"Liquid Lunch" is a blues-inspired debut collection of poetry by Stephen Bess. Successfully sprinkling dialect of Black Americans, Bess covers topics such as spirituality, human relations, traditions, and how our lives intertwine with music.
Bess successfully tackles a male's sexual prowessness and how his 'old lady' handles him in "Here's the Situation". He states, "I just wish my 'old lady would cut me some slack / 'cause I just met this sweet, fine thing. . ." Bess cleverly challenges the reader with Black folklore in somber "Death Bells"--a highly effective, brilliantly repetitive poem detailing the connection between life and death. Poem "Sweet and Steady"--a definite read, and personal favorite--instantly pulls you in with the narrator's tongue-in-cheek, and appropriately teasing words.
"Liquid Lunch" is serious, humorous, and entertainingly completed with musicality. This collection captures Black South and, like the Blues, represents how Black Americans make the best out of uncomfortable situations. A definite must-read book. For a complementary book, I'd suggest Nikki Giovanni's "Blues: For All the Changes".
-Stephen Earley Jordan II
author of "Beyond Bougie" and "Cold, Black, and Hungry"
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Wednesday, December 09, 2009
Thrusts
When I masturbate
I think of how many
hungry mouths I've fed,
and lost children
have fled from my black dick
down hollow throats,
into lubricated condoms,
onto chests, into loose vaginas,
and tight assholes,
attempting to impregnate,
to procreate something--
like dry-humping air with no hands.
It was not meant to be:
a child who will never become anything
but failed mess to his disilllusioned parents,
who pisses his bed with American Flag sheets,
in hopes their son's flames will not torch it--
then he'd REALLY be anti-American;
a child who will become President
of something, but not the U.S., but
the local gang,
sharing his teen sister with his boys
atop a pool table
in daddy's basement,
covering the scent of semen
with pungent yet sweet minerals
found in Lysol while he sits
on a cigarette-burned couch
playing X-Box.
This is what we've become.
Living on the Wild Side,
fucking the fuck out of a dumb fuck
just to say we fuck.
And though my name has 7 letters,
I'm still a 4-letter word to family.
Is that what they are?
Family.
These are the ones that we love.
These are the ones we try to not emulate.
These are the ones that attempt to control.
Their futile attempts at love and trying to
define IT wastes words and depletes my serotonin,
denying meds, cutting and burning and purging
my insides like a back-alley abortion
on a black mongoloid teen.
But I don't complain.
I celebrate every day
with memories of how you made it an art:
using me like black canvas covered in foodstamps,
with your soot-covered boots flaking
onto my back, while your thighs chaffed
my young neck.
Thrusting in.
Thrusting in.
Thrusting in!!!
Then you ask me why did I want to die
as you crawled into my bed
threatening to fuck me with a curling iron
if I said a word.
"Hush little baby, don't you cry. . ."
"And if you cry or say a goddamned word. I swear to God, I will kill you..."
And you wonder why I think bad thoughts
or jaded like an emerald would like to be?
I didn't choose this for myself,
you did.
I think of how many
hungry mouths I've fed,
and lost children
have fled from my black dick
down hollow throats,
into lubricated condoms,
onto chests, into loose vaginas,
and tight assholes,
attempting to impregnate,
to procreate something--
like dry-humping air with no hands.
It was not meant to be:
a child who will never become anything
but failed mess to his disilllusioned parents,
who pisses his bed with American Flag sheets,
in hopes their son's flames will not torch it--
then he'd REALLY be anti-American;
a child who will become President
of something, but not the U.S., but
the local gang,
sharing his teen sister with his boys
atop a pool table
in daddy's basement,
covering the scent of semen
with pungent yet sweet minerals
found in Lysol while he sits
on a cigarette-burned couch
playing X-Box.
This is what we've become.
Living on the Wild Side,
fucking the fuck out of a dumb fuck
just to say we fuck.
And though my name has 7 letters,
I'm still a 4-letter word to family.
Is that what they are?
Family.
These are the ones that we love.
These are the ones we try to not emulate.
These are the ones that attempt to control.
Their futile attempts at love and trying to
define IT wastes words and depletes my serotonin,
denying meds, cutting and burning and purging
my insides like a back-alley abortion
on a black mongoloid teen.
But I don't complain.
I celebrate every day
with memories of how you made it an art:
using me like black canvas covered in foodstamps,
with your soot-covered boots flaking
onto my back, while your thighs chaffed
my young neck.
Thrusting in.
Thrusting in.
Thrusting in!!!
Then you ask me why did I want to die
as you crawled into my bed
threatening to fuck me with a curling iron
if I said a word.
"Hush little baby, don't you cry. . ."
"And if you cry or say a goddamned word. I swear to God, I will kill you..."
And you wonder why I think bad thoughts
or jaded like an emerald would like to be?
I didn't choose this for myself,
you did.
Unattached
When I masturbate
I think of how many
hungry mouths I've fed,
and lost children
have fled from my black dick
down hollow throats,
into lubricated condoms,
onto chests, into loose vaginas,
and tight assholes,
attempting to impregnate,
to procreate something--
like dry-humping air with no hands.
It was not meant to be:
a child who will never become anything
but failed mess to his disilllusioned parents,
who pisses his bed with American Flag sheets,
in hopes their son's flames will not torch it--
then he'd REALLY be anti-American;
a child who will become President
of something, but not the U.S., but
the local gang,
sharing his teen sister with his boys
atop a pool table
in daddy's basement,
covering the scent of semen
with pungent yet sweet minerals
found in Lysol while he sits
on a cigarette-burned couch
playing X-Box.
This is what we've become.
Living on the Wild Side,
fucking the fuck out of a dumb fuck
just to say we fuck.
And though my name has 7 letters,
I'm still a 4-letter word to family.
Is that what they are?
Family.
These are the ones that we love.
These are the ones we try to not emulate.
These are the ones that attempt to control.
Their futile attempts at love and trying to
define IT wastes words and depletes my serotonin,
denying meds, cutting and burning and purging
my insides like a back-alley abortion
on a black mongoloid teen.
But I don't complain.
I celebrate every day
with memories of how you made it an art:
using me like black canvas covered in foodstamps,
with your soot-covered boots flaking
onto my back, while your thighs chaffed
my young neck.
Thrusting in.
Thrusting in.
Thrusting in!!!
Then you ask me why did I want to die
as you crawled into my bed
threatening to fuck me with a curling iron
if I said a word.
"Hush little baby, don't you cry. . ."
"And if you cry or say a goddamned word. I swear to God, I will kill you..."
And you wonder why I think bad thoughts
or jaded like an emerald would like to be?
I didn't choose this for myself,
you did.
I think of how many
hungry mouths I've fed,
and lost children
have fled from my black dick
down hollow throats,
into lubricated condoms,
onto chests, into loose vaginas,
and tight assholes,
attempting to impregnate,
to procreate something--
like dry-humping air with no hands.
It was not meant to be:
a child who will never become anything
but failed mess to his disilllusioned parents,
who pisses his bed with American Flag sheets,
in hopes their son's flames will not torch it--
then he'd REALLY be anti-American;
a child who will become President
of something, but not the U.S., but
the local gang,
sharing his teen sister with his boys
atop a pool table
in daddy's basement,
covering the scent of semen
with pungent yet sweet minerals
found in Lysol while he sits
on a cigarette-burned couch
playing X-Box.
This is what we've become.
Living on the Wild Side,
fucking the fuck out of a dumb fuck
just to say we fuck.
And though my name has 7 letters,
I'm still a 4-letter word to family.
Is that what they are?
Family.
These are the ones that we love.
These are the ones we try to not emulate.
These are the ones that attempt to control.
Their futile attempts at love and trying to
define IT wastes words and depletes my serotonin,
denying meds, cutting and burning and purging
my insides like a back-alley abortion
on a black mongoloid teen.
But I don't complain.
I celebrate every day
with memories of how you made it an art:
using me like black canvas covered in foodstamps,
with your soot-covered boots flaking
onto my back, while your thighs chaffed
my young neck.
Thrusting in.
Thrusting in.
Thrusting in!!!
Then you ask me why did I want to die
as you crawled into my bed
threatening to fuck me with a curling iron
if I said a word.
"Hush little baby, don't you cry. . ."
"And if you cry or say a goddamned word. I swear to God, I will kill you..."
And you wonder why I think bad thoughts
or jaded like an emerald would like to be?
I didn't choose this for myself,
you did.
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Petals and Beagles
Petals and Beagles
by Stephen Earley Jordan II
I wish I knew who lived above me in apartment 4C.
At 3:17am on fridays, tuesdays and wednesdays
and sometimes mondays and thursdays,
I hear rose petals crushed under workboots,
homemade butterscotch stirred
with a wooden-handle spoon,
cartoons switching to reruns of MASH.
I wake myself sweating
like your mother's menstruation (long gone),
wiping myself in 500-count silk sheets,
remembering when you forced me to watch
Comet and Snickers, your childhood male beagles,
give IT to each other, grunting and barking and panting
while I shivered in the corner of the toolshed
your father made just for them,
the hamsters, gerbils, and rabbits.
With a slight grin, eyebrow raised,
smelling of aqua velva aftershave,
and bubbalicious bubble gum,
you said, "This is between us."
You were sent away, somewhere far away
like a deferred dream,
where falling stars are caught
and placed into position by black cherubs,
where boys become men
with blinded wives,
and you will forget me.
by Stephen Earley Jordan II
I wish I knew who lived above me in apartment 4C.
At 3:17am on fridays, tuesdays and wednesdays
and sometimes mondays and thursdays,
I hear rose petals crushed under workboots,
homemade butterscotch stirred
with a wooden-handle spoon,
cartoons switching to reruns of MASH.
I wake myself sweating
like your mother's menstruation (long gone),
wiping myself in 500-count silk sheets,
remembering when you forced me to watch
Comet and Snickers, your childhood male beagles,
give IT to each other, grunting and barking and panting
while I shivered in the corner of the toolshed
your father made just for them,
the hamsters, gerbils, and rabbits.
With a slight grin, eyebrow raised,
smelling of aqua velva aftershave,
and bubbalicious bubble gum,
you said, "This is between us."
You were sent away, somewhere far away
like a deferred dream,
where falling stars are caught
and placed into position by black cherubs,
where boys become men
with blinded wives,
and you will forget me.
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