humani-vore-ing

“so what’s wrong with you now!”
dis gnaw’n on’me! dat’s what’s wrong
 “no way! you’re just making sump’n up!”
i aint making-up a goddamn thing!
“all right then where’s your proof! huh!”
LOOK!!!I’M ALREADY BLEED’N!!!
“Yeah! it’s because of what you doing wrong!”
‘cause of what !I’M! doing wrong!
“nobody else here’s complaining ‘bout bleeding
so what else can it be! but i’ll tell you what . . .
if you’ll just calm down and act more civilized
i’ll tell you exactly what you need to be doing”
and who in the hell you ‘spose to be!
“the one you need to be listening to right now!
anyway . . . early somewhere in the morning
when you standing there in the mirror”
how a body be stand’n in a damn mirror!
 “listen! . . . you just be telling the rest of us
what you’re feeling like you’re seeing”
 ‘spose i say’n i aint see’n nothing
aint no body else gon be there
so how you gon know if i’m lying!
“what do you think we all be saying then
‘bout what we’re feeling like we’re seeing
when we’re standing there too
nothing!!!nothing!!!nothing!!!
because you caint be saying nothing
about nothing except nothing! . . .
now aint you got some damn nerve
here acting all out in our pretending
whining loud invisiblizing like all us all
running scared lubricating hallucinating
try’n to hide here in behind
all this seeming that we’re doing
Now Just Who In The Hell
Do You Think You Are!”

Copyright © 2016 Asili Ya Nadhiri

every body we all entitling
in our own decadencing

—welfare-inged moments
they chanting and caressing us all 
bleeding on through the veils of invisibled-ling faces
running on out here all over us all
!splashings loudly bodaciously! so afraid-ing
loquaciously splatterings in the pupil-ling of our eyes
hooching things hazing synthesizing fantasizings
paralyzing socializing with infantizing mesmerizing—

we all !!SCREAMING!!quietlyingSO LOUDLY
selfishly shamming inside this pretending
desperately wander’n grabbing!SO SCARED!
holding on to those louder some bodies else-ing

public booty shaking’s our coffling shuffle
in closets coming out in every which’a way
better always watching where you stepping
and what whom you woo-ing here when

and beseiging ourselves in words impounding
serpentining cliches rapaciously serializing
with our mathematizing self- imperializing
ingurgitate’n we legislating a vulturine abode

running all around frantically hallucina-tizing
obsessing over power with such tiny lil ’l hands
probates unbeholding in this boundless expanse
and we’re all just random custodial guests

here mesmerizing in this bale synergizing
spinning with our mouths camouflaging it all
anxiously waiting for another decadencing
so aint seeing how we all imploding us all

—they spreadinged and swallowinged on
in this low droning stare of who
this who in here who for they selfing
purpled grey splotchings aloninged
wrinkling and drying on out on one another
growinged hard too soon—

Copyright © 2003, 2007, 2015, 2016 Asili Ya Nadhiri

swelling dung’s “dust bowling” amber fields

we vitiating in abetting addictionings
riding sterile blinging loins
of our automated things
seducing everybody else
on in here with’us too
greasy hands so rapaciously gorging
aint even bothering defecating no mo’
look at how pompously we’re pretending
hustling ourselves with proverbial potions
in slippery metaphorical illusionings
and flatulating resorting fabulations
we making us all want’n to be
the one who up there on a stage
dancing lips syncopating enthralling us all
“♪hey! it is what it is how else can we do
it’s all ‘bout the me aint nothing ‘bout you
we aint needing no redeeming
just mo’ scheming and seeming♪”

 on’n’on we’re impetuously harrowing
endlessly ‘round ‘n ‘round
judiciously eroding ourselves
serpentine cultivation of this fertile ground
we swallowing our tails strangulating
sopping here bursting from constipation
pompously strutting disputatiously cussing
“just tell me what else goddammit
  should everybody be trying to do!!”

Copyright © 2016 Asili Ya Nadhiri

waiting and tomorrow
(are pregnant with eternal costs) 

 everything else is always
wantingly conjugating conjugations
hungrily synergizing synergizings
embracing in a boundless beholding
mutually enfolding unfolding on
in with all the other things
. . . and we’re here wantonly aloning
burrowing up under some bottom line
of our own obsessing orchestrating
and imploding wallowing here

so busily serpentine-ing in the ruse
of all our purpled red midnight rouge-ings
rolling vitiationinged souls in tabloid news
and surging swirling dirgings of the blues
scrolling faster’n’faster’n’faster’n’faster!!
shooting up snorting smoking it all
try’n to make like this aint what it seeming

and pretending so vulgarly loud!dinning
vicariously dancing marchinged on
desperately transmorphing our selves
absconding on inside the schisms
of serially perversive legislationings

we’re desperately hustling in between
and coffling on in the corrosive arms of
our own self deluding excusings
as we’re rapidly erasing ourselves   

“. . . but if i spread my wings and fly
which whom will i touch
and which one will touch me
what then will i do and
then what will be done to me . . .”

Copyright © 2015 Asili Ya Nadhiri

the man-ing
(ode to a Haitian bag boy) 

the words in my lips are silent
and this still wide smile
is biding something inside here of me
as brown grocery bags are neatly filled full
and carried out somewhere to a car

a broom in my hand and a tiny dust pan
trying to pass by here without being seen
and all of you there wandering
in those clean wide aisles
are passing on by and never minding
the taste of greying in my abandoning hair
and the steady glimmering here in my eyes
quietly hinting of another somebody there walking
in the ties of this pale orange apron

Copyright © 1993 Asili Ya Nadhiri

BESIEGING

this here it crowding in on me
wrapping ‘round me so !tight!
locking me up inside
on inside this night
and there aint nothing else
that i feel like chancing
everything it played LOUD
for so i go on dancing
ah BOOJU ahh na na !UH!
ah BOOJU ahh na na !UH!
ah BOOJU ahh na na !UH!
ah BOOJU ahh na na !UH!
ah BOOJU ahh na na !UH!
they is nobody
i in here all alone
fingering the echo of words
try’n’ta come through the lips
of us brown trumpet horns
who dont we never let me find
what they right here in my mind
them ones who in here
they like us but aint bound
by this line i here behind
the one us drawing in the dirt
right here on the ground
ah BOOJU ahh na na !UH!
ah BOOJU ahh na na !UH!
ah BOOJU ahh na na !UH!
ah BOOJU ahh na na !UH!
ah BOOJU ahh na na !UH!
ah BOOJU ahh na na !UH!
ah BOOJU ahh na na !UH!
ah BOOJU ahh na na !UH!

Copyright © 1995 Asili Ya Nadhiri

grounding me down 

look at me in here
at this i doing right now
i’m waiting here inside
for something else it appear
and gone seem like it near
to this make believe
what playing here in my ear
i running back and forth
when there’s no what for
staring there inside
every go by passing car
just parade’n here strutt’n
so ’cause you then seeing me
all by myself wrapped up
in how i making like it be
cocking my head
it looking side to side
hypnotizing what i realizing
so this here that i show
be what i say to claim
that it all i have to know
and all i have to b’lieve
i ever gone need
and so long as everything
seem like i make it seem
it like i make it be
so like it really so

it like i make it seem
just like it really so

Copyright © 1998 Asili Ya Nadhiri

ORACULAR

only the smell is raising up
from the deep tribal markings
on the dark bodies laying there
in they kin folk bowels
shackled down to the bottom
on this cold damp floor
in the belly of Jonah’s slave whales
!and we was told they was coming!
was told long long before
eating things for living they cannot name
scared about the night it filling they head
they listening for the drumming off yonder
low going lower it fading away fast
they left naked there humming
humming here alone
in the loud throbbing silence
resounding there
in the undulating rhythm of the ocean’s roar
a mama crying there gnawing on she baby throat
so he never! gone die here no more
they have to feed them ones
they burdened there my Lord to carry on
and sown here in this dirt
by many other hands
like it done been told
it was long meant to be

Copyright © 1995 Asili Ya Nadhiri

there’s no need apologizing for yesterday

then-ing is when-ing
and when-ing is then-ing
and now-ing is always is-ing
on into the salvatory muscling
of our knowning
this numbing crippling massaging of guilt
is dastardly painting the same mind-scape
over and over and over and over
fermenting in tears of the shame-ing
collusively embalming us all with
the same numbing intoxicating potion
anesthetizing in plagiarizing fantasizing
so we all just always be wanting
to be seeming like we nowing in vogue
it’s keeping us keeping on nourishing
and nursing this vulturist ruse
with our shackling enthralling alms to
“how we them-ing themmm then
in all we here doing when”
then-ing is when-ing
and when-ing is then-ing
and now-ing is always is-ing
on into the salvatory muscling
of our knowning

Copyright (c) 2018 Asili Ya Nadhiri

holding on to this just holding on 

and we aint even ‘sposing no more
if there’s any something worth ‘sposing
and we seeing right here ‘fore us eyes
so howcome us keeping on doing
keep on doing like we doing
leaning on leaning onto this norm
of hanging on to like’us here hanging on

we dis-focussing everything all together
desperately photoshop’n kaleidoscoping
so it’s all being like    just like it aint so
try’n to hide behind in our hiding behind
mattering no mattering is mattering
everybody’s in here acting like’us long
becoming mo’n’mo’ use to nothing more

encoring over’n’over we’re strutting
arm’n’arm in the well trodden ruts
of our lonely alone-ing promenades
hypnotically obsess’n with just look’n hot
and what’aint kin to this   is just for not
swallow’n us in our own never minding
how this what’s going-on’s being made

and just what are we wanting and not
is it simply some kind of ‘guess what’
so be want’n some something that’s not
or is we chasin’ an other in between
an endless bottom and illusive top
. . . it’s like us never ever wondering
how come this is   that it never stops

Copyright (c) 2017 Asili Ya Nadhiri