Tatting Children

lend color, disappointment
progress to the slaving bond
baptism for reprisal, for latent
fools casing hands
exacting and tidy sori screenagers
occlude measured bursts
fit instruments make the new man
the hero in denial
will suffer a similar despair
when the octaroons are all sitting in temples
when the pagodas are moist with children
running feet in water festivals
when the stem is poised and ready to flower
we have made our mention
on sanguineous tatterdemalion prophets
on torn gems Leskov sought for fate,
where the man of Keriot finds redemption.

When all the brimstone factories are abandoned
and the baskets are no longer weaved for tourists
when the bridge watchers and neighborhood councilmen
empty their vests for the walkers, the strangers,
they will be no more,
when He establishes His palace
the men who enforce His name
on the feminine body politic
will be no more.

The greater part, the necromancers asleep in halls
made for twenty-seven righteous men
only a few verses away from consulting
bleating tones defaced for the rich

for the serious artist consorts in reared dreams
for other figures, suggested, appended and
chiming potentiality on professors made edgy
by poor chiefs sounding imitations

is it satire by chance?
spent most of their savings in the pillar
declassed pitches on barber avenues
solvent on church bell rhymes
decubitus revenue In Dahomey,
in seamy juba glances
painting a yellow procession

underlining imperialism in text books,
in the meantime,
until the horizon confronts ethnographic explications
and He appears in naked streets

erasing the name
of tatting children.

EDIT: Writer’s note: Before you object to the language: context. I wrote this after attending an HBCU. While the lectures as an upperclassman influenced me I only stayed radicalized for 1 or 2 years after I left. It is difficult to live life with that much hate in your heart towards all white people. That is not the say the lectures by themselves radicalized me. An HBCU isn’t like that, believe it or not. That being said, it is easy to fall into a place of hate for all white people. One has to stop and catch oneself from going there. If you know the history. If you know the poetry. If you know the truth. There is a thin line if you have the passion to allow yourself to go there, but a resting spot of hate is a dark place, no matter the roots of that passion. It’s really a poem about liberation and redemption. But I suppose it would take some familiarity of the history and literature to understand the nuance.