i dreamt of you in red
the city casting red shadows
painting the surreal narrow windowless
streets of last year's violent summer
funeral processions clotted in my veins
my body a map of every grave in the world
and i had lost yours in my melanin
i showed you each pore
each shape
individual as a mother’s
pronunciation of a son's common name
you were so round
verbose
so much to tell me about the next world
you had been healed
how you had grown
then the river came to take you back
and you walked out on the water
eager to continue into mystery
a photograph bears neither of our faces
it is your future and past
where an eyeless child awaits in
the unspoiled velvet of your
warehoused tomorrows
and it is what was ahead of you
that fell into memory
delirium in colossal vacancies
cacophony of hysterical
blue laughing death
what you leave behind
a small pool of water
fallen back into stillness
tyson
our country is ten thousand miles ago
used and desolate
without ether
weathered tin
a mute thudding heart in a nuclear dreamscape
and what i must say
20 years beyond your murder
20 years into that crystal ever-growing silence
20 years into the empty brightness like clear
breath for thousands of miles upon water
into dreams where you come among thousands
seeking connection
it’s in the whites of your mother’s eyes
that hunger
and in her step
the adjustment around the loss of her flesh
each winter night against the skin of the city
under the frozen stars and moon
the sphere of each tired streetlamp
hurries a negro through
the clockhand change
into darkness
where do the brothas go?
what consumes the laughter?
something private
that stops or falters finally
and hides
and belongs to the used portion of the season
i am calling your name
tyson kuumba
tyson kuumba
tyson kuumba
