The shifting winds of remembering riding the night you was born:—
Your daddy’s rock-dumb expressions, drunk on the night you was born.
Your mama too sick to seek a hangar or harbor in that man.
She fought the fool in her. Rolled weight onto the night you was born
Rather then decipher your daddy’s whereabouts. His garbled mess
Of words couldn’t muffle the pain caused by the night you was born.
Any wave of excuses, any apologetic scats curling fast:—be his best
Al Green, imitated organ tones heating the night you was born.
Love & Happiness be a mouth full of Mississippi, be bad beer & hoochie-coochie.
Nonsense ran them streets and not into the hospital. On the night you was born,
Your mama, a sliver and a small ember hanging to the wind. Recovery—: a
Blood dance or coin flipping down a deep well. On the night you was born
She let the drugs kick, but wouldn’t wait for your daddy’s tears
And paper bag prayers to finally stumble into the night you was born.
She would punish his ass real good:—slapped his full name on you
To force love to burst longer than the night you was born.
Love gon’ keep him present, Dougi:—This, the day you tell her your daddy
Is dead:—and how right she be forty years after the night you was born.