20001

this soil that always drawls me
back
i prepare to leave (again)
having found
its Southern charm
forgiven its ostentatious pretense
longed for more of its lure and magic
this second time around

i leave wondering
why I always wander back
down alphabet streets
across checkerboard blocks
where yuppies and niggaz
ignore the shortening distance
between what it was, is
and will be: D.C.

and it be
that pit stop on the way to
my next somewhere
shifting as i stir
most beautiful
when it's not trying to be
the ruse of bling
cradled in asphalt

this place where
artists are professionals
(on the side)
and vice versa
to make ends make sense
will always be home to me
though being so close
to the powers that run the world
can run one mad or away

still I will miss
these same streets where
i first affirmed
there were others here
drawn to the possibility of finding
(people like) themselves
and it seems I have always left
this blues alley
frustrated with the ways it failed
to be a place that would hold
more than
a few bitter-sweet memoires
but some of the most cherished ones
I have
are here:
The birthday present I got at 33,
Front Porches, Fireplaces
all the dances between them
captivating the prospect
of being cherished
like I will always cherish
this place where i tried...
and learned what it meant to be
cherished

will miss its
wireless coffee shop cubicles
where i've dredged inspiration
to write wrongs
overstand the lessons they provide
erect museums with the open journals
that are my pulse and cure

and i have waited the weight of human traffic
at this vast intersection of America
where states collide at red lights
and freaks come out at night
for a taste of freedom


a taste linked to
my palate's insistence
to mambo my chicken til it drips
to be the black-clack go-go
I'm unlikely to feel
(quite the same)
anywhere else

and like these poems
trapped in my fingers
that have become songs,
my blakkboy blues
are rooted here
so i remember there are places
i have never wanted to leave
for fear of being forgotten
and there is a place
i have always preferred to leave
to return to