American Sonnet for My Past and Future Assassin

I thought we might as well sing the fables of sea
To fill our mouths before sailing out to whale.
I thought we might sing as well of the feeling
Of sea moving about the whale like a coat.
The color of water is always the temperature
Of a mirror.  I thought we might drown
Our reflections in a swaying like our songs
Of mother wit & mother woe, our toasts
With the water a deep dark blue, an almost
Indigo we paled from the well before sail.
Whale-road is a kenning for sea. Time-machine
Is a kenning for the mind. Alive is a kenning
For the electrified. I thought we might sing
Of the wire wound round the wound of feeling.

American Sonnet for My Past and Future Assassin

Later the white boy we once beat like a drum
Died after crashing his Camaro around a bend
Off Shop Road. He was an asshole. Ask the baby
Black boys he bullied at Robert E. Lee Middle School
Where the Robert E. Lee statue was painted white
So often over the years it looked like someone
Covered in a sheet of glue.  I would not have liked
To attend a middle school named after Emmet Till
Or for that matter, any murdered black person.
When I was the age of Emmet Till, I reckoned
MLK was an old man at the age he was killed.
I am old enough now to know the drum, though beaten,
Is not an instrument of violence. Nor is a banjo
Or whistle. I’m sorry I missed the white boy’s funeral.

American Sonnet for My Past and Future Assassin

One side of blue shifts like water, one side
Shifts like an autumn afternoon. One side
Of watching is seeing. One side of our money
Is for me, one side is for you. One side
Of seeing is looking. One side of the country
Cannot distinguish blackness from evening.
One side of fear is vanity. One side of vanity
Is baby powder, one side is powder keg.
One side of the flag is yours, one side
Is theirs. Soldiers can raise a poet. A shepherd
Can love a wolf. One side of carefree is careless,
One side is careful. One side of the dollar
Bears the face of my assassin, one side
Declares In God We Trust because trust is godly.