for Janaka Stucky, Lee Ann Walker Lowe, and Karen Friedland
I hope to come to you with nothing but light
Black ocean dark madonna
Aura broken and spinning with sparks
like a madman
I want to make you dance,
he said on the hot asphalt of Manhattan island,
pointing an imaginary uzi at my feet
after I gave him both light and death,
dark lungs roiling with the smoke of an herb once sacred,
now deadly, commodity,
stripped of its
awe-ful significance, a gift taken from the
economy that gave it value, a gift reduced to a
mantelpiece cargo hold royal court
boardroom
commodity
a gift taken, replaced, reborn
from the dark heart of suffering
into another kind of–
I hope to come with you with nothing but love
I will not bow down to the master
I will not lay down on the bed
the bitter spits itself from my mouth unaccorded,
unrecorded,
uneaten,
unlearned
unencompassed
I cannot choke
any
more
the bitter sees its sisters and says
dark heart of compassion
long, dark teatime of the soul
I bring you seven tables of impetigo
and an illness
that will make you whole
