Poetry: AfroFuture--Dystopic Unity, Vertical, Mother Earth

AfroFuture—Dystopic Unity

My first word was an error
according to the machine I spoke it in.
Whispering into an orifice used to be intimate,
Now, the Neural Network Noir twitters from every misplaced
exclamation. Deep spell check.

Not set, the rhythm hasn't been squeaked yet.
I was the first class to be spoon-fed the suspicious cereal.
"Look at the swirls" we said as the glucose crystals separated from the genetic grains.

"Crunch-crunch-crunch" they marched through the esophagus,
the sarcophagi from us, rolling over.

The first time we dared to play the underground numbers straight and they hit on the regular, when every time a someone dreamed of a black cat and ran into one the next day, we thought those folks on the down low we all know who shook them bones was finally coming up, with the upper hand.

But then, the "git-cho-man-back" gooba wasn't happening.
(He disappeared.) We could feel the ooh's and aah's of the clients getting done by the meth girls who were turned out to turn tricks. That was more than we wanted to know.

In a covert bell curve moment, the lower than average intelligence
quotient of bleached D.C. allocated 20 mill, a buck a pop & mom, to equalize Negroes with psychic self-correcting breakfast which would allow their leaders to auto-repair the rest of us.

Above grounded, it was called the Contemporary Ancestral Pacifier, guaranteed to have all in your business. Coming out open folks called it getting a "cap through yo' ass."

(Leno quipped that we talked too much anyway and this would, at least, save us from all that yelling on the sub-way.)

It was all the Paleros and Iyalochas could do to stay out of the loop, much less help anyone else. Conversion was officially closed in those
circles. You had to be in line to stay in line.

This was the concession allowed to stave off their complaints of attrition

 

Vertical

A rainbowed sky is the fixed horizon
among the alleyways of light.
Recurring building towers have Quasimodo
humps, their spires, dowsing rods.

Lengthy, heavily boned people,
inhalers affixed like ornate Spanish
combs of flamenco Doñas,
tiptoe the panorama.

Terra vibratos,
spontaneity uneven—reactors
balloon and deflate their half-lives.
Degraded lungs of the world
at the ball's melting, melding center.

Under the rubble, under the graves
the ancient dead shake such angry fists.

 

Mother Earth

The whole boiling, burning sea
has finally begun to smolder.

The dolphins, leaving land again,
search deeply for remaining whales.

Green is peeking out,
under garish day-glo
from useless things.

Manipulated animals, re-made
fawns with sharp teeth,
does with claws.

Goats consume tiny tastes of uranium. Convert
them to pebbles under foot, walk away.

Steroidal breasts drain
in women, milk
returning to lucidity.

The eagles come down from
stratospheric heights, carrying
their nests from clouds.