hayden

by amaud jamal johnson from red summer

what did i know, what did i know
of gazing silences and terrored stone

brilliances; beauty of what's hardbitten
the auroral darkness which is god

then you arrived, meditative, ironic
my head gripped in bony vice

mouth of agony shaping a cry it cannot utter
what did i know, what did i know

of a changing permanence
the stains and dirty tools of struggle

weaving a wish and a weariness together
years before your time. years and years

i gaze through layered light
within the rock of the undiscovered suns

i see, i walk with you among
the landscape lush, metallic, flayed

behind us, beyond us now
the very sunlight here seems flammable

on being good men

by amaud jamaul johnson from red sparrow

because you were a good man,
and we had spent so much
of our adolescence thinking about
being good men, about being better
than our fathers, about proving
the world wrong, that black men
could love, that we could be true
to our wives, strong for our children

because so much had come to pass
how the narcotic night called us
how the streets beneath us ached
from sorrow and we survived

when you said you understood
what made men leave, how you stood
in the doorway, your wife and kids
asleep, your keys like a knife
at your wrist, how you heard your
name echo in the chorus of darkness
and were not afraid

because you were a good man
and i had spent so much of my life
trying to be a good man too
i could see your truth, like all
the truths who turned their backs
on us, the men who jumped
freight trains, the men who drove
for milk and never looked back

how we run from ourselves
from the chaos of our hearts
from our inability to witness
our failures in those we love