"My brothers are notorious."
They have not been to prison.
They have been imprisoned.
The prison is not a place you enter.
It is no place.
My brothers are notorious.
They do regular things, like wait.
On my birthday they say my name.
They will never forget that we are named.
What is that memory?
The days of our childhood together were steep steps
into a collapsing mind.
It looked like we rescued ourselves, more rescued.
Then there are these days, each day of our adult lives.
They will never forget our way through,
these brothers, each brother, my brother, dear brother,
my dearest brothers, dear heart--
Your hearts are broken.
This is not a secret though there are secrets.
And as yet I do not understand how my own sorrow has turned
into my brother's hearts.
The hearts of my brothers are broken.
If I knew another way to be, I would call a brother,
I would hear myself say, my brother, dear brother,
and dearest brothers, your heart--
On the tip of a tongue one note following another
is another, path another dawn where the pink sky
is the bloodshot of struck, of sleepless,
of sorry, as senseless, shush.
Those years of before me and my brothers, the years of passage,
plantation, migration, of Jim Crow segregation,
of poverty, inner cities, profiling, of one in three,
two jobs, boy, hey boy, each a felony,
accumulate into the hours inside our lives
where we are all caught hanging, the rope inside us,
the tree inside us, its roots our limbs,
a throat sliced through and when we open our mouths to speak,
blossoms, o blossoms, no place coming out,
brother, dear brother, that kind of blue.
The sky is the silence of brothers all the days
leading up to my call.
If I called I'd say good-bye before I broke the good-bye.
I say good-bye before anyone can hang up.
Don't hang up.
My brother hangs up though he's there.
I keep talking.
The talk keeps him there.
The sky is blue, kind of blue.
The day is hot.
Is it the cold?
Are you cold?
It does get cool.
Is it cool?
Are you cool?
My brother is completed by sky.
The sky is his silence.
Eventually, he says, it is raining.
It is raining down.
It was raining.
It stopped raining.
It is raining down.
He won't hang up.
He's there, he's there but he's hung up but he's there.
Good-bye, I say.
I break the good-bye.
I say good-bye before anyone can hang up, don't hang up.
Wait with me.
Wait with me though the waiting might be the call of good-byes.