The difference between poetry and rhetoric
is being ready to kill
yourself
instead of your own children.

I am trapped on a desolate place of raw gunshot wounds
and a dead child dragging his shattered
face off the edge of my sleep
blood from his punctured mouth and shoulders
is the only liquid for miles
and my stomach
grimaces at the imagined taste while
my mouth splits into crusty dry lips
without rhyme or reason
thirsting for the wetness of his blood
as it sinks lower into the ignorance
of  that place where I am lost
without imagery or magic
trying to make power out of hatred and destruction
trying to heal my dying brother with warmth
only the sun will radiate his bones quicker.

A policeman who shot down a thirteen year old in the bronx
stood over the boy with his cop shoes in childish blood
and a voice said “Die you little motherfucker” and
there are tapes to prove it. At his trial
this policeman said in his own defense
“I didn't notice the size nor nothing else
only the color”. And
there are tapes to prove that, too.

Today that 37 year old white man
with 13 years of police forcing
was acquitted and set free
by eleven white men who said they were satisfied
justice had been done
and one brother who said
“They convinced me” meaning
they had dragged his 5'8'' latino man's frame
over the hot coals
of four centuries of white male approval
until he let go
the first real power he ever had
and lined his own womb with cement
to build a graveyard for our children to be buried.

I have not been able to touch the destruction
within me.
But unless I learn to use
the difference between poetry and rhetoric
my power too will inject corruption like a poisonous dart
or lie limp uselessly as an unconnected wire
and one day I will take my teenaged plug
and connect it to the nearest socket
raping an 35 year old white woman
who is somebody's mother
and as I beat her senseless with no remorse
a chorus will be singing this hook one time
“Poor thing. he never hurt a soul. What beasts they are