Lord and Chariot

I say the dead done caught me in a special knot

and lured, and dragged me to the interior.

I say his face is strange here, a moment cruel

but not without its silk, its earned sadness.

He asks me to touch it, so I touch it. No light

can blossom here I know, as my bones know.

~

Why ask me who I am. Who really knows

the place of my future? I’m his, or I’m not—

I’m black, or black was made me. The light

turns the cane a wanted color. I walk its interior.

There are only grasses here, only sadness.

I pick one. I tear it. I think to be free is to be cruel.

~

He says the dead are versions of himself: little ulcers,

little cruel insurgencies. He says, Know

that I’m master here, my boy, my little sadness.

There is no riot. (Riot.) Or fear. (Fear.) Bought, knotted,

I’m the boy in the cane field that’s his, the air, or

I’m his whip that stirred the air, scarred the light.

~

~

~

I say the dead done left me, stranded, at the interior,

which is this stranger’s face, his sprawling sadness.

I say any blade in my hand is just my hand, and I know

its weight exactly, the lifts of its bite. O light:

sweet molestation in the fields. One lord. One chariot. Cruel

silk, I’m a boy in love. Let the dead bury their dead.