I was brought up on Queen’s English
                           Damn if I Sound Like Gorilla           

I was brought up on Queen’s English damn if I sound like gorilla

Black jive I was cursed ‘cause I couldn’t hang with Black American jive

Copped a British accent when I was outed as a European Afro Negro
Chump change chimpanzee mocking “the” language Elizabeth built

I had never heard of Shakespeare. Under what circumstance did I hold court?

Escape artist. Black Houdini. Turning over metaphors. Flowers in Autumn

Poem I wrote about Falklands War jocks with paper in hand read out loud

Words I had written for them it was music Chaupin from an African muse

Glory be the Puerto Rican Latina graceful dark haired mamita waist high

Mustachioed breasts bulging from Catholic uniform back facing beauty

Mother Mary silhouette counting Rosary beads weary of bloody knives

Cutting into meat Kitchen Contessa - Oh dear brother neighborhood gangs
Waging war baseball bats in hand collapsing on basketball courts dieing   

In stairwells they gathered flashed blades compared fists took charge

The girls how they ogled - The girls how they popped pink bubble gum

Hid in corners talking sweet – Giggled to themselves the boys they’d meet

Young Guapitos gigolos at the age of fourteen called upon themselves

To service housewives nookie in the afternoon inside housing projects

Girl Gang Three - Spanglo American chicas Italian American princess

Dominatrix of the courtyard where virgins skipped rope played dodge ball
Who were they then these sluts pinching asses gossiped during classes
Followed me home one day scattered along the streets enraged laughing

Oh darling molested – was it mother who raped your mind from sexuality

Did Daddy Darling protect you warn you watching cable television porn

On that veranda I stuck an Ever Ready battery in Regina’s underwear

Playing house in that moment I was doctor delivering baby battery baby
Ever was a moment I did recall why I became this – this animal it was that

Delusion – Oh bother me with your life drug polluted air planes leaving

From the backyard I watched never knowing I would sit among mayhem
White girl – Destroyer – I play philosophy for pussy – watch me work

An afterglow black boy surrounded by white flesh blonde hair blue eyes

Smell of skin purer than yolk – scented sweat possessing my every breath

Who was I to these ghetto Pre Raphaelites – oh black brother with no sister
Black girls in their hip hugging jeans mocked you dared call you strange
Poor puppet of God what face do you show them now – art intellectual

Come of age among crack whores prostitutes – the future is what you saw

World where drug addicts home-made gangstas become friend and foe

For it was Park Avenue doctors Las Vegas psychiatrists Harlem nurses

When the sky opened earth collapsed –

For it was Teachers at the art schools English Professors literary bimbos

When mother was my little purple pill –

Black Botticelli girls from villages afar came to town called you prince
On overturned sunny pavements bathed you before grandmother figure
With middleweight fingers it was love – Lux soap seeped skin it was love
Here boroughs become cities - these ebony girls throw pity on my shadow
A world within where nuance is a white girl reading Barthes on the subway
What becomes of a black philosopher – I rule with words! I paint with words!     
Need I kill my ghost shed blood prove my heritage – I come from Kings!

Neurotic – this perverted thinker seduced by pale faced Eastern Europeans

Androgyny – white boys come calling suave in their wife beaters and shorts
Accompany dear sons daughters of Klimt Kokoschka I am not wanted here
Greenpoint where the Polish girls serve coffee wait their turn at Chelsea bars
Art stars on Van Gogh evening she glared at the sight – what sorrow are you
It was me that terrible tear – she knew that dark light recognizable as love
Brought down from a tower golden blossom an axe taken to trees in autumn

As the gorillas go so do I – walk the miles from Brooklyn to the Bronx Zoo

Behind cages we watch worlds go by – fortunate balloons that reach the sky
White men in white suits inject us with serum – listening as we enunciate
Speaking the white man’s English – that street vernacular becomes me now
My inner walls have housed many brawls opened themselves for inspection
If I did murder language of Elizabeth throw me back among wolves of night
Along some dark streets a word is never spoken it is the mind that wounds