photo credit: L. Lee Grismer

                  

Camouflage (for Alexs D. Pate)

To disappear is magic

To reappear revenge

She said you couldn’t

Make it

(Without her)

And you not only made it

You came back eating sushi

What kind of Negro eats dat 

Rumor has it you don’t dream

Don’t need to

Or don’t remember

Don’t admit 

You lose control enough to

Wonder off in some subconscious

Meander looking for resolution

Since you haven’t decided

Where sanity is

Dreams don’t need

To keep you there

You use to dream

In another life

In transition you went cold turkey  

Deciding to disappear

From your own mind

To live as phantom

Incognito   

Spraying noise and octopus ink

You’ve changed 

You cover your tracks

By dragging myths

Working magic

Hiding behind nonchalance

Or bursts of anger

Fits of drama

Contradictions   

How could you have disappeared

I saw your birthday

Invisible as it was

Running through fiction telling lies

Eating pickles skipping sidewalk cracks

You a conjure man

Working juju stolen from a deranged man

Mentored in a black hole

Stretched and spaghettified 

Losing shape and volume

Consumed completely

Like 

light speed

That’s how you disappeared

Without a trace

But I see you

If matter can’t be

Created or destroyed

What made you think

You could disappear

Even those who claim

Not to see you

Know you're there

A new species

A psychedelic gecko

Hiding everywhere at once