America

—for Brother Ray

i.

The thistle in my ear is smart about old bunk-

bed-days when jet planes veered at mach speeds

over fake looking snow-capped mountains,

my nappy head on pillow, my sister knocked out,

your raspy voice on black and white screen.

We can’t afford color. Just like you can’t afford

blindness, so you break and bend notes, gained

vision by becoming a man when dropping

the bottle and drugs. It’s a strange contextual

comparative analysis since you dream gospel

for all sinners, pass it on so all can hit your joint—

a fire in little circle, coughing before the program

fizzle of snow hits us. I talk as if you are dead,

but how many in Indiana, Alabama, Vermont,

California, and Texas watch with me, listen to

your cobalt graveling? How many know love

is higher than the jets, an unreachable filament

like in I Chronicle 13? It’s higher than high

for us, but you get there every night, your throat

a burning heliotrope about each crack in sidewalk

called humanity, dragging hypocrite, farmer,

politician, mother, father, and fool along

the plains, to feel how golden wheat will whistle

harmless aside whichever face, a bit past

midnight, with just a little bit of soul.

ii.

You tell me a black man loses his color, becomes white

noise on color spectrum, bends hot racism into a pretzel

and smiles it out? That’s a second coming. Sounds like

the more mustard, the better the taste. So stripes and stars

mean something, since meaning got scars hopping like skillet-

fried benevolence. The word on the street is a brother got softness

in throat-lump-blues-quell, with funk in a country-Bama kick-spin.

When Ray plays that sanctified piano looks like he slipping on ice,

too much going on underneath the keys, but the onyx out his

mouth — s m o o t h , r i c h velvet made of c r o o n.