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Recede Again
(February, 2021)
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1 /
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Dynamite​
Was a wonderful expression
That meant wonderful
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Discontinued
By formal decision​
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Too lunatic
For a looming future
​​
Too peculiar
For a standard horizon
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Peculiar meant queer
And odd, peculiar​
All too familiar
​
Now,
Odd is but a mundane reminder
Of numerical asymmetry
​
Or the broken mid-step
That hampers
The delight of acquiescence
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Dynamite words
That came to be sacrificed
To the glow of correction
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2 /​
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One of my favorite gifts from God
Is when He wakes me
At the oddest, most peculiar
Hours preceding daylight
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To lay in bed in solitude
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Contorted
Yet still
As a mantis
Confronted
With the ceiling of my thoughts​
And what lays above it
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Pondering a frightened world ​
Shunning the reminders
Of a year yet to come​
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3 /
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At first, the ceiling is black
Like a Jet or a Mars
Lovely in its stillness
My eyes adjust to a bit of Prussian
Emerging blues from the periphery
Of the ceiling’s lateral expanse
In the ceiling middle,
A quiet collision
Hints of Ochres and Umbers
And that most unfashionable of browns,
Vandyke
In the parts I ignore
I wheeze, wring, and wrench in bed
But only in smaller increments
And diameters
​
So as not to disturb the one next to me
Who, unlike me, values her dreams
And resents being awoken​
4 /
I served at the lotto machine​
Up in Hamtramck
For half a shift Friday eve
After a day of readying my classroom
For my returning students
The older black men and women
Who entrust me with their saved
Lists of numbers
Scribed on the backs of envelopes​
Or pieces of neatly-torn lined paper
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Worn at the edges
with Have beautiful handwriting
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I confess this to them
​And admire to myself ​
Their threes and fives
That curl at the bottom turn
More elegant than any fancy double u
Found in any independence declaration
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I rest my aching eyes
On a procession of numerals
Graphite etched deep into the fibers
Of a used and reused shred of paper
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A micromoment of sojourn
For my tired vision
From the fast pace of number punching​
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4 digit, straight,
3 digit, wheel,
box, 50/50​
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5 /
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My two older children
Who spent their earliest years in
Detroit Public Schools
Were taught their cursive writing
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My youngest child who did not, was not
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For her, I bring home from Hamtramck
A small yellow bag of “Swedish Fish"
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I pop one into my mouth and declare
That it tastes more
Norwegian than Swedish
She stares at me​​
Odd, Peculiar, Queer​, she must think​
But in other words​
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6 /
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American politics is more and more
Openly extortionist​
The spiraling towards
A mass hoarding of fears
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The ambitious grab for them
A tug of war for them ​
Back and forth
And more intensely each time​
Traced back to
​Reagan, Johnson, Jackson,
Elizabeth, Caligula
Names that pertain only to themselves
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7 /​
There are wars that we
Are not made aware of
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​A war for the sugars ​of industries
A war for the oils of industries
Wars for the drops of water
And pieces of sky
Of this world
What ARE dry goods?
You and that Daimler
Were MADE for each other, Stevens
One hears whispered rumors
That the theme song to "Cheers"
Was written in J Edgar Hoover’s office
Or somewhere thereabouts
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​Thereabouts, there's a peculiar word
​
Words and people, many are peculiar​​
Perhaps everyone is, in some way​
But that would mean that no one is
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Simply put, the extent of your limbs
Is as far as you can reach
As you reach for whatever is beyond​
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The farthest fringes​​​​​​​​​
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