Excerpts no one asked for, from books no one will read.
What I said made him
make the kind of face
a man makes when his
wifey or woman or girl
or boothang or whatever
you wanna call says that
one thing that gets so
far under a man’s skin
that data scientists
and analysts have made
box and scatter plots
bar and pie charts
and histograms
to show the correlation
between said words and
domestic violence.
But it’s the real men
that keep to themselves,
unbothered and unfazed
except when their guard is
down, and they least expect
to let anyone see their
emotional side for even
a fraction of a fraction
of a fraction of a thought.
I caught him slippin’.
I caught his vulnerability.
His rage. His spectrum that
makes up all the other lantern
corps that aren’t green.
I didn’t care.
I wasn’t his wifey or woman
or girl or boothang or whatever.
Then he said,
”You think you’re fast. You don’t
know anything. You don’t know
what it feels like to run.
3:43.13.
1:40:91.
43:03.
19:19.
9:58.
You don’t know. To you, they’re
just numbers, times. Hmmph, you
don’t even know what you don’t know.
You don’t even know that that’s slow.
I was driving the other day, and I
say something. At first, I thought
it was a leaf, so I paid no attention,
but then I saw it squirming, crawling,
skittering across the street. It was
small, it had a tail, and it was running
for its life.
I swerved out of its way at the last second.
Why? Because I knew what you don’t. That, that
right there, was fast. It was speed.
And it was life. It was its entire life from
sidewalk to sidewalk. 60 feet. That’s less
than from the mound to home. And that rat
didn’t give 110% or some stupid made-up number.
It gave it’s life to make it. It gave everything
for no other reason than it was that or death.
And that’s what fast is. That’s what speed is.
And you don’t know shit.”
Then he left.
He was right.
I didn’t know shit.
“Girls like bad boys” he whispered
to himself with the confidence of a
baby bird about to fly
or crash for the first time.
He knew he had to do something.
Time was of the essence.
So he strapped his Jesus sandals on
over his ankle sock-laden feet,
tucked his 1980’s vintage
Reagan Bush tee
into his Wrangler jeans,
got on his Vespa
with his helmet securely unfastened
and head out into the dangerous world.
“This must be how it feels to be a man”
he thought while a manly montage of
super masculine manly man versions
of the man he himself wanted to be
played in his mind.
The wind chiseled his boyish face
and maneuvered through his bowl cut.
It shot through the holes in his helmet
the way insults do to one’s soul
when they are on the wrong end of
a roasting session.
“Today is the day” he roared like a
newborn dolphin, king of the seas.
He parked in a compact parking spot
with such grace that someone else
looking to park would have sworn
there was an empty space
right around that one car...
Only to be fooled once they turned
four-sevenths of the way in.
How embarrassing.
He cared no; he was the baddest of bad boys.
He jaywalked across crosswalks.
He didn’t say you’re welcome
to people who said thank you
after he held the door for them.
He didn’t just go to the yard where
the milkshake brought all the boys,
he brought reusable straws for all the boys.
Truly so very bad was he.
All that paled in comparison to his final act.
His vicious, dastardly move that cemented him
square in the heartbeat of the organ that
brings lifeblood to the body of villainy.
There was no redemption, no reincarnation
after this.
He saw a girl he fancied very much,
went straight up to her,
and spoke the unspeakable words
no man is ever supposed to speak
ever.
“I like you.”
“Hey Bitch bring That Ass here”
I hollered.
Everyone’s gaze descended
upon me like I was the
only black kid in a
predominantly white
classroom——death behind a
thousand blue eyes.
“What?” I inquired
unrepentantly as if
I was an unsaved
member of the Catholic
Church unwilling to agree
with the father’s words
about my sins during
confession,
“It’s their names.”
The park was a pair of
wireless noise-canceling
headphones after they’re
turned on, but before the
music starts.
Except for all the dogs
licking each others’
buttholes and having
convos in dogspeak.
She wasn’t expecting him
to move so fast,
but she didn’t know he
was Usain Bolt on a 400m
track that went along
more like a moving
walkway than a treadmill.
“No” she negatively
nodded nonchalantly
while verbally lip
syncing in ways she was
more than heard.
With the snap of a
middle, trigger, and
thumb finger he performed
the miraculous magic
trick a myriad of
African American fathers-
to-be make a reality
every so often and
vanished into the night
with such skill and
eloquence, even the
caped crusader himself
would have been impressed.
Never to be seen again,
never to have existed,
never to pay child
support or take a DNA
test or appear as a
contestant on Maury,
until one day, a familiar
facial encounter arose
where both parties looked
so similar it’s like they
must have been related or
(God forbid) familial
manifested.
The mini-me mimicked the
‘my old man’ cry in that
moment of that moment at
that moment and meddled,
“Dad?”
To which the male of
males, the man more manly
That all men,
The most nonmaternal
maturely full-mouthed
foulmouth muscled a murmur,
“I am not your dad!”