Poetry by Adam Ai

                         ​greg CC



Baptism by Name

Jill stood on the tracks alone, raising hours 
I left empty in darkness, engine-flame stroking 
rear the pitch-blue house we shared. Webs of paint – 
blue to red, red to black – flung slack in darkling rain. 
 
Corey overdosed alone, bluesy and mottled in bruises, 
pill-bottled and boozed. We used to make jokes 
about suicide. We laughed a lot and it helped,
till it didn’t. When his sister came – I couldn’t face her.

Billy was lightning jaked at a runaway pick-up 
that shucked-up onto the baked sidewalk – some drunk –
of a no-place road in Palm Springs. Cruel heat
I can’t believe. In love with me. I had laughed, ashamed.

Michelle was murdered. It was on the news.
Stabbed to death by her boyfriend. A spitting wolf-trail
scats black from the door, staggers at the telephone, 
floods the floor. The reporter didn’t know I loved her.

It was not long after her sister Melanie was shot
and killed at a house party. They say it was accident.
Meant for someone else. Nobody knows what happened 
to their dad after that. Rick – my best friend once.

We stutter among our living and the dead not knowing 
much about the touch that catches us, what keeps.
What the choice to live requires from kindness
and what I owe each hour. My choice – love or fire.  

Halved and halved again, I sink to my knees 
Christmas Eve in Los Angeles, who surprises me – 
this cursive, loping scribble of voices I hear. I imagine 
angels listen, crouching the spaces in-between words.

“But there are angels everywhere,” Stefanie says, 
“all around you. Why go on your knees?” And my sister
stands and kicks this joyous, arm-out, shimmy-shimmy,
winging wind and sea, ether to strange ways, blown open.

The storm struggles all through me, garbles half-mouthed,
and I moan as it sets wet into my eyes, the sky like the ocean, 
wily, froth - ocean like the sky. This drowning sensation –  
the flood. So much blood. Will I rise believing I’m worth this mystery?

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Dog-boy

Dog-boy take me down the tracks, I’m shaking, 
can’t you feel the train? Give me something, I said. 
Where are you taking us? The end?

Hollywood at sunrise, no hero, no heroine – 
this isn’t a fucking movie – 
the streets are broken glass we rush past Sunset. 

Today will be better, Dog-boy said.
Dog-boy could never stop dealing.
Let’s go get on. This time we’re going all the way.

It’s coming down so fast. 
It’s coming through so hard.
Let’s go get on.

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Adam Ai is a Puerto Rican and Basque poet and U.S. Army veteran from Los Angeles. His poems have been published in various print and online publications. He lives with a Ghost. Hobbies include time travel and teaching robots love. Connect with him on Twitter and Instagram @AdamAiPoems.

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