Poet-Swordsmith of B.H.C.M.

“after about an hour of this frightfully difficult literary labor, he fell to the floor exhausted. we saw him creep, feebly, into the nest of the poems which are always there. so that all this work had not been in vain, we made an examination”

It’s the poet-swordsmith [of] Baldwin Hills-Crenshaw Mall
Hits but with the shammgod
Dangles phrasing like car alarms

It’s the poet-swordsmith [of] Baldwin Hills-Crenshaw Mall
Spoken soloist
Three filled notebooks all ajar

It’s the poet-swordsmith[of] Baldwin Hills-Crenshaw Mall
Hits but with the shammgod
Dangles phrasing like car alarms

It’s the poet-swordsmith [of] Baldwin Hills-Crenshaw Mall
Spoken soloist
Three filled notebooks all ajar

I became a brown man in Los Angeles
On a magazine cover
Man-of-color-mumbled through an interview
Then fumbled

My line of scrimmage
Down and out counting inches
Became a Black man downtown
With a u-turn
In the business district

Between my verse
And spurned romantic interests
Whereas certain phone numbers
Now have become prison jumpsuit digits

I’m on a cell reverse translating
My tweets in techno-yiddish
While I lament solipsism
As a well-educated happy idiot

You never met a wordsmith more illiterate
Reclaimant of ride share privileges
Unemployment benefits
And breadline manuscripts
Who makes a mean sautéed spinach

That plate of wine-reduced predilections
That visage akin
Revisionist stone-faced grimace
(like what?)

Of the strong silent typography
Apocryphal Olmec and circumspect
To get hemmed denim wet
Spit the rawest paroxysms
To focus groupers in headphones

I’m in the gutter club
Slanging clichés
The same way a dictionary
Rents out ad space
To price human emotion
And contemporary art

In the gallery as an attendant and
As a pedant I’m a synonym
To [sic] an off-camera Petrarchan rant
Like like like like fuck it, we’ll do it live

Rewrite the verse from first stanza
Top to bottom
Right to left
Just to just to just to just to just to
Get a rise

It’s the poet-swordsmith [of] Baldwin Hills-Crenshaw Mall
Hits but with the shammgod
Dangles phrasing like car alarms

It’s the poet-swordsmith [of] Baldwin Hills-Crenshaw Mall
Spoken soloist
Three filled notebooks all ajar