There been a long-term betrayal. You could tell
by a certain fitchy smell. A brotha could tell.
Somehow by hook or by boat or by footwork
or by the trail of leaking beta particles
there been a spectacular spit-shiningly precise
decay. Who/when was one question, and one
question was protected by a layer of asbestos,
a decagon fence, a constant squall of laws—
law of Signs, law of Co-signs, third law of
Thumbtacks, law of the Jungle Bunny,
and the long-neglected Black Code and centering
it all, the impossibility of Absolute Zero, bro.
Still, it cold. It made a brotha want to be sure
to get his words' worth, his ass blackened ass
movin'. Soon it be night and then the equational
epitaphs be dictated and then it be like a crime
scene, the masses of botfly larvae wiggling
the surface of the epidermis, and a faint scent
of fission. Who knew then what the mission
would be knew the weaponry of his so-called
clan and best be ready to wash hisself in the ritual
dried leaf bath and resist. The impulse to gag
or the impulse to group, impurity as information,
information as leash or history or a dollop
of dream dispensed by a pair of lazy tongs,
that much hisself knew. Fucks hisself grandly
with a pair of lazy tongs, he do-dee-do-dee-do.
In the middle, the cleft, where it don't matter.
He riding that swishy fissure like a wish-you-
were-here. He a bad muther—shut-yo-mouth.
He licked it once. He liked it. He trying hard to—
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