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The Mire

Chris Blake

So small the sugar and salt filled cart suited him
Mud soiled shorts a torn shirt his marshmallow knees
Me barely reaching my mother’s turned to protect me hips
Nigger nigger his cherubic potty mouth opening curling
Managing syllables very clearly point-blank distinctly
Narrowed eyes already cross with his brief strange life
Cursed by a timeless rot not quite yet his own mind’s fault
His mother embarrassed sickly needle marked skinny
Not really a trailer park villain but more like another victim
Nigger nigger nigger nigger angry beat of a taunt drum
Somewhere heard over and over again now parrot repeated
Sorry for her was not looking back pushing the cart fast

I do not yet fully appreciate his rarity the earned complexity
It is a privilege an honor he courtly states hugs not hands
To be with you to discuss frankly what is and is not the past
Sipping sweet lemon spiked iced tea with you a tested friend
You like me appalled by the length of these boiling summer nights
Philosophy specifically apologetics existentialism big truth
S¿ren too we agree would have grasped the irony of the blues
Both of us now ersatz Icaraus and then recklessly we dared soar
Still impossibly higher God the marvel of escaping stagnant air
His famished ancestors fought with faulty hope and brave futility
They were fierce the sullied firmly put in their place to stay Gray
You know it would be so easy he tells me wistfully once more
But it is too certain the ever-raging currents of this hellish river
Only flow one direction and greedily take what they will by force
Everyday is a person’s own siege a far more cunning war

Outrage sparked the city but it did not catch fire and burn
The rarity of a man to detect the odor of death and follow it
Where it leads and to not only fathom the why but also how
Absurd is the weight of difference the exhausting toll of otherness
How it feels when thumping pain falls without once a pause
A humanly ruinous shower of all our assorted squandered days
Still by drops the one heart resolutely swells a collective pulse
We are Stockholmed or there is a very rare grace still in the blood

Strike that strike this sorry your honor strike that no this too
Unsteadily dragging unpolished brown shoes tattered suit
Aged hands trembling sleep starved eyes red and porous
Breath of a well-stocked left blessedly unlocked brewery
This worn out judge with his officious clock and bursting docket
The accused impoverished and dazed likely also quite guilty
Later the gentle couple the soft sweet traumatized baby-like injured
A random bar no more costume courtroom drama wardrobes
Pink-beige canvasses swimming in sullen incendiary ink
The inadmissible provocations the spewing of typical vitriol
I learn too late the artful incantation of a handful of syllables
Nullification rendered impotent by intentionally ingrained civic lies
Nullification if it’s broken the pieces need more hard bending
Juice walked and all of us top lawyers in our grand glass scraper
Me the only one who looked like me and all that lawyerly shock
The system damned as unfit for purpose its decay urgently noted
Me the only one who looked like me who couldn’t help smirking

Rusting husk the imperial titan that was what now few remember
Dreadlocked island barber freezing but up for colonization’s offer
Stubbornly self-educated cutting all kinds of hair choices limited
Holding hostage the heads of sunless mid-day businessmen
Who too late wonder why they didn’t accept their lunch invitations
When I see you he matter of factly says if I had any sense he adds
I’d run fast as my tired legs can carry me since all of history teaches
You fear me think me ignorant a thief but you’re the bogeyman

Marx banging on his coffin missing out his nemesis badly hurt
Thinkers spy post-racial with get over it gooey-eyed smooching
Cautioning if it’s about his blackness never forget he’s no less white
Still matters unless you’re handing back your license to get by
Profane progeny spawned so another rare man looked soberly around
His neighbors his suburbs terror crawled up his spine and down
A young daughter his promise not kept since this could not happen
Except it did and then days of looking around everyone a stranger now
Women with daughters disturbing as suspect as their husbands
With their easy smiles and whispered words that almost add up
His daughter fractured he wants and can stand no more not now
Explaining to her the price of there being the first and only one
You have time to make it better but before then it gets much worse

Anywhere will do for proof no need to venture far or linger long
Nigger nigger nigger nigger all day every day unadulterated hate
Light blinds my sight stunned I dare not turn no I can’t not now
In my bones truth forced out something too terrible badly off with you
Something misplaced yet so necessary melting your gauzy edges
What is this relentless ache to possess manipulate and conjure ruin
You so long you don’t believe in better angels or that they ever flew
This rising uproar drilling your ears stolen time you dread won’t keep
Shuddering sigh your despised giving up the ghost and still breathing

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