Nomad

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If only I had enough

money to lose it all

in a recession, followed

by a pining depression

of my white postindustrial soul.

I want to name my cargo van

& travel for the sake of traveling.

Let me shake my pasty ass on camera,

I won an Oscar. So fun.

Post-pandemic America will be full

of broken-down motorhomes & white vans

that some nomadic white kid named for TikTok. ‍

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How do my dreams tell me that I am lost in the veins of society?‍

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I hit a golf ball with my brother

after I spend hours watching his kids,

because their Bible school can’t go a full day,

& he works so hard to buy them black shoes

because I can see white socks in the toes. ‍

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Can you give me a free pass? I’m not living the white life. ‍

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The gradual release of responsibility is a theory

that some equity professor enacted in teaching pedagogy,

some professor, who ignored the communal teachings

of my ancestors, & wants me to tell my brown students

to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. ‍

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What is a bootstrap?

           We wear Nikes or Adidas, puto,

                                   go read some Paulo Freire.  ‍

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And how can I tell them to stop working, to stop

driving forklifts, or cutting red sinews of flesh

from hanging cows on conveyor belts?

I have no release from my responsibilities.

I can’t build a cabin in the woods & jerk off,

I got shit to do.  

In the last days, men will be lovers of themselves.

What’s so bad about that? I love myself,

but I can’t help but think that “Whitman”

sounds so much like “Whiteman”,

& that to love oneself, you lose the souls

of those you are responsible for. ‍

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And yes, I ended a clause with a preposition. ‍

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I guess that’s just making

all the fucking difference, the body is electric,

but some of us don’t have to sing