
climactic about sinking into the middle of a lonely road,
the intoxicating smell of tar & blood-stained shirts
telling you that you are far from home. The howl
of the wolfdogs nearby or faraway is a prayer for the blessed rapture
to come claim your body – blood for the bloodgod.
& as you lay there, in the cold stillness of a silent night, you ask yourself
if this is the quiet leaving you had prayed for.