There Are No Such Things As Poems

To be honest, I think most must die
In the dank crevices of 9 letter words,
Tucked in folded over tones seeking never to offend,
A timbre wanting to propel itself forward through space &
Time and again we cain’t win for losing.

I was taught to not say cain’t in mixed company,
But 20-some odd years of
Articulating with an intonation of a superior register, just to be safe,
And still I              fall
Into place on the same unemployment line,
Where I now consider it acutely amusing how often we remake ourselves
In images of failure. I mean if you want to speak with a certain
Inflection or gravitas or emanate a particular milieu that’s on you, but what I mean more is the
Peering, around
the corner                        waiting, lurking, for
the Black bogeyman
You rumplestiltskinned into breathing yarn.

I know I’m not supposed to say all this in a poem,
But there is no such thing.                   
Laughing until the only thing that makes sense
Is texting in tableau, spitting slideshows with the homies,
And God bless the child that memes their own because now they’ve made a poem.

Inside your embrace, your kiss until—
? I liquify into a puddle of my own vulnerability and see,
That’s a poem, too.

Walking to the corner, mask chafing my ears, pulling them
Into the sacred kind of ashy only your closest will dab with their
Thumb, moist in their suck, teasing
Look at this ol’ rusty dusty-eared nigga here,
Even Dumbo kept his shit right nigga what is your excuse?
And your eyes will moisten its own fuck
You, will jab a dozen back that you later forget,

And that is most definitely a poem.

The best counting poem ever written
Was the one that measured the space between
“Mommy I got diagnosed with OCD”
And, ultimately, “                                                                            okay.”

The first best friend ever made,
Then lost: another poem.

The next best friends I made then lost were poems too. Matter of fact:
My homies and I were all poems together.
My niggas were always poems until
They stretched their newly etched stanzas,
Unhinged the wide mouths of their meter,
To only become capitalists.

The last of my poems died on a train platform in DC, not far from the courthouse. 
I saw my poem from a distance and since
It had been a while since we'd held each other's forms,
I dapped my poem up and asked how my poem's mom and sister were doing and then
My poem started to lurch and heave,
As we realized our mutual illegibility.
My poem convulsed across the platform’s mud-washed octagons,
As our fellow riders impatiently rapped their penny loafers or bathed their faces
In the soggy glow of their iPhones,
And before I can curdle a scream at their arrogant disregard,
My poem looks at me.

It tells me it cares no longer
For itself to be illustrated. It’s focused
Instead on business, on how to sell.
And then my poem died on the train platform
While the American worker hurriedly stepped over its Black matter.
That's a poem.
But that is not how they marked my poem’s body.