Corporations **** the core
Cuts the soul to ribbons
Takes all the labor
And pays back in paltry paychecks
That barely covers our debts
Whilst doling out pain and exhaustion

But the people are good
Hardworking and smiling
Straining to maintain
That spark of heart
That remains
While paying their bills
And feeding their family

The shift starts
And tired bodies
Stumble in
Factory already
Rumbling
Like last night’s thunder
People laughing and chatting

Lebanese dude calls me Habibie
Grinning and patting me on the back
Brown brother give me a knuckle bust
As he passes by with a playful gleam in his eyes
One guy doesn’t high five but bumps elbows
The Congo girls speak another language
Beautiful flowing and musically rhythmical
The Janitor sings Motown
In this factory town these are good people

The generators hum
The machine sings
Doing their thing
Hoses circulate water
Like life’s blood
Taking in the heat
And sending it away
Bringing back more cool water
That does the same
Cooling the loud and hot equipment

While the employees are stressed and sweating
Wearing muscle fatigue and sleep deprivation
Like it’s their second skin

The machines drums ch, ch, crack
Ch, ch crack like a musical number

While the workers hustle
A smoke break and a popsicle
Then back to work
A lunch break and a conversation
Then back to work
Last smoke break and a phone call
Then back to work
Leaving the factory body hurting
But still coming off
The assembly line a good person

The reflection in your eyes
Like a mirror to my lost soul
The depths truly astound me
Nowhere to go
But deep into your poetry
Where I can feel your misery
The beginning of your love
The mask you hide behind
But OH!
The beauty I can find
Within your words so clearly defined
Much love, hurt, pain and sadness
We are one of a kind
Filled with joy and madness
Your flows speak to me
Your rhymes tell me your story
With each stanza the truth is revealed
How you feel
And the pain you hide
I want to see what's behind
The mask covering your eyes
The truth of your disguise
Your words told me your story
Now I wanna see the face of that poetry





******, you look beautiful to me

Pretty Woman

rest your head on my shoulder

you are richer wine

as you grow older!

On my shoulder is a space

that craves much

the spark of happiness

from your loving touch.

Now my shoulders

been imprinted these years

with your joys your tears

there you have not grown older!

Pretty Woman

my shoulders lust your rest

and for as long they can

reap the divine harvest.

{I can live life unfiltered.

I preen and uncover the riotous feathers
I always felt I had to tuck away.

When I cause those laughs,
or at the very least, those grins,
it seems suddenly, I have swallowed
something much like the sun—
all of the lit space in its seams,
and I become bright,
unchallenged, and with purpose.

I live life proudly and profoundly undressed.

To feel comfortable in my own skin
will never be this natural in any other context.

I am rarely a creature of grace, but
when I feel those fingers
run down the length of my bare back,
I become a word so treacherously beautiful,
writers are too hesitant to pen it.

Wrapped up in those arms,
I find that I fit; I’m home; I’m safe.

I get an unmatched pleasure out of
watching such a mind work—
in awe of how it knows when things fit together,
the way it peels, layers, creates, and stimulates.

No, seriously though, the mind thing?
[Nothing turns me on more.]

The same fears are shared—
of living a cliché and settling,
of pain and disfigurement,
but mostly of
endings.

I find contentment
in simply being held in the
silent repose of the morning
before my small world is awake,
and the street lamps are still
competing with the dawn.

It’s occurred to me that this has
made me into something marvelous
I didn’t know existed. }

Just know,
why I keep you around can’t be explained
johnny-on-the-spot.
See, when asked,
my little heart crescendos, and all of the words
rush to tangle on the back of my tongue.
I pull the phrases out, word by word,
and string them the way
they were meant to be read.

Don't be discouraged
by an answer of “I don’t know.”
It sometimes buys
the necessary time
for one to display the whole truth—
one that that lovely, whiskey-soaked head
can’t fully comprehend in that moment.

But maybe,
I keep you around
simply
*because.