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under
    my clothes bout my love bizness
    friends be doin that.

BLUES HAIKU
    this is not a fire
    sale but i am in heat
    each time i see ya.

HAIKU
    i am you loving
    my own shadow watching
    this noontime butterfly.

BLUES HAIKU
    i wuz in Kansas
    dorothy and toto wuzn’t
    a jacuzzi. sky. you.

HAIKU
    i am looking for
    you to banish all sermons
    a fine hail of touch.

HAIKU [
for Nneka and Quentin
]
    i listen to this blood
    breathing roses in my veins.
    i grow with laughter.

HAIKU
    these waves boisterous like
    Che’s mountains smell of mania
    howling in my veins.

HAIKU [
for Louis Massiah
]
    your leonine eyes
    squatting in Du Boisian blood.
    violets and steel.

SONKU
    what is love
    you asked
    i took you
    inside be
    hind my eyes
    and saw me.

BLUES HAIKU
    legs wrapped around you
    camera. action. tightshot.
    this is not a rerun.

BLUES HAIKU
    is there a fo rent
    sign on my butt? you got no
    territorial rights here.

BLUES HAIKU
    my face is a scarred
    reminder of your easy
    comings and goings.

HAIKU
    derelict with eyes
    i settle in a quiet
    carnival of waves.

HAIKU
    the i in you the
    you in me colliding in
    one drop of semen

HAIKU
    i taste your sweet salt come
    your face a revelation
    of bedtime fairy tales.

HAIKU [
for Queen Mother Moore
]
    they smell like rust
    these truants shouting magic
    obscure men in heat.

HAIKU
    a tint on the tongue
    an echo in the fingers
    i dust off your cough.

HAIKU
    my teeth can write your
    name in hieroglyphics paint
    your sound graffiti-like.

HAIKU
    i have carved your face
    on my tongue and i speak you
    in my off-key voice.

SONKU
    my eyes look
    and i don’t
    see me i
    turn around
    to find you.

SONKU
    when i die
    i shall take
    your smell
    inside me.

HAIKU
    i am a small piece
    of yellow flesh taking shelter
    like a leper.

BLUES HAIKU
    his face like chiseled
    china his eyes clotting
    around rubber asses.

HAIKU
    to be lifted in
    smoke to be cast in iron
    remembering the fire.

TANKA
    woman without heat
    blankets herself with eyes
    avoiding the cock’s walk.
    a woman in seclusion
    dreams of secreting milk.

HAIKU
    it was nothing big
    just no one to put suntan
    lotion on my back.

HAIKU
    the sea murmuring
    dialect remember che
    alive in my veins.

SONKU
    what i want
    from you can
    you give? what
    i give to
    you do you
    want? hey? hey?

HAIKU
    i hear your breath
    in the faraway room
    breathing castanets.

HAIKU
    i smell you on my
    skin ravishing my veins
    i see your sweat running.

HAIKU [
for Joe Barry
]
    when i imagine
    you i recall a river
    flowing with eyes.

HAIKU
    red orange breasts sweet
    as chocolate touch my lips
    wild bones up for sale

HAIKU
    and i am flesh burnt
    red charcoal black gift wrapped in
    philadelphia blood.

HAIKU
    this poem is for me
    who could not speak your death
    still i laugh and spin

SHORT POEM
    quite often without
    you i am at a loss for
    the day.

HAIKU 1 [
for Bill and Camille
]
    but i am left with
    flesh that hangs like yellow sails
    hear my voice knocking.
HAIKU 2
    my bones migrate in
    red noise like pinched wings
    they stream white ashes.

HAIKU
    do you want ashes
    where your hands used to be
    other faces will come.

HAIKU
    if i were an old
    woman all my veins could hold
    my laughter in check.

HAIKU
    you are rock garden
    austere in your loving
    in exile from touch.

TANKA
    to surround yourself with
    arms that will not hold you
    to dream yourself home
    where the road is dust
    and dissolves in purple.

SONKU
    to worship
    until i
    become stone
    to love
    until i
    become bone.

HAIKU
[
for Bill and Camille
]
    my bones hang to
    gether like pinched dragonflies
    shake loose my skin.

In This Wet Season

HAIKU [
for Sophie and Val
]
    in this wet season
    of children raining hands
    we catch birds in flight.

A POEM FOR ELLA FITZGERALD
    when she came on the stage, this Ella
    there were rumors of hurricanes and
    over the rooftops of concert stages
    the moon turned red in the sky,
    it was Ella, Ella.
    queen Ella had come
    and words spilled out
    leaving a trail of