I impatiently waited tables
trying to earn enough money
to keep my apartment
filled with cheap beer
and expensive drugs.

There wasn’t much else to do
in that stuffy little town
with one intersection.
The air was fine
as long as you didn’t breathe.

I watched my friends and neighbors
watch me from a close distance,
separated by a parking lot
and an eternity of sins
that no one wanted to talk about.

When I was 18,
I kissed a boy
and told him we were going
to get married some day.
He laughed at me.

I picked out a tux anyway.
It was white. I wanted to wear white.

Lily Kesha Gump

Sittin' on the curb of Bronx and Main Street

How I wish I could wrap my arms around you

Sweet little lady, lookin’ grown with a picture of her mama’s stare frozen on her face

Wrists slung through the spaces of her thighs, waiting for a daydream

And she sees me as I’m twirling by in my ruby reds and thigh high leather grace



There you go darlin,

She says to me  

Scoring on my indigo smile

She bites men to sleep

With the crevices of her curves

As her voice weakens wicked

she pulls me out of my gloom



There you go darlin,

She says to me

With a time bomb ticking

On my pain pain pain

And the pen is in my hand

Before she even leaves my sight



I love this city

I love these women

I love their shoes

I love their smiles

Cheeky little laughs  



Someone once recommended

When I was dancing under the shades of a neon lamp  

From Homeless to Harvard

by a woman named Liz or Marie

Or maybe I read the title off of a screen
when I walking with Maryanne on north Peachtree street


And I remember


Lily Kesha Gump

How I wish I could wrap my arms around you

And give you the life some white woman

who doesn’t even know you

Thinks you desire.

Have you ever tasted her between your teeth?
The midnight cowgirl with a suicide smile
She’ll love you until the sun rises
if you can play your cards right

Love you like linen, rose, and sugar
I stared at her through the broken glass
Of mirrors shattered white
In filthy rags

The colors of my daydreams
And I can’t help but wonder
Have they ever tasted her between their teeth?
The midnight cowgirl with a suicide smile

What does it feel like to drown the same way you do?
I tied anchors to my feet
for five days to understand
And roamed the earth
in rose gold petals

In pursuit of the mistress in my fantasies
Black, white, and gray stones flicker
Do they feel the same way I do?
This morning I can write like god

With the knowledge that in twelve hours
I won’t have enough breath to ask
Have they ever tasted her between their teeth?
The midnight cowgirl with a suicide smile

I see black everywhere I look
but I know people that see white
and people who understand my black
and I envy their white

i am the white male
part of me the black woman
is hidden inside

Hey White,

Isn't that your name, right?

Yes indeed and who are you again?

I am all absorbent Mr. Black

Indeed I can see it from the back

You got some humor in you, white

And you got some; wait, nothing in you, black

Funny but look who got all the energy

And look who got all the synergy

Yah, it's me the almighty white

So almighty, you are just in a shell to dwell

And the shell is mine maybe in some parallel

Universe it's yours but that would be hell

So, who's the almighty now?



Hey Black, I got one sentence

Everyone can live in your absence

But what makes the plant grow,

What makes the wind blow,

What makes the stars glow,

And a lot more but you wouldn't understand

'Cause all you know is to expand

And you are alone which you can't withstand

But that's life, life without light.