With God as your shrink laureate

You should’ve buried your wandering spirit

I can’t prop up my story any more

For I don’t think that I really exist.

Though my leg is as long as Potomac River

My step is as sudden as a wink

At its climax, I interrupt melodies with dirges

In my pranks, I hide sonnets in dark laughter.

Just when you say no to creation

I erase your rainbow with my pencil of mirth.

I have somewhere else to go

I always have

But you are the reason why I’m staying.

On souls under siege

I nurture my nursery

In mortars of lies

I plant my root.

In my hunger, I retain

My right to tuck my tummy inside my shirt

In my tears, I restrain

My wrinkles from forming channels on my face.

In barrels of dollars, plinth of pounds

I sink my gimlet tooth.

I have somewhere else to go

I always have

But you are the reason why I’m staying.

I am like the spirit child

I come

I go

I come again.

But where is my respect?

With clustered prints I make on your red soil

Halloween cartoons I draw on your gloomy sky

Whiplash of wooded pestle

And monstrous claws of metallic hawks

Knocking down your palm-husk candles

What else should I do to prove my existence?

I have somewhere else to go

I always have

But you are the reason why I’m staying.