Somewhere between eggshells and landmines
Were the creaking floors upon which I played
Carefully, for her wrath could be detonated
At a footfall, just a bit too heavy
From a word uttered under the breath
A mess left too long in the sink.

But her embrace was warm,
Wrapping around me like sheets from the dryer
And when she put on pause her own life
To tend to me at my sick-bed,
Her eyes showed only tender love.
“My baby goat,” she would say, affectionately,
And leave a kiss upon my feverish brow.

She is a living contradiction, my mother:
Churning disapproval shattering the gleam
That she put into the hopeful eyes of a child
Just a moment before.
I lived in perpetual uncertainty,
Never knowing which mother I might see next:
The raven or the hen.

And now she looks at me with disappointment,
Wondering aloud why her children fear her.
Her capriciousness eroded away any trust
And much of the fondness as well
Her hot-blooded adoration
And her ice-cold tantrums
Have mixed so long now
All that is left is
Lukewarm like the bathwater
Left over from when the
Baby was thrown out.

Splash through the puddle underneath that golden expanse
Our tea cup synchronicity belies our swimming decadence

Ride waves taught by the playful mantaray
Cruise through the ocean sky to the city of the Bay
Like a babe I crawl on the edge of the plane

We're all refugees on this backwater bathwater ocean
We look around and to our elders to make sense of the scaled schools motion
The gray herd moves as the vacuum looms over green Picasso notions

As travellers across great highways we can reach those distant cosmic creations
A speedboat horse race were confident we can win

Ski down pillowcases  of fresh powdered imagination
Great green looming through the dark starlight illumination
Barrel rolled into the canvas ink of knowledge on the mountain

We pay attention to the cashier of time
So we can swing life away as the world floats by

Set the cheetahs on the loose
There's a thief out on the move
Underneath our legion's view
They have taken Cleopatra
Run run run, come back for my glory
Bring her back to me
Run run run, the crown of our pharaoh
The throne of our queen is empty
We'll run to the future
Shining like diamonds in a rocky world
A rocky, rocky world
Our skin like bronze and our hair like cashmere
As we march to rhythm
On the palace floor
Chandeliers inside the pyramid
Tremble from the force
Cymbals crash inside the pyramid
Voices fill up the halls

The jewel of Africa
What good is a jewel that ain't still precious?
How could you run off on me?
How could you run off on us?
You feel like God inside that gold
I found you laying down with Samson
And his full head of hair
Found my black queen Cleopatra
Bad dreams, Cleopatra
Remove her
Send the cheetahs to the tomb

Our war is over, our queen has met her doom
No more she lives no more serpent in her room
No more it has killed Cleopatra
Big sun coming strong through the motel blinds
Wake up to your girl for now, let's call her Cleopatra
I watch you fix your hair
Then put your ******* on in the mirror, Cleopatra
Then your lipstick, Cleopatra
Then your six-inch heels
Catch her
She's headed to the pyramid

She's working at the pyramid tonight
Working at the pyramid
Working at the pyramid tonight
Working at the pyramid
Working at the pyramid tonight
Working at the pyramid
Working at the pyramid tonight
Working at the pyramid
Working at the pyramid tonight
Pimping in my convos
Bubbles in my champagne
Let it be some jazz playing
Top floor motel suite twisting my cigars
Floor model TV with the VCR
Got rubies in my **** chain
Whip ain't got no gas tank
But it still got woodgrain
Got your girl working for me
Hit the strip and my bills paid
That keep my bills paid
Hit the strip and my bills paid
Keep a ***** bills paid
She's working at the pyramid tonight

You showed up after work I'm bathing your body
Touch you in places only I know
You're wet & you're warm just like our bathwater
Can we make love before you go
The way you say my name makes me feel like
I'm that *****
But I'm still unemployed
You say it's big but you take it
Ride cowgirl
But your love ain't free no more
But your love ain't free no more

You have heard it said that
A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose
But truly I tell you that
I am that I am that I am that I am
Dripping with Jehovah and stardust we fell to earth
Pieces of atmosphere pieced together
And who can trace the mythology of our chemical compositions
Or rewrite the narrative of our anatomies?
I fell to earth soaked in Yahweh and covered in snakebites
Black holes where the fangs sunk into the astronomy of my freckled skin
All the galaxies of my body each with their own elliptical orbits
Connect the dots to form two wolves in my milky way
Romulus and Remus –
My ******* bear venom white as the purest lamb
Whisper astrology and
Remember the day we built Rome by stacking corpses
Remember the day when all the stars burned red for us
But that was millennia ago and
I’m not your Venus anymore –
I’m nobody’s ******* Venus anymore
It was the age of Pisces and we came out drenched in Messiah
You found me picking painted roses on asteroid planets
With a blonde-haired child and a fox
In the garden green snakes and white roses
Thorns and soft pink ribbon-tongues
Fangs and velvet petals
Two drops of blood in the white sand like Mary,
I bore a son and named him Ares
I named him Mars
I named him Set
Boys will be boys will be boys will be monsters, you know that
I am that I am that I am that I am.
Swim down deep enough into the black waters and you’ll reach the heavens
Keep drawing blood from thorn wounds and you’ll drag out the atmosphere
Stare out intently into the abyss and the abyss will stare back into you
These are the things we knew
When we reached the outer boundary of the cosmos
And realized how hydrogen is nothing but celestial amniotic fluid
We, motionless
Smothered by God and Carbon and perfume and poison
In this ****** we named universe
On this fetus we named Earth
I am that I am that I am that I am
Truly with you until the end of the age
Until the afterbirth of star matter gets tossed out with the baby and the bathwater.
You have heard it said
A rose called by any other name wouldn’t smell as sweet
But truly I tell you
A rose is only as beautiful and fragrant as its thorns are sharp
And if you want to know what fills the space between protons and electrons
The gaps between breaths
The light-years between planets
Then listen to the sound of your own heart beating
Counting down the gestation period of our own reality
I am that I am that I am that I am
I’m more than a Rose.