The Cut Off

There is no sound louder
Than the silence of the void
When you want to hear
"I love you"

But I didn't want these things from you
I wanted to see these things
But apparently I've got a blurred view
I hear you saying:
"I think the prescription lens they got you in just ain't right for you"
All these things you tell me you say
Not to take away
From the simple fact that:

This is still delicate
All of its entanglements
Still very much so intricate
This is "different"
Infinitely definite
The termination fee for a contract you cut short

I am the one
The second
And the third
Now there's four.
I am the fifth that you missed
From that bottle of
Tequila
Bottle of brandy
Of rum
Scotch
Vodka
Gin on the bar
In the dining room adjacent to the den.

This is from your womb
Your anatomically deformed son
Reason why I am always wrong
My truths are always lies
And the battle is never won.

This is not the apology of the decade
Or the century
Instead a letter of resignation
From the lords of the world
And the sons of the nations
Swahili and Yoruba
Isis and Oshun

This is what I'm spitting
From the lab in the dreams that I have

For the child I'm not even sure that I'll have
These are the lessons I'd teach them
The difference between being
Confident and obnoxious
Between the words indigent and ignorant
Common sense and consciousness

This is for those close and far from here
The ones who feel abandoned
Even though their folks stay not too far from here

The patience and dedication grown
Into each one of my locs.

For corrupted identities
Joint bank accounts made mistakenly
For the kid who's birth certificate
Reads Leroy
But prefers to be called Leslie
The one who only hears verbal lashings of
"Tranny"

This is for Uncle Will
And his flamboyant roomate
Uncle Phil
For binders
And bisexuals
For packers
And pansexuals
The pair of boxer briefs that know that truth
But never reveal our true identity

For the Bohemian left in my Daddy
Bound 23 hours in a cell
The minutes my grandmother puts on his canteen
Because calls ain't free from jail.

This is from the pet name in me
To the lover in you
This won't get soggy from our tears
And turn into mush
We won't dedicate this to the children
Of the babies we'll make
From our hearts
And not from the trust funds we'll build

This is for my favorite poet
The heart felt flutters when I hear them in the audience
Yelling
"Go IN poet!"

There is no term that taste so sweet
Coming off the tongues of the prejudice
As fairy
And to think of how far they say we've come
Nothing more bitter sweet
Than the word "dyke"
Off the lips of the ignorant

Strange fruit is still ripe
So this is for those too bright
For their own good
Perched on streetlights
Under clouds getting too much sunlight

I wear the chip on my shoulder
That fell from her mountain
And yet,
I'm still climbing.

This is merely a piece of my acceptance speech
For the Walt Whitman
Publishers Clearing House
Academy Award
And the Grammy

It rests in the left pocket
Of the saddle on the horse I rode in on
For the face of the elephant left bleeding
Where the tusks have been removed

Special shout out
To the left handed chicken scratch
On tattooed papyrus paper
Mimicking hieroglyphics and cuneiform

This letter
Is just a letter
Of resignation
Gratification and recognition of
All the bullshit
I see
Been through
And heard of

This is the gas for my jet pack
Before I fuel up and blast off
Crude and unusual
Resources renewable
Reduced, reused, and recycled

For all my family that fall in
Anywhere between
Alpha, Beta, Gamma
And Phi, Chi, Psi, and Omega

This is no Eulogy
No cover letters
No wag warred apology
Not for me
But from us
That rests in every piece of you
The insurance
To get new prescriptions
For a better view

The tassels in the titty bar
Helping to cover the road
To academia
Associates, Bachelors, and Masters degrees

Shout outs to the spiritual journey
To get that pack of Yacky B2 from India
And into the States
And the Albino Presidents
We've promoted to honorary Blacks

Who changes traditions
Of female circumcision
From Senegal to Ethiopia anyway?
This is the cut off for the search party
For who shot John
And actually killed him

To the student government
Because someone's got to run
The masses on every level
Of an institution

The ferocious little league
2 years aways from steroids
3 weeks away from chewing tobacco
And eating 5lb barrels of sunflower seeds

This is for the dealers of
Blow
Smack
Girl and boy
Medicinal and exotic weed
Dealers of motivation and ambition
This is the size of the seed
After you've reaped the reward

All the finger nails I've snagged
On the new growth in my hair
How my fingers run wild in her hair
She never gets mad
She NEVER gets mad

This is focused on
The lie I told
About the bruises on my thighs that showed
To the matriarch
The day after a lashing with the belt
This goes out to the fear I felt

The cotton candy nail polish
Layered on in 3 coats
After a brand new full set
Smolder black eyeliner
The lip glass
Both made by MAC

Back to the death threats made
The multiplicative inverse of all things
Unclear
Unbalanced
Unclear
Misconstrued
Demolished
Misunderstood
Defiled
Deformed
And
Queer

To homophobia and misogyny
This is not 2010's apology
It is what it is
For you
My mother, my father
My master, my punisher

Only wanting to hear
Permission from the world
The proclamation
To "GO IN!"
Verification from all the wrong places
This is the sanctuary for all the ink
That will fill the void and cleanse my lens
This will hold me down
Hold me tighter
Than you ever did.

All the memories that will be
Left to restore your thoughts of us
Thoughts of me
When it hits that this
Is all it really is

Just acknowledge this as a head start
Not to the soul of a rebel
But a means to the end
Of the thoughts of you thinking
I want to be a man
From your lesbian son
With working vagina and protruding breasts
Still completely deformed in your eyes

For the binary love hate
This is the last word
To the synopsis of our fate
The reality that there will never be more
To something that never really was

This is for the mission statement
The blueprint for the world
The misery that dwells
In parallel planes

For those who need to hear it
The allies and the advocates
I'd like to submit my final lines
One last cry
Over the spilled milk
Punches to the face
Profanity and neglect

The spot where growth dies
And brown patches taint life
The point of no return
Forgiveness or remorse
Nothing sweeter ever came from words so bitter

Nothing as sweet
As the post marked mailed verification:
This is the cut off.

And the void left now
Doesn't seem so loud anymore.