Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib

The Music Or The Misery
 

“I went to sleep a poet / and I woke up a fraud / to calm your nerves / I’m feeling for my clothes in the dark”

    - Pete Wentz

 

I do not mean    the cartoon heart      the one that swells    from the wolf’s chest  when
distracted by
    a girl wolf             his tongue rolling      onto the hot pavement
right before the anvil    drops from
             an impossible height and he is crushed
again      foiled by a man’s               hunger                I say heart and mean the
actual heart      
         I saw my heart            in the eyes         of my mother
    and it was too small     to save her        I wrote my heart      in a poem
and it took up               the whole bedroom it doesn’t pay rent    it stays up
watching cities              burn to the ground I am so sorry          that you have
nowhere to sit               I just loved someone       yesterday        so you see
   the dilemma             I just promised           someone that     I would watch
   them grow old          in a country that   wants them dead   so I just can’t 
spare any more             room here take this mixtape I made         it is just 30 
minutes  of the wind                how it sounds when      being cut by        
something heavy  falling from the                 sky making an             endlessly dark

          shadow at my feet    while I blow          a kiss