1900
There's a history of blood on crosses. The gallons
of blood shed on the intersections of King Ave.
and Malcolm X Ave. Every ounce a mockery
of the names sacrificed to violence. Or rather crucified by it.
The countless young men
and women caught up in juvenile mentalities
think Scarface died on the cross.
& I'm not religious, but it's a wicked vision.
They internalize
banana clips more than the world externalizes the ape they are falsely portrayed as. They read
asinine rap lyrics like holy scriptures and preach
those words through their ignorance of self.
They baptize themselves in cognacs & blood
until they are drunken and blind by the vain of sin.
& the misconstrued truths in the poetry of death.
Because there is truly nothing more Shakespearean than bloodshed, death and deceit,
especially on a Summer's day. They think
the world is all bandos and amphetamines. Drugged
up on the realities of abandonment. They've abandoned each other.
Forced to live in worlds where you prove you ain't a
or end up in obituaries.
The world has seen
these men and women as corpses since infancy.
& they know the cotton their ancestors
picked was just the foundation
for the interior of their final resting beds.
It has become routine to make their final homes a coffin
before they even know of a real life.
Before knowing the colors of the rainbow
that extend beyond adolescence, the vision of seeing a seed grow
rather than seeing it buried in soil, and the feeling of real love or knowing any definition of it.
What is a world
where humanity is loss within human context? Human and beast
have become synonymous. It is safe
to say they have always been. Them all abandoned
by human dignity and humanity. The turmoil slick, they've slipped
and slid, abandoning themselves. They've propped
the ropes around their own necks and impatiently wait for the noose knots to be tied.
& a person of their own pigment will elevate
their bodies until light fades to the blackness of 365 coffins. Night
is revealed by the day and for each, a body will lay.
Stilled by the stillness of silence & the stillness of change.
Their final portrait potrayed by chalk outlines,
and a river of their blood, sweat and family's tears. A life denoted
by tragedy and celebration is all there is. But the true
tragedy lies within the celebration of their death. The magnitude
doesn't equate to crushed ivory. Their spirit blackened
to a soul's hell. Time will only tell
until I perspire under the scintillating flames. Scorched
by the inescapable fate of inked blood and blackness.
My short story only to be a landmark in the necessity for change.
Or maybe just another tear for the ocean, a reason for the
smile upon the lips of Mephistopheles,
& simply another worthless soul
chained to the life we've adopted.
