I once knew physics well for
A few months
A bomb descended I
Couldn’t stop it (but on paper I knew)
The impact was absorbed by the
Face of a laughing child
And the weight of cinder blocks resting upon
Her blameless corpse
I looked at my uncle’s tax forms there was
Written the child’s names
Uncle rose from his chair opened
His computer
Laced with the bones of a mother who
Has tribe no more
Bought a plastic toy off a screen for
My beloved cousin-sister
Laced with the sweat of Vietnam’s (America’s) child
But what matters truly is what I saw what
I felt
The hunger pangs when
My wife sleeps cold on
The floor of a closed restaurant
Surrounded by the wooing of
Greedy penises
When I am far
And Mrs. Travarti on the phone says
I am a number in
Line for a visa I cannot
Afford unless I starve and
I know no one I can bribe and
Have nothing no one wants even
The deranged nighttime black man paces the
Streets with a three-wheel cart having
Empty cans of sleepless
Office staff lunches but
The police harass him and search his trash
Worth six dollars if he can walk another
Thirteen blocks and wait
Until morning
(Meanwhile in my yard two girls rip
The hairs from one anothers heads
Throw a brick through the glass
Distribute baseball bats
Someone profits quietly and
Where my other half is her
Neighbors sprint through
Miles of decomposing rubbish to
Be the first to reach the
Trucks pouring new landfill contents
They compete to
Dwell and find meals within
This heap to which they walked for months)
I tell the cops to go home they
Tell me the same I
Tell them this street is my home because
It is and
I don’t care if they shoot me or kill
Me I am already dead I
Have long been dead since I
Held the twig baby in my palm and
Cried like he was
Mine
Choked on guilt shame anger rage sorrow pain
and bitterness which is
What I became
So I abandoned
Myself to the vague
Distant idea of hope that should it
Ever come near me
Near us again I would see
A glimpse of its
Mourning with me
But hope has never come not once
Has its teasing manifested except
For those who grow up rich or
Have guns
I dug and dug and dug the
Dirt of my beloved
Then an army man lit
The room at night with
Magic fires and shattered
My home and thieved my
Life that didn’t matter
It had been measured by
The ignorance I had the
Pleasure of maintaining so
That means I never lived long
Everything is meaningless says
The teacher