Spoken word poetry

woww! awesome

tw: sexual assault

tw: rape

is what your father calls you now. Yes, you know
your father loves you
but each time he will not name you

you feel a hole
bang open. Black pit. Runs straight through you
like a tunnel,
which is what it is.

There are tracks laid in the tunnel in you & a train.
Yes, that’s right, a train
& on the other end, a little girl.

The train is where each thing made for her that happens in your life
goes to travel to her & sometimes
you think you will die—

last night the man tugging at his crotch
says Have a good night girl or maybe he doesn’t
grab his crotch & means nothing or means well
but what does it matter?
He boards the train
with your father & your first girlfriend & the state of Michigan
& they all want to see the girl

& you’re carrying a train full of people who want you gone
or think you are gone.

But then the train is full & leaves
its station & leaves the hole
engine warm & then
it all feels faintly ridiculous—

who does that man think you are, anyway?
Even if you are a girl, you don’t look like the kind who would want him, though you do
in another life where he says girl with a slightly different inflection
& means he is the kind of man who wants a boy to ruin him.
To carve a hole & move inside.

But that isn’t how it happened.
You’re the one with the hole

with the little girl inside the hole
with the father standing at the edge, calling & calling
for her & never you
& you can’t blame him—

you’d rather be her
or at least bury her, seal her shut
or shut her up
& in the end, isn’t that what we all want?

To not feel so
split? To carry an image of ourselves
inside ourselves & know exactly what we mean

when we say I— . I— .

I— ?

after JFK

i.
ask not what your country can do for you
ask if your country is your country
ask if your country belongs to your country folk
ask if your country is addicted to blood
ask if your country is addicted to forgetting
ask if your country is an oil & power fiend
ask if your country shakes at night starving
for bodies if bodies mean your country
keeps on being your country in the same ol' ways
ask if your country was built on stolen land
and stolen breath, if democracy is a chain
tight as skin around your neck
ask if your comfort means elsewhere
someone is burying a daughter
ask if your comfort means round
the corner a man is dead cause a cop
mistook his body for a gun
ask if your comfort means broke schools
& food deserts on the other side of town
ask if your new apartment used to belong
to someone who couldn't afford to look
like you, ask yourself if all the things
you are scared to admit are shovels
slowly filling up a brown boy's throat.

ii.
all lives don't matter
the same as all lives

some lives matter
only to themselves

some lives matter
only in they hood

some lives matter
of fact & some lives
up for debate

all lives matter
to someone

but what about
this life of mine?

honey colored
& black as it is?

what my life mean to you?
am i talking to you?
do you wish me justice
or do you just wish I would just
shut up already, vanish already?