___________________
APOCRYPHA
"Apocrypha:
a self-consciously
Other”
—Joseph Urgo
Faulkner's Apocrypha:
"A Fable," "Snopes,"
and the Spirit of
Human Rebellion
But where to begin—
So many profane fictions
Broken promises.
So many false starts—
Go Down Moses tragedies
Sanctuary lies.
As I Lay Dying—
And Absalom, Absalom
Story of gay life.
AFROCENTRIC
APOCRYPHA
“I’ve discovered
that my fiction has
been ahead of me”
—Ishmael Reed,
“Distant Cousins,”
Airing Dirty Laundry
I want to say it—
Something like “Let there be
Yoknapatawpha!”
But where do I start—
It’s a mystery story
A noir whodunit?
An Apocrypha—
Like Absalom, Absalom
Afrocentric love?
DISTANT COUSINS
“The Afrocentric
exploration of the
black past only
scratches the surface”
—Ishmael Reed,
“Distant Cousins,”
Airing Dirty Laundry
I don’t believe in—
A White America or
Black America.
We’re not two nations—
With two separate blood lines
One black & one white.
America is—
A Land of Distant Cousins
A complex context.
MY SHADOW FAMILY
“The pursuit of this
journey requires the
sort of intellectual
courage that’s missing
in contemporary politically
correct America”
—Ishmael Reed,
“Distant Cousins,”
Airing Dirty Laundry
Exploring my past—
My Afrocentric mother’s
Chicago father.
Jazz saxophonist—
My mulatto family roots
The Windy City.
My own personal—
Go Down Moses ledgers
Shadow family.
PORNO POETICS
“a meditation on
an unsublimated,
pornographic poetics
in the emergence of
Yoknapatawpha”
—Kodat, Catherine Gunther
“Posting Yoknapatawpha,”
The Mississippi Quarterly
10-01-2004
“I’ve known rivers”
—Langston Hughes
i’ve known dead rivers—
hoodoo voodoo mandingo
zombie dead deltas.
older than the styx—
older than mississippi
older than congo.
old as amazon—
old as the veiny volga
old as the danube.
i’ve known thick rivers—
thick as the vein on my dick
writhing wiggling slow.
thicker than your lips—
your lynch party killer smile
your thin fay wray lips.
BAD SEED
“An ‘apocrypha’ is a
textual other, an alternative
to orthodoxy and the canon;
it exists as dialogic, multiple,
inconsistent, contradictory.”
—Martin Kreiswirth,
“Paradoxical and Outrageous
Discrepancy”: Transgression,
Auto-Intertexuality, and
Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha,”
Faulkner and the Artist:
Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha
Bad seed be good news—
I know it & he knows it
Tyrone my brother.
Blacker the berry—
My mulatto kid brother
The sweeter the juice.
“It’s big & it’s black!”
My young little sister said
Looking at Tyrone.
How could I tell her—
I was in love with Tyrone
I was a dinge queen?
TALKING/FUCKING
"Sublimation is satisfaction
of the sexual drive, without
repression. In other words
for the moment, I am not
fucking, I am talking to you.
Well! I can have exactly the
same satisfaction as if I were
fucking. That's what it means.
Indeed, it raises the question
of whether in fact I am not
fucking at this moment"
—Jacques Lacan
Tyrone speaks fuck words—
Much more muy macho than
Me his weak sister.
After school when he’s—
Fucking his girlfriend in bed
He sayz bad fuck words.
Tyrone speaks fuck words—
Even when he’s not fucking
His sexy syntax.
He be Lacan-esque—
His seminal semantics
It gives me the chills.
WHODUNIT MYSTERIES
“And that’s why
searching for the
details of one’s
background is
similar to a
whodunit”
—Ishmael Reed,
“Distant Cousins,”
Airing Dirty Laundry
Tyrone was all-male
Already a mature man
When he was sixteen.
He was good at it—
Doing self-fellatio
He’d let me watch him.
Finally one weekend—
I couldn’t stand it no more
That’s when I did him.
I showed him one night—
What professionals could do
I was a queer pro.
After doing him—
And getting him off two times
He agreed with me.
Self-fellatio—
Was okay but nothing could
Outdo the real thing.
PENIS ENVY
“with a kind of alert respect,
as you approach dynamite;
even with joy, as you approach
women: perhaps with the same
secretly unscrupulous
intentions"—William Faulkner
I know it sounds gauche—
Talking about Tyrone’s dick
I can’t help it though.
It makes me wonder—
About our Family Tree
Its roots & branches.
It makes me wonder—
About genealogy…
Tyrone’s genitals.
Why was Tyrone’s dick—
So much darker & thicker
Than my white boy one?
Why was I whitey—
And he was a mulatto
With a beige penis?
It made me jealous—
Full of bad penis envy
I wanted one too…
When I sucked him off—
And he lost it really bad
I became his dick.
BROTHERLY LOVE
“Having used verse,
I would now allow verse
to use me if it could.”
—William Faulkner
Early Prose and Poetry
I have to confess—
I’m a cannibal for love
Just as young Tyrone.
He doesn’t trust me—
When I get that look in my
Jaundiced queer boy eye.
I be a headhunter—
Slipping back his black foreskin
And getting his pink head.
My pouty lips smeared—
With his seminal cream-cheese
He wrinkles his nose.
He likes to watch me—
Slowly swallow his dickwad
A tablespoon’s worth.
INVISIBLE MAN
“What did I do
to be so black
and blue”
—Ralph Ellison,
Invisible Man
LSU back then—
Was still integrated but
Things were changing slow.
By 1967 there were—
African-Americans
Going to school there.
A young editor—
Of the Delta Journal was
A handsome black guy.
Amos J. Bolton—
Who liked my poetry some
Delta published it.
MULATTO
ARCHIPELAGO
“A sea of faces,
some hostile,
some amused,
roared around us
and in the center
stood a magnificent
blonde—stark naked”
—Ralph Ellison,
Invisible Man
My young kid brother—
His mulatto endowments
Sullen & moody.
I was just a young—
Stupid dirty white-boy
In love with Tyrone.
I had a white dick—
It wasn’t black like Tyrone’s
African penis.
He’s still beautiful—
I still get excited when
When I see him nude.
THE WEARY BLUES
“Down on
Lenox Avenue
the other night”
—Langston Hughes
The Weary Blues
drooping a dreary—
sucked-off too many times dick
it’s weary blues time.
the pale dull pallor—
of harlem dayz long ago
it’s weary blues time.
that old piano—
ebony hands playing the
the ivory keys
that was yesterday—
harlem boyz like me just aren’t
in vogue anymore.
FRANKIE AND JOHNNY
“O Frankie and
Johnny were lovers
Oh Lordy how
they did love!”
—Old ballad
Frankie be dirty—
He be a dirty whiteboy
The Trailer Trash kind.
Johnny be bad boy—
He had a mulatto dick
A really big one.
Frankie loved Johnny—
He be a dinge queen for love
He liked his men black.
Johnny could care less—
He didn’t go for fag boyz
He preferred pussy.
But Johnny was broke—
Frankie had plenty of dough
To do the down-low.
And Johnny had lots—
Of juicy jizz to get blown
Right outta his Bone.
I WANNA DIE
WHEN YOU LOVE ME
—for Georgia Douglas Johnson
I just wanna die—
When you love me the hard way
Pulling my hair tight.
I just wanna die—
When you stop kissin’ me and
Get down to business.
I just wanna die—
Who cares about just livin’
When we’re down fuckin’.
I just wanna die—
When you go spastic on me
Shootin’ your brains out.
MULATTO
“Because I am the
white man’s son”
—Langston Hughes
Got the Blues tonight—
The Bad Boy Mulatto Blues
I be White Man’s Son.
I may be Dingy—
I may be Chocolate Brown
I may be Yellow.
I may be Pink-Eyed—
I may be Albino Pale
I may be Cocoa.
But my fuckin’ Dick—
Be Black as the Ace of Spades
Licorice smooth sweet.
Let me peal it back—
My Hoodoo Voodoo Penis
Show you my Pink Head?
"Apocrypha:
a self-consciously
Other”
—Joseph Urgo
Faulkner's Apocrypha:
"A Fable," "Snopes,"
and the Spirit of
Human Rebellion
But where to begin—
So many profane fictions
Broken promises.
So many false starts—
Go Down Moses tragedies
Sanctuary lies.
As I Lay Dying—
And Absalom, Absalom
Story of gay life.
AFROCENTRIC
APOCRYPHA
“I’ve discovered
that my fiction has
been ahead of me”
—Ishmael Reed,
“Distant Cousins,”
Airing Dirty Laundry
I want to say it—
Something like “Let there be
Yoknapatawpha!”
But where do I start—
It’s a mystery story
A noir whodunit?
An Apocrypha—
Like Absalom, Absalom
Afrocentric love?
DISTANT COUSINS
“The Afrocentric
exploration of the
black past only
scratches the surface”
—Ishmael Reed,
“Distant Cousins,”
Airing Dirty Laundry
I don’t believe in—
A White America or
Black America.
We’re not two nations—
With two separate blood lines
One black & one white.
America is—
A Land of Distant Cousins
A complex context.
MY SHADOW FAMILY
“The pursuit of this
journey requires the
sort of intellectual
courage that’s missing
in contemporary politically
correct America”
—Ishmael Reed,
“Distant Cousins,”
Airing Dirty Laundry
Exploring my past—
My Afrocentric mother’s
Chicago father.
Jazz saxophonist—
My mulatto family roots
The Windy City.
My own personal—
Go Down Moses ledgers
Shadow family.
PORNO POETICS
“a meditation on
an unsublimated,
pornographic poetics
in the emergence of
Yoknapatawpha”
—Kodat, Catherine Gunther
“Posting Yoknapatawpha,”
The Mississippi Quarterly
10-01-2004
“I’ve known rivers”
—Langston Hughes
i’ve known dead rivers—
hoodoo voodoo mandingo
zombie dead deltas.
older than the styx—
older than mississippi
older than congo.
old as amazon—
old as the veiny volga
old as the danube.
i’ve known thick rivers—
thick as the vein on my dick
writhing wiggling slow.
thicker than your lips—
your lynch party killer smile
your thin fay wray lips.
BAD SEED
“An ‘apocrypha’ is a
textual other, an alternative
to orthodoxy and the canon;
it exists as dialogic, multiple,
inconsistent, contradictory.”
—Martin Kreiswirth,
“Paradoxical and Outrageous
Discrepancy”: Transgression,
Auto-Intertexuality, and
Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha,”
Faulkner and the Artist:
Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha
Bad seed be good news—
I know it & he knows it
Tyrone my brother.
Blacker the berry—
My mulatto kid brother
The sweeter the juice.
“It’s big & it’s black!”
My young little sister said
Looking at Tyrone.
How could I tell her—
I was in love with Tyrone
I was a dinge queen?
TALKING/FUCKING
"Sublimation is satisfaction
of the sexual drive, without
repression. In other words
for the moment, I am not
fucking, I am talking to you.
Well! I can have exactly the
same satisfaction as if I were
fucking. That's what it means.
Indeed, it raises the question
of whether in fact I am not
fucking at this moment"
—Jacques Lacan
Tyrone speaks fuck words—
Much more muy macho than
Me his weak sister.
After school when he’s—
Fucking his girlfriend in bed
He sayz bad fuck words.
Tyrone speaks fuck words—
Even when he’s not fucking
His sexy syntax.
He be Lacan-esque—
His seminal semantics
It gives me the chills.
WHODUNIT MYSTERIES
“And that’s why
searching for the
details of one’s
background is
similar to a
whodunit”
—Ishmael Reed,
“Distant Cousins,”
Airing Dirty Laundry
Tyrone was all-male
Already a mature man
When he was sixteen.
He was good at it—
Doing self-fellatio
He’d let me watch him.
Finally one weekend—
I couldn’t stand it no more
That’s when I did him.
I showed him one night—
What professionals could do
I was a queer pro.
After doing him—
And getting him off two times
He agreed with me.
Self-fellatio—
Was okay but nothing could
Outdo the real thing.
PENIS ENVY
“with a kind of alert respect,
as you approach dynamite;
even with joy, as you approach
women: perhaps with the same
secretly unscrupulous
intentions"—William Faulkner
I know it sounds gauche—
Talking about Tyrone’s dick
I can’t help it though.
It makes me wonder—
About our Family Tree
Its roots & branches.
It makes me wonder—
About genealogy…
Tyrone’s genitals.
Why was Tyrone’s dick—
So much darker & thicker
Than my white boy one?
Why was I whitey—
And he was a mulatto
With a beige penis?
It made me jealous—
Full of bad penis envy
I wanted one too…
When I sucked him off—
And he lost it really bad
I became his dick.
BROTHERLY LOVE
“Having used verse,
I would now allow verse
to use me if it could.”
—William Faulkner
Early Prose and Poetry
I have to confess—
I’m a cannibal for love
Just as young Tyrone.
He doesn’t trust me—
When I get that look in my
Jaundiced queer boy eye.
I be a headhunter—
Slipping back his black foreskin
And getting his pink head.
My pouty lips smeared—
With his seminal cream-cheese
He wrinkles his nose.
He likes to watch me—
Slowly swallow his dickwad
A tablespoon’s worth.
INVISIBLE MAN
“What did I do
to be so black
and blue”
—Ralph Ellison,
Invisible Man
LSU back then—
Was still integrated but
Things were changing slow.
By 1967 there were—
African-Americans
Going to school there.
A young editor—
Of the Delta Journal was
A handsome black guy.
Amos J. Bolton—
Who liked my poetry some
Delta published it.
MULATTO
ARCHIPELAGO
“A sea of faces,
some hostile,
some amused,
roared around us
and in the center
stood a magnificent
blonde—stark naked”
—Ralph Ellison,
Invisible Man
My young kid brother—
His mulatto endowments
Sullen & moody.
I was just a young—
Stupid dirty white-boy
In love with Tyrone.
I had a white dick—
It wasn’t black like Tyrone’s
African penis.
He’s still beautiful—
I still get excited when
When I see him nude.
THE WEARY BLUES
“Down on
Lenox Avenue
the other night”
—Langston Hughes
The Weary Blues
drooping a dreary—
sucked-off too many times dick
it’s weary blues time.
the pale dull pallor—
of harlem dayz long ago
it’s weary blues time.
that old piano—
ebony hands playing the
the ivory keys
that was yesterday—
harlem boyz like me just aren’t
in vogue anymore.
FRANKIE AND JOHNNY
“O Frankie and
Johnny were lovers
Oh Lordy how
they did love!”
—Old ballad
Frankie be dirty—
He be a dirty whiteboy
The Trailer Trash kind.
Johnny be bad boy—
He had a mulatto dick
A really big one.
Frankie loved Johnny—
He be a dinge queen for love
He liked his men black.
Johnny could care less—
He didn’t go for fag boyz
He preferred pussy.
But Johnny was broke—
Frankie had plenty of dough
To do the down-low.
And Johnny had lots—
Of juicy jizz to get blown
Right outta his Bone.
I WANNA DIE
WHEN YOU LOVE ME
—for Georgia Douglas Johnson
I just wanna die—
When you love me the hard way
Pulling my hair tight.
I just wanna die—
When you stop kissin’ me and
Get down to business.
I just wanna die—
Who cares about just livin’
When we’re down fuckin’.
I just wanna die—
When you go spastic on me
Shootin’ your brains out.
MULATTO
“Because I am the
white man’s son”
—Langston Hughes
Got the Blues tonight—
The Bad Boy Mulatto Blues
I be White Man’s Son.
I may be Dingy—
I may be Chocolate Brown
I may be Yellow.
I may be Pink-Eyed—
I may be Albino Pale
I may be Cocoa.
But my fuckin’ Dick—
Be Black as the Ace of Spades
Licorice smooth sweet.
Let me peal it back—
My Hoodoo Voodoo Penis
Show you my Pink Head?
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