american gothic

nature boy/

the brief tale of nature boy, the first born:

I met him when he wanted to be Malcolm X, but was really Erykah Badu, and swallowed the Dead Sea
to water himself down to
Martin Luther King whenever
our white teachers gave him the
red eye.
I met him at low tide,
nature boy,
with the naked reef, and the corals
shining like hounds teeth,
the oysters cutting opening their soft heads in sacrifice,
unwanted saltwater children of God with their loyal
lips open for His liquid love
all in cold moonlight, the fresh glass of refrigerator milk
spilling down the sky.
he swallowed it all.
I met him in the middle of the night,
just after the peace at sunset, just before the 1 AM war;
his face was tight in acne scars
and pools of gem stones on his forehead, his cheeks
and melted gold down his arms
replacing his blood.
his eyes were far apart
almost on the side of his head,
like cattle, like prey.
evolution caters to their
fear of not seeing.
evolution caters to the dark skinned
nigga's fear of being seen
(but dark skin nigga's is always
gon' be the prey).
i met him when i was lost,
and he was looking,
and just happened to look at me.
I met him and he looked quite a bit like me,
bronze age eyes,
fizzy cola curls,
negro noses dripping like
salvador dali's clock paintings.
i met him when I was breaking my fingers, pushing
that slanted nose up
like pink, like innocent
like a white girl with pigtails.
I met him when he spoke slow
with his tongue made
of ocean sponge
like Maya Angelou,
I met him when he decided
dark skin was art,
and wrote a poem all about it
he yelled like waves were closing up
his throat.
he looked like he was
drowning
in his own darkness;
(shadow boy,
always hidden behind somebody else.)
He decided this in AP Calc
when Prince died
and angry at God, he ate nothing but grape soda,
plums,
eggplant.
there was a time when he would
cut himself open
to find the pallets he wanted to
cover a canvas in,
there was a time when I would
too,
i found red, and white blood cells,
and green from bile,
and yellow in urine,
and tore my flesh off for pink.
he wrapped up my
gaping sternum, he said
"do you realize sun on black skin is
golden?"
now he only wraps his skin
in linens
and hangs them on the clothesline and
he is an artist,
his backyard is a museum
in suburbia.
now he only walks as Apollo,
draws his war paint eyeliner like Artemis,
he wears the night in the afternoon,
he goes to war with the zodiac
burnt black into his back.
He lies beneath the ginko tree,
the woman tree, that bore cherub children, freshly jellied and
full of earth saliva,
and red wine;
he catches her children when they fall.
I met him in the morning
at school, the first day,
when I was huffing guilt like it was spray paint,
and reciting sylvia plath like it was scripture,
and the puckered faced white woman in pearls behind the counter stuck butterscotch, and sweet words in my mouth, with her wrinkled pink
hands tasting like dish soap.
she said "ok", I said, "alright"
he said, "fuck all this extra shit."
I met him on the playground
inside the red plastic tower
with wood chips stuck in my
throat
and sand pouring from his eyes
when he told me about the boy
who kept his heart hidden
in a mason jar, crawling
with worms and butterflies.
In the school office he
told me chillwave
was Bible, was what we always and only
get high too,
was musical incarnate of french fries
dipped in vanilla
milkshakes.
his eyes watered with the violins
and shrieked, like a dying man, something about
how "my heart feels so
full."
nature boy had a night terror
that he was Peter Pan,
this time without a shadow cause
dark skin niggas ain't human
enough to get a shadow too,
this time levitating with the aid of
ropes in salt spray chafing
sailor knots around his neck,
pixie dust at the bottom of
pitchers of Georgia
lemonade.
i met him with the sun behind his head,
or his head between the mountains sleeping and just born to the green, to the morning valley,
sticky in green dew, warm from
earths core,
from the magma in his mountain colored mother's
womb.
he was born fat, full of pollen.
he killed with wolves,
but never ate with them.