This morning a group of people working for the government decided
that all children who lived below the poverty line should not have to pay
for breakfast or lunch at school
Be we don’t give a _________________.
No, man we the people don’t trust the government
We the people…don’t trust the police
We the people…we hate the police
They don’t care nothing about us
We the people…be steady mobbin’
The headline read, “3 Young Black Men, Killed”
No one saw or heard anything
No one knew who did it
Two weeks later another headline read, “5 More Young Black Men, Dead”
We the people…take care of our own
Don’t need nothing from ya’ll
Don’t want nothing from ya’ll
Them white folks don’t care nothing ‘bout us
We be steady mobbin’
We be steady mobbin’
Tar graves for tar babies
The concrete graves cry out
See, we the people don’t go over there
She ain’t making no money
I can make more money than him without no degree
We be steady mobbin’
Tameka was 15 when her son was born and 18 when her daughter was born
Tavon was 13 when his father was locked up and 19 when he was sent to the same cell block
Big ballin’ is my hobby
We the people…you don’t want to mess around with us
You see Lil Will was 14 when he made his first sale and 20 when he made his first million
You see Lil Will was 16 when he murdered someone
Now that Lil Will ain’t little he still cares about the neighborHOOD
He made sure that LaKeshia’s tuition was paid for
We take care of our own
We the people…be steady mobbin’
We be celebrating drug dealers
We be lovin’ our ball players
We havin’ our babies
We be droppin’ out of school
We be getting’ locked up
We steady mobbin’
Gun Girl
Gun shy, grinning girl
Beaten by the crazy stick
Lovely nights of hot physical nothingness
Screeching nightmares of wedding bliss
Dumbfounded, confounded
Misused china doll, dirty faced
Cleaned up
She is just a baby all grown up
Waiting to be consoled
Gun shy, too young to be so old
No more innocent smiles, now just womanly wiles
Someone to be feared and used
Gun-shy girl, not a killer
But, a fighter weakened by forgiveness
Grins of past disasters and private pain
Haunted by babies never held and love never consummated
Gun-shy girl can’t stand to live but too scared to pull the trigger
Some Say
Some say it is more than what it seems
Who says? Who are those quotable folks?
Where are they when it is actually happening?
And life is actually moving
And decisions are actually being made
What are they saying then?
When, it is really going down
And life is turning round and round
When up is where and where is down
Are they creating their quips?
I beg to understand it
Some say this
Some say that
Who says its right?
We validate by saying it over and over
A Question
What have we done?
So carelessly, so effortlessly
What generation have we created?
They do not care for school or books or writing
They do not care for history or classics or language
I fear we have weakened out children
Alienated them from expression
Snatched their voice
What utter doom awaits
Those who cannot communicate
What tragedy will ensue?
I have seen their faces riddled with insecurities
Absolutely unable to tell us
What ails them, what hurts them?
Curse them, ignore them
We sentence them
We sacrifice their black bodies upon the thousands
Of imprisoned and illiterate bodies
Marred with the scourge of slavery
We have turned our heads see our sins
We have closed our ears so we cannot hear the cries of history
To my students
These words are
For you
Born in this world
To those who
Have been labeled
Never listen to those
Holding the labels
Because they have already decided
Who you are
Listen to your heart
Because it only beats for you
With deliberate speed
Can we cure it with all deliberate speed?
The children can’t write, the children can’t read
Injured parties of our idiosyncrasies
I plead to all who will hear, are we as mobile
As a vengeful army moves upon an enemy?
Can our speed be as deliberate… steadfast…unmoving?
Can the leaders of the free world lead, if they cannot decode the language of their countrymen?
The Creatures.
We are destructive creatures
Merciless, uncouth
We cry and crouch in the night
Screaming to God
Unseen and unheard
Chopping through the midnight
On a murderous rampage
Tasting blood to feel some healing
God, can you hear us?
The pleading begins. The begging.
Dreaming stops.
Nightmares rise up and stain the once picturesque horizon
Pitch black; tears flow; crimson spills
Doubting, doting killers
A prayer might be in order
Listen.
Lil’ Mama
Mama loves those girls
Hers but not hers
Young mama with more
Than she can handle
Mama loves the boys
Hers and those she birthed
She don’t know how to show it or feel it
Her heart is not unscathed
And she gives the best love she knows
School don’t love her
Books don’t get her eyes
She loves the ease of the streets—she thinks
But it’s all she knows
The streets don’t love her
The blocks they own her
And brick and cement suck up her life
And the paper trail ain’t too far
Mama loves those girls
Mama loves those boys
But not so good or so well
Mama wants to see and hear and speak
My boys—revisited
He got hands
Small hands now
Big hands later
Emmitt was 14 when he met his end
Too big to joke and be
Inappropriate
Beaten, shot, stabbed—most horribly
My little boy is so mad
He throws chairs down the stairs
Flips over trash cans
He doesn’t understand that he got hands
Small hands now
Big hands later
Trayvon got into a fight—wearing a hoodie
The last thing on his body
His last day on Earth, breathing
Too big to buy Skittles, stroll through
Talk
s smack and be inappropriate
Killed—shot—and again
My little boys kicks doors
Hits other little boys
Screams and yells
He got hands
Small hands now
Big hands later
They got hands too
Hands that dig graves
Easy
An 80’s Thing
Yeah, yeah I was conceived when
Luther was making love a vision
Bellowing out dreams of love faithfully
I was conceived when
Glamour was revolutionized and
Doves cried in purple rain while a Prince
Became a star
I was conceived when the sky was lit with
Atlantic Starrs and they created masterpieces
While romantics enjoyed secret loves
I was conceived when
Vanity was sanity, and a curly haired boy
With one glove danced across the moon
And thrilled a globe
I was conceived when material girls
Lived the glamorous life
And dressed up boy toys in love
It was a time when life was an event and time
Was measured with a never ending Rolex
A Little Light
We are walking in darkness
Someone lit a match
Poof!
Good God Almighty
Hear my prayer!
We are stumbling in the path
Of speckled moonlight
Peeking through the clouds
God deliver me from
All this violence
Amen.
I say a prayer. I shroud myself
In belief,
Knowing people somewhere are walking
In the glow of dawn
God deliver me from all this death
Amen.
My eyes are filled with trouble
Dirty little angel faces
Whose bodies are filled with life
Menacing. Menacing. Menacing.
The air chokes you with despair
Someone light a match.
Poof!
Trudging, trudging, trudging, trudging along
God helps those
Who help themselves
Stumble. Trip. Fall.
I can’t see in here.
Broken
You think you got wings
Polished. Smoothed.
Get your feet in the air
And find your wings untrue
You touch them, glistening
Sparkling divine
How heartily I wish these were mine!
The feathers are clean
And sweetly perfumed
Awaiting a flight on
A summer’s afternoon
Covet not. Want not.
Yet, I want to fly
With these perfect wings
Beauteous, pulchritudinous
WINGS
Unlike my tattered wings
Unlike these filthy things
That cannot glide
As
These
Prayer
This place, this place, this place of prayer
Just close your eyes and you are there
Quiet darkness filled with love
In Holy Communion
With God above
This place of blessed
Sacred conversing
With echoes of angels choir rehearsing
Enter this space, fearless, and jumble
Accepting His grace, still and humble
This place, ethereally
Connects . . . . . uplifting
You from the clinches of flesh
Bring your grief, sorrow, and sin
Leave them here, let them end
Fear
Afraid, yes
I have been afraid
So deathly afraid
Terrified
I have been scared of doors closing
And windows locked down tight
Scared of dark rooms
Scared of closed spaces
Scared of me
Petrified of dying
And horrified of living
Southern Girls
We some baby rocking, chicken frying, love making sistas
We some cake baking, hip shaking, sweet tasting sistas
We some sepia toned, silk brown, chocolate dipped sistas
We some choir rehearsing, hand clapping, love shacking sistas
We some fussing, cussing, deep trusting sistas
We some love you all night long, never do you wrong sistas
We some full bodied, hot blooded, soul stirring sistas
We some fill you up food and love,
hold you tight with kisses and hugs sistas
We some mean collard greens, corn bread,
and black eye peas sistas
We some do you want sweet potatoes or candid yams sistas
Hot tempered, Hot Loving, Sweatin’ by the oven sistas
Lay you down where you can’t leave sistas
Smell so good you can’t breathe sistas
We some good bye don’t mean gone sistas
We some do everything we can for our man sistas
We some help is on the way sistas
We some thank God for this day sistas
We some love more than you hate sistas
Wrong Song on Repeat
Mingus and me sat down last night
And I told him I was heartbroken
Mingus kept playing, uninterrupted
I screamed at him, he made me angry
Mingus kept playing
“He broke my heart,” I told him.
Mingus kept playing, drums smashing
Against the rails of my mind
“Go talk to Coltrane!” He yelled, “You’re turning me off.”
When getting lost is good
Some days I am lost in a poem
I cannot find my way back to the world
I cannot think outside my poem
I can’t do anything, but wrap that poem around my thoughts
I have no time for silly people
Or frivolous banter, no I must capture this poem
Write it down
Commit it to paper
Through strokes of glorious ink
Me—the story goes
I is the narrative
Story of my life
Dream a little…die a little
Forget a lot
Truth be told
There is no truth when you are old
I am here again
Narrating
Live a little…scream a little
Cry a lot
True love exists in fairy tales
Who’s living one?
Close the book. Don’t read it.
Look for the pictures.
? There aren’t any
I can’t believe this is not in 3rd person
Damn, I am
Still the narrator
Fornicate a little…judge a little
Keep telling the same old story
In My House
Find yourself here again
In the close of day
Your mind in perpetual, intellectual reflection upon the day
What thoughts have you had?
What dreams have drifted in and out this day?
Here’s a quiet moment, now
Not for resting, but for thinking
Turn world turn, like the reels of my mind
I need to sit with Socrates
And mull over this globe’s dilemmas
And find solutions in the midst of mayhem
Mr. Dubois, can mediate, while I serve
Jimmy and Lorraine some tea
Ernest likes red wine, and Mr. Eliot can only sip
While picking Ezra’s brain
Oscar laughs at the scene
Eudora and I
will try to be on
A first name basis with Mr. Faulkner
And Margaret, she’s one to talk
She kept Richard all to herself
I felt he had some strong words for Mr. Washington
Here I am amongst the thinkers, the real thinkers
I pray Mr. Nietzsche doesn’t require my company—he’s not very social
I am thinking with them trying to understand this western concept of self
Tennessee and August over hear me and began to chuckle
Mr. O’Neill joins them and I blush
I cannot talk to Frances or Ida or Mary
They tease me and call me “Young Stuff”
So, I wonder around, not aimlessly though
Looking for something, bumping into old friends
Emily and Robert, I have not spoken to them in a while
I believe Robert has been quite upset since I fell in love Mr. Hughes,
And became infatuated with Mr. McKay and doted on Mr. Johnson
I’ll love him again one day, soon
I switch best friends like thoughts and whims
Just ask Zora
She understands cause we go way back and here I am
You know I had fling with a most peculiar Mr. Salinger
He took me for a ride and dropped me off on Mr. Haley’s steps
And there I stayed, for a while too
If you know Alex, he’ll keep you for a while
I thought a long time about just up and leaving
But, I couldn’t so I stayed longer than I expected
And before you know it
A lovely gentleman named Fitzgerald was romancing me
It did not last as long as the others
(cont.)
But what a memory!
I thought I couldn’t think with so many people in my house
I’ve never really been able to put them out
Even when they kept me up at night
This space has thoughts
This space has thinkers
Short Lived
I cannot shake this feeling.
I cannot rip it out
Love.Speak.Easy. Page 3