Bark Too Read online



  In Praise of Bark Too

  “When dogs bark,” they simply surrender to the inevitability of their natures. Charles Harvey understands, even in form, that humanity too, is broken--these line and stanza breaks parallel the places where people struggle to put themselves back together again. Reading him, I am always confronted with how crude, if true, we too surrender to the inevitability of our natures: like the poetry in these pages, we breathe, we break, we breathe again.

  Tim’m T West

  Author of

  Red Dirt Revival, BARE, and Flirting

  Harvey’s work is an “oops upside your head” because his pen is a blunt object, but every breath of this book blends vernacular and imagination to present stories we like to pretend aren’t true. But they are. Harvey’s book has made these stories real.

  Avery Young,

  Poet, Spoken Word Artist

  ****

  Bark Too

  by

  Charles W. Harvey

  * * * * *

  PUBLISHED BY:

  Bark Too

  Copyright © 2011 by Charles W. Harvey

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  Author’s Website www.charlesharveyauthor.com

  Epigraph

  America I’ve given you all and now I’m nothing.

  From “America”

  By Allen Ginsberg

  ****

  Dedication

  To my friends and friends to be

  And to....

  All of the pretty young men

  Who have lived to tell about themselves

  ****

  Table of Contents

  Mother’s Advice

  S’up, Dawg...My Boi...My Nigga...My Dawg...My Jigga...My Shorty

  Woe’men Are Dogs

  Dreams’N Blues

  Our Stuff

  About The Author

  ****

  Mother’s Advice

  The normal people

  who rattle on about

  sports about the weather

  their kids their lovely toxic wives—

  they won’t understand you

  won’t understand that in your silence

  you’re writing them into poems, songs,

  folding them into pages

  of psalms and novels

  giving their banal chatter

  titles and life long after

  their graves are paved over

  and under Piggly Wiggly’s.

  ‘S UP, DAWG...MY BOI...MY NIGGA...MY DAWG...MY JIGGA...MY SHORTY

  ****

  Young Nigga I

  The young niggas

  you know what i’m sayin’

  the young niggas

  slappin hands

  pow pow pow

  slappin hot hands

  together

  you know what i’m sayin

  slappin hot hands

  then pullin gats

  and blowin holes

  in each other’s manhood

  you know what i’m sayin

  pow pow pow

  guts runneth over

  south side chi--town

  eastside philly

  oakland, Kinsasha, Luanda

  you know what i’m sayin

  my ass drowns cause

  niggas slap hands

  then blow holes in each other’s manhood.

  Maybe just maybe we oughta

  greet each other by shakin dicks

  you know what i’m sayin

  instead of this hand slappin bullshit

  it ain’t a love jones thang

  you know what i’m sayin

  it’s an intimacy thang

  just maybe we gotta feel each other

  get close to the thang that created us

  to know us to survive us.

  This ain’t bout no back door action

  it’s about us surviving

  ‘til the trilenium

  you don’t feel me yet

  but one day you will be conscious

  one day nigga, it will be our day.

  Young Nigga II

  Caressing me in alcoholic fog

  loving me through clouds of poppers

  then in your blue sky clarity

  acting like i’m a storm cloud...

  Nigga Nigga

  I’m not your Daddy.

  True I’ve seen decades

  You’ve only dreamed.

  I saluted with John John his

  daddy’s flag draped box of bones,

  danced in my Mama’s pink pillbox hats

  seen Watts and Detroit

  baptized by fire.

  I’ve witnessed young black panthers

  with mouths soft and tender like yours

  spit venom at honky honky honky

  then secretly go play Pin the tail on the donkey donkey

  using their white girl’s ass as the ass’s ass.

  I wrote a poem about that

  while you were pissing in kindergarten toilets

  Nigga, did you ever read, “Before the Big Chill, There was the 60’s”

  and i said, “Made sex with plump chicken-fat colored blondes.”

  Have you forgotten what I was talking about?

  Me, I was nourished by the blood

  of King and I too have dreamed

  all kinds of shit like

  flying suburbs, walking on Mars,

  blondes sucking my dick

  and of my children your age now

  not knowing what the hell I’m jaw jacking about

  like you don’t.

  You know Lauryn Hill

  and Lauryn Hill knows her shit from the history books

  so logic leads to the theory that you know history

  But it’s a flawed theory because all you know is

  Abercrombie and Fitch, Banana Republic

  Nigga don’t even know that Banana Republic

  is a slur is a slur

  Hell no nigga nigga I’m not your Daddy

  I’m your lover and I’m your hater

  Because so much love is bottled as hate.

  You know that, You know that in your heart.

  That’s why you brutalize the air between us

  hate love hate love it’s the same fucking thing.

  I am not full of wisdom. I eat and shit bullshit too.

  Sometimes I forget Banana Republic is a slur

  and despair because my toilet is not made of stained glass

  I am flesh, hair, and Madison Avenue.

  So accept me nigga, guilt free or die frying

  in the dreams of your lies.

  Young Nigga III

  young nigga, you think

  muscle is power and your

  dick can split mountains

  but I’ve got a tongue

  that can make your bones rattle

  After the Club

  Empty handed, empty hearted, empty pocketed you go home

  Where is the love Where is the love your heart sings a sad sad song

  You drank and acted a fool, laughed when you wanted to cry

  Kept up appearances in the Ed Hardy rags you procured from Costco

  You flashed change, chain and eyes. One paid attention then

  Discounted your pennies and cheap gold filled dreams

  You didn’t matter naked or clothed in his eyes

  Your change and chains ain’t enough

  To warm your bed.

  The Type

  You know the type

  they never grow up,

  baseball cap backwards

  arms that once held

  bricks and babies

  now holding a forty ounce to

  fifty year old lips. They just
/>   never, never grow up.

  Been doing the same shit

  for years and eons

  only this time their new agenda

  doesn’t have tits

  “I’m all about your ass, boy”

  They love loving you

  like you the last man

  then leaving your ass or

  dumping you unceremoniously

  out the front door as they

  put out the garbage,

  the garbage you smell like.

  You knew it was coming

  but the bourbon, baby, on his breath

  was an aphrodisiac. You knew where you were going

  before you got there.

  All you wanted to do was borrow those arms

  for just a few minutes to cradle your weary ass.

  And aren’t you the type yourself

  that’s been getting dumped for years?

  You know the body language so well

  after the “ooh, ooh, oh shit nigga!”

  and before the Elmer’s glue cum

  dries on your belly, you feel his hand slip away

  from your shoulder like a falling silk garment

  and you are more naked at that moment

  than you were at birth.

  You watch him glance at his watch

  that he never pulled off and his eyes

  bright and alert with afterlust

  tell you he’s got to get up early

  got to get up early before his

  cat, dog, wife, roommate wakes up

  got to get up early before

  his dick wakes up and he gets

  horny for your ass and don’t make it to work

  on time.

  And then you hear this:

  “You cute, but you ain’t quite the one

  to settle me down.

  You almost there though, dawg.

  Yeah you can be my road dog.

  You see I like a nigga who...”

  You shrug it off

  You never been anybody’s “one.”

  So you roll out of his bed

  and walk out his door his life

  A notions hits you on the way home

  You stop by the Handy Dan

  for some Elmer’s glue and a wooden plunger.

  On top of your soiled satin sheets

  you spread the glue over your belly and nipples

  you take the head of the plunger up your ass

  and you don’t stop until you taste wood and shit.

  Young Bones

  maybe it’s because you

  haven’t traveled the path littered

  with broken glass and stepped over

  carcasses of despair, maybe it’s

  because your eyes shine bright with moon dreams

  and maybe it’s the silly things

  like running naked through parks and mooning

  old farmers riding ancient mechanical mules,

  dancing until your skin turns liquid,

  or doing that “flip” thing with your hair curled like fingers...

  I don’t know...

  maybe it’s just you calling me “poppi” that makes me

  love you, young bones.

  To Marvin

  The way you wear your white cap, sideways,

  Makes me want to hug

  Your smooth blue thighs, makes me

  Want to suck your boyhood dry

  To the bone. I love you so,

  I even want your friends. I want

  Anything you have touched. Your underwear

  Is my sacrament. Your tennis shoes I sit

  Upon an altar next to your torn picture.

  Every night on my knees, I pray and feel

  Your moist hands on the back of my neck.

  I do not mind sitting next to you

  In your pal’s creaking red Chevy Impala

  On our way to the woods--their taunts

  Songs of praise that make me

  Kiss each and every mouth that spits on me.

  I do not mind the jostling in that car, the

  Slaps from those soft hands stinging me, those

  Rose and blackberry lips spitting

  “Punk!” at me. I want all of

  Them because they are you.

  At every lash of their belts, I call

  your name.

  Marvin rushes to my lips and echoes

  All over those black woods. And before

  The black veil covers my eyes

  I see you, your white cap sideways,

  Your boot heel coming closer to my skull.

  Wha’s Up

  “Yo yo, wha’s up

  Yo yo, wha’s up,”

  boys chant--

  gawky limbed, but

  steeped in rhythm

  feet going

  tick tock tick tock

  like a jazz clock

  down my hall.

  Levi’s seat don’t

  hit the ass nowhere

  except dragging

  around the knees.

  Pimples dot a smooth

  oval face

  eyes, bright black

  and furtive

  slender hands

  stroke the Glock

  nestled between

  their thighs.

  They spy me

  on my knees

  hands clasped

  in furious prayer

  to my all mighty father

  maker of heaven

  and black black dirt

  my mouth is open

  my tongue beats

  a tune:

  “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus!”

  suddenly cold steel

  touches my throat.

  a trigger clicks,

  rough hands squeeze

  the back of my head.

  I clutch thin hips,

  look up and there

  be Jesus, skinny

  shaved head,

  robed in gold.

  My lord whispers,

  “Yo, yo, wha’s up.”

 

  To Daddy

  Suicide

  Genocide

  Patricide

  We all die.

  Crack, AIDS-

  Take crack to

  Cope with AIDS.

  Get AIDS dealing

  In lust.

  “Can you jack off

  With me over

  Your red laminated

  Plastic telephone?”

  “Yeah, Baby my blue

  underwear is a

  Rope Bracelet

  Around my ankles.

  I’m your slave,

  Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!”

  All boys scream,

  ‘‘Please be my daddy!”

  Scream it from their

  Broken hearts.

  Send kisses over

  Their red laminated

  Plastic telephones.

  War in their hearts

  Death in their bones-

  ¬AIDS, AIDS, AIDS

  Never killed any SOB

  It was their search for

  Daddy that did them in.

  Daddy Daddy Daddy, Come back!

  Lead us Not

  (For Gerald when he was…)

  Temptation--Nineteen little gold bracelets

  On his thin wrists. A halo hovers

  Above him, pulls my eyes to his eyes.

  His feet, dainty and bound

  In black canvas. My eyes

  On his chest and the foolish

  Cartoon character with big ears and snout.

  My temptation has a thin neck and a mouth

  Rich in white ivory. Young ivory

  Young bones, young blood.

  He say his name is Johnny Youngblood

  And he live with his daddy in a yella

  Shotgun house. He say he don’t

  Like to give his phone number out and then

  Folks not call him. I fold the paper

  Into a
square, place it in my

  Breast pocket, drive on past

  A yella shotgun house and an old man

  On the porch carving an ivory phallus

  With a butcher’s knife.

  Business

  His dick invaded my mouth

  like a rude foot. It sought refuge

  in the back of my throat.

  My guts heaved but hung on for the ride.

  His hands rough and weary with two decades

  of hard life

  stroked my head tentatively,

  then with brutal authority when he felt me resisting.

  A man talks with his dick then regrets with his heart.

  And right now Junior, this business is all talk

  Daniel in the Lion’s Den

  Standing up in Heaven,

  A place of whirling blue

  And pink stars, sepia boy

  Angels with wings and black hair,

  Where skinny St. Peter at the door

  Charges five dollars for me to enter,

  (All can enter saint/sinner),

  And where God is a fat DJ

  Playing an electric harp--

  Standing in that place,

  Daniel fresh from the lion’s den--

  ¬Blood on his throat,

  Touched my bony shoulder,

  Whispered a prayer into

  My earshell. I answered him.

  Selling Short

  He say, “Hey Nigguh,

  Brown clay, red wine for blood--

  Come here. Let me look at you.

  Let me kiss yo’ lips.”

  I say, “Hey man,

  Alabaster skin, flax hair

  Red wine for blood--

  Ain’t you talkin’ about my Mama?”

  He say, “Oh no.

  It’s you, man. It’s you.

  I say, “A fag live down the street

  With his daddy ma yellow shotgun house.”

  He say, “I don’t like no fag.

  They got too much of their Mama’s soft ways.

  I like muscles, the hard edge of a man

  His dark solitude, closed mouth.”

  I say, “Let me close my door.”

  He say, “Please, please, please!

  I can do the James Brown.”

  I say, “I don’t like James Brown.

  Do you know William Burroughs?”

  He say, “He’s a fag writer, no I do not know him.

  But I know Little Richard. I know Angel Face.”

  I say, “I know William Shakespeare

  And what the Ides of March mean.

  I ain’t no nigguh.”

  He say, “Oh you one alright.

  And you swallow men’s babies.”

  I say, “Take your foot outa my dark door.

  Ima call the police!”

  He say, “I like police.

  They so blue, cool, crisp and kind.”

  I say, “Man, where you get your fantasies--

  from the back end of Venus?

  He say, “I get my fantasies

  from looking at you, boy--

  Your sleeping eyes, your hair soft

  and black like the baby Jesus’s,

  Your mother-of-pearl teeth, hard thighs,

  heaving rib cage--

  The smooth back of your adolescent neck,