Thinking how Eddie Levert lost two sons,

before Sean Bell slices my dreams

“the family is the solution to the world’s problems of today”

from the song “Family Reunion” by the O’Jays

All the wildflowers shifted on a brilliant night

Sean prayed in jasmine with his boys at a bachelor

party—a rites of passage before the Lord’s alter.

No father should out live his son—passed on axiom

spouted within the walls of family. Here, a bullet’s

cry can mislead in these urban plains and will sound

like a scout hyena signaling to hungry pack to close

in on the meat. These type of bullets gallivant air,

high voicing gun powdered lungs, whistling on

through the black night of a tunneled out thought,

wanting to cavort inside that gray mussy matter of

brain. These bullets laugh like they’re in a saloon

wanting what matters under the petticoats of women

who are looking for money from a long day’s ride

with cattle—our great American expanse lending

itself to making all men men. There are two things

suspended in the silence of a maturing foul moment:

1) the listening gasp of the soft incremental seconds

that butterfly from all its individual parts into one

solid body, or 2) the acceptance of accepting how

matter can bully its way into a crowd of blackness.

Laughter abates in all ears. The clapping hands of

the moon and the stars, bright like big city footsteps

on concrete, yet throbbing: Diallo. Diallo. Diallo.