Page 22--Instrument of War--Joshua Chas McCool

There are many ways to fracture

The human bones,

And perhaps even more ways to fracture
The human heart.
I spat South

Africa inside the pastor’s mouth,
Modifying,
Morphine dripping into the eye
Lid of a melting pot.

The American Dream dangles from a firm branch,
Bowing, praising the Orange River.

Last night I walked out, stretched out
Parallel to the fresh baked pavement,

When a man with a sun fucked complexion, a yellow sun kissed jacket
yells out
“Hey you!”
Yeah?
“You one a them faggot lovers? I heard you was a faggot lover… Don’t you know that God made pussy for your salvation?”
I let language trigger the temple of my throat,
Vibrating the voices of the Maori ancestors,
Setting sun to gay lovers’ hieroglyphics painted on ghetto sidewalks and China’s exile line ups,
Dry blood peeking
through the cracks,
In surfaces, laboring palms of African tribes dilate from the various hues of my memory.

“Well,
One day,
I projected out of mamma’s brown pussy..
Musta been sweet cause she birthed a honey gem.
Been touched, been beat.
Born a warrior, a faggot to your hip-hop dreams.
Beat a drum.
Skin the concrete.
Recycle the child.
Illiterate the heart.
We are living in times of war.”