You Chose the Joe Black Death in my Dreams
by Sabrina Dawkins
He approached you in a black suit.
You thought he was attractive.
He could rap, sing, dance, teach, shoot hoops,
lie.
An actor.
But when I saw Joe Black
in a dirty blonde wig,
he wore a suit that was white,
a blue (blood) shirt underneath,
and handcuffs
for financial crimes.
He stepped behind the mic
and belted out Drunk in Love;
with Jay-Z
she threw up devil horns at 4:23.
He Crip Walked in the middle
of the basketball court
while leaning on the shoulder
of the old white man
to his left for support.
In a dream
I saw Clive Davis
teach LeBron James how to play
basketball with an orange Nerf ball.
But LeBron looked like an adult.
I saw you on the sidelines, black women,
making bass thumps with your mouths
on Team Kobe Bryant
in Lakers warm-up jumpsuits,
cheering, clapping.
Handsome, tall
Joe Black dressed up.
Death hidden under a body
with a Michael Jordan smile
of satisfaction
watching his son Kobe play ball.
I saw Matt Barnes tatted up
in a restaurant that serves
good-tasting junk food.
He sat across the table
from an overweight
young black female
with weave braids.
He was teaching her Black Power.
I saw William Bludworth
in the middle of the street.
He had decided to become a truther.
I watched his slim long legs
like Magic Johnson’s maneuver
in the middle of the streets.
He wore blue jeans/genes
and a maroon vest that perhaps
Esau would wear.
He told you to have premarital sex
using the voices of actors, rappers, and singers,
one-night stands.
I saw him with long, black
mixed-person hair,
olive skin, in the body of a woman—a Siren
blowing fire into the air
like a dragon.
Kobe Bryant
couldn’t keep his eyes off her.
A pale Beyonce with vertical slits
dressed as a prostitute or stripper
beside me on a high school bus
looking like the living dead:
an image I could only see
while I slept in my bed.
I saw a young brown female
dragging Nipsey Hussle’s body
across a busy street, the highway,
farther and farther from me,
as if she were protecting it,
didn’t want anyone to take it.
But he was dead
and wearing Joe Black’s dress suit.
Death isn’t confined to one body.
He entertains.
In the streets, he gangbangs.
She sings beautiful melodies.
She’s sexy on covers of magazines.
In three-piece suits
he’s GQ-ready
He can be your friend for a spell,
ride the school bus with you;
in your youth,
your naivety and ignorance
sing you to sleep
with sweet Aaliyah-tone lullabies
and softly lift your soul
from your body.
And then wear the shell.
But don’t worry:
You’ll still be alive
when he takes you.
You’ll have just lost control.
A shell to a spirit
is not the same
as a shell to a person.
A shell to a spirit
is anything the invisible can influence
without detection:
a passenger that thinks
it’s the driver,
Death’s bridge
into the world.