We wear the mask that grins and li… It shades our cheeks and hides our… This debt we pay to human guile With torn and bleeding hearts… We smile and mouth the myriad subt…

Some clichty folks don’t know the facts, posin’ and preenin’ and puttin’ on acts, stretchin’ their backs.

Pretty women wonder where my secre… I’m not cute or built to suit a fa… But when I start to tell them, They think I’m telling lies. I say,

Your skin like dawn Mine like musk One paints the beginning of a certain end. The other, the end of a

A free bird leaps on the back of the wind and floats downstream till the current ends and dips his wing

A last love, proper in conclusion, should snip the wings forbidding further flight. But I, now,

We, this people, on a small and lo… Traveling through casual space Past aloof stars, across the way o… To a destination where all signs t… It is possible and imperative that…

Soft grey ghosts crawl up my sleev… to peer into my eyes while I within deny their threats and answer them with lies. Mushlike memories perform

I note the obvious differences in the human family. Some of us are serious, some thrive on comedy. Some declare their lives are lived

You drink a bitter draught. I sip the tears your eyes fight to… A cup of lees, of henbane steeped… Your breast is hot, Your anger black and cold,

The highway is full of big cars going nowhere fast And folks is smoking anything that… Some people wrap their lies around… And you sit wondering

One innocent spring your voice meant to me less than tires turning on a distant street. Your name, perhaps spoken,

You may write me down in history With your bitter, twisted lies, You may trod me in the very dirt But still, like dust, I’ll rise. Does my sassiness upset you?

FOR DAVID P—B The eye follows, the land Slips upward, creases down, forms The gentle buttocks of a young Giant. In the nestle,