I looked at life snuffed out of a black man

like he were my mother’s pagne,

lunging from the shadows of blue uniforms like 

earth escaping flood, ark seeking land.

I wasn’t there but I know him and how his skin pores broke into bells

that couldn’t take a screaming mouth past a broken crucifix,

his balding head forging the soil of my room

where scalps look the end of a map.

I know the taste of his mother’s kitchen,

salt and jalapenos dicing away joy into edible morsels.

Just breathe!

uniforms can be tragic flaws.

Death is a multiformed man in regalia,

and it is not the colour you had in mind.

I know how the morpheme of body is transformed into morphs that break the sky into tears, skin slitting in amerikka.

Skin is of course all that matters

when a blue ribbon streaks down asphalt,

when a thrush defeats a song,

when twigs gain life to become phasmids.