Black Man on Fire
Tony Keith Jr.
Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contest 2020 (view all the winners)
First Prize, Tom Howard, Poetry
Illustrations by Anthony Pugh
when I write
I'm dangerous
I be more lethal in pen
than words spoken out-loud
cause spoken words are sharp
they cut deep
they be like daggers
they be like swords
stuck in concrete
they be like letters
melted into stone
them joints be
spelling out loud
all of the hard shit
I be trynna soften up
just enough
to smoothly slice
in-between
all of the rock
and all of the pebble
and to sift through
and to split up
all of the shit
and every single
speck of sand
and scared ideas
I have about losing
my battle
my war, with myself
my internalized civil unrest
my crusade for liberation
my freedom beating
breathing, beneath
my Black skin
digging up
all of my dirty roots
and burning up
all of my sage
trynna clean up
and straighten out
all of the stirred up soil
and all of the smelly shit
I be wanting covered, forever
a stench buried, forever
a rot
swallowed into the earth
a decay
digested by gravity
a corpse
consumed in that space
where the magma boils
like a bubbling pool of
water on fire
in a place
hot as hell
where I be cooking myself
in a simmering crockpot
full of all the salty
saucy, spicy, and sweet shit
I gotta deal with
being burned alive
by myself, forever
where I be a solitary flame
where I be a Black
crispy faggot on fire
stuffed down there
in the pit
in the sink
where the kitchen
and the baby's bath water
get lost
cause I be getting lost
trying to discover myself
reflected in puddles of wonders
I made from my own tears
a hoard of emotions
liquified from the heat
caused by the anger
rubbing on the inside
of my veins
an itch in my blood
I could only scratch
with the blade
I balanced between
my tongue and the paper
where my words
carve holes in glass ceilings
inside of homes
with stones scattered
across the floor
and where I make room
for my escape
from the moments
when my fuel
would meet my spark
and I'd become
a grenade
with the lynchpin
attached by a
thin layer of my Black skin
and I'd be a bomb
ticking to the tune
of my own time
and so I'd make my own time
to write
I'd pause to extinguish myself
to cool myself down
to wash myself off
to cleanse myself out
to keep myself
from turning myself
into the ashes
and so I wrote
to keep my gay Black ass
far enough from the incinerator
high above the point
where my flesh
would be scalding
on a cast iron skillet
disguised as a space
for Black people's safety
and all I needed
was some saving words
