Concrete Gospel

I learned to count my blessings on cracked sidewalks,
where the gutter taught arithmetic and the stoop kept time,
where old men bellowed scripture over double-cupped coffee
and kids traded futures like baseball cards — folded, worn,
worth measured by tomorrow’s hustle.

We baptize ourselves in subway breath, the city’s damp hymn,
sirens singing like angels with badges and bad news.
Mama’s voice was gospel and warning both — “Child,
keep your head, don’t let them take your shine.”
So I wore patience like a chain, heavy but polished,
caught glints of hope in pawnshop windows and neon prayers.

Here, rhythm ain’t just music, it’s survival:
heels on pavement, bass on the block, breath hitched to rhyme.
We speak in similes of smoke and steel, in metaphors honed
by late nights standing under streetlamps, watching the sky
get scraped clean by towers that never learned to listen.
We memorize the names of the missing like sacred texts,
light candles in stoplights, let incense of exhaust and jasmine rise.

There’s a choir in every corner—vendors yell, children laugh,
old women clap in church basements to the sound of boiled greens,
toasters pop the news, radios preach the day’s sermon.
We trade recipes for better tomorrows: collard patience,
rice resilience, sugar of small victories—stirred slow, served hot.
Love here is a barter; you swap protection for loyalty,
smiles for secrets, quick hands for quicker instincts.

I carry my ancestors in pockets, in the split hem of my jeans,
their stories stitched into my knuckles, their names rolling
like coins when I pray for rent, for safety, for art to pay.
We are poets by necessity, painting murals with cadence,
scripting survival into verses that bend but don’t break.
When the streetlight flickers and the night folds up its map,
we stand, a congregation of breath and broken glass,
singing our concrete gospel until dawn answers back.