Word

the first draft of a poem should be scribbled in a mind that knows its body ain't free / all that truth should feel like gallstones / like a bag of rocks on fire in your belly and gotta come out / don't then you die / don't then the whole world ain't safe / ain't that a poet's job / to sweep this world up clean as it can get / a poem should be ugly / should start off wrinkled and loud and innocent and bloody / should taste like Flint water / should be dense as Georgia dirt / opaque as L.A. sky / a poem should leave traces all over your carpet / all up on your couch / all these babies dying / some killing they own selves / women missing every day / police ain't never been no good / even a happy poem got pulp / even a love poem got seeds / a poem should have lines carved out / should ask a question it can't answer / it should solve an old problem / should dare you to dream a world outside your little ole life / should make you remember that hell is here / heaven too / heaven right here too / a poem should tell you ain't no life easy / my grandmother five times great was a slave on this good land / probably picked cotton / probably forced to have some white man's child / maybe died tied to a tree never knowing her own name / a poem should take you back / make you wonder if your nightmare ain't really a memory / a poem should sit with you on the bus stop on a rainy night and wonder if Jesus see all this / should ask what's taking him so long / oh you ain't ready / ain't ready for no poem / ain't ready to ask if Job gave his new children his dead children's names / oh you ain't ready to wonder if God and the devil had theyselves one good ole laugh / I tell you / a poem should offer you its hand to squeeze while you release clots and boils and flesh / one story at a / time