Keep off the grass
Childhood lessons from pastel ladies
In Family Dollar lawn chairs
Framed in silver
As silver as silver fleeces
Over their Sunday best
Hats ringed with synthetic roses
The wise often wear many crowns
They Preach
Leviticus 19:27
Tho shall not cut corners
But shit we all had to cut corners
Running around two story project apartments
Growing up and out of
hammy downs to fast
Good will – God’s will and other glorified bullshit
Never ceases
The top of High Top
White Old Schools
Scuffed up as my uncles
Scratched up black boom boxes
Thats real rap wrapped up
With solar powered duct tape
Heating up that Loud – Mary J
In the cuts of notorious
compartments and apartments
Blasting
Real Love, One Love & Juicy
Until the mix tape popped
I remember
Nas. Since 1996
Imagine that
If I ruled the world, I’d free all my sons
Black diamonds and pearls
If I ruled the world
It would have stretched from Tone’s
Get a dollar lunch – A bag a of pepperonis and hot sauce
Set to the sunset
Over the basketball court
I seen
God’s will falling through the net
Kids morning the dead
Squirting Huggie’s juice on the ground for a dead homie
Sticks in my head
Like the crunching of skulls
Like the gnashing of 25 cent Doritos
Or the swallowing of 50 cent bullets to the face
Becomes bills with no names
Eyes popped we become blinded in the dark
Setting fires – ritualistic predispositions to burning shit
Now and Later s microwaved & aggressed into my memories like melting crayons
Where white boys in blue speeding through backyards
Flashing flags on top of their toy cars
Lookin like The Bloods, Creeps, and the KKK
Playing ring around the Rosie’s
Just another pleage with no respect for rented propriety
At 7 I peeped around corners just to watch them
Chasing boys up the block for their pay
My father always told me every man got to eat
I remember
Fish fry’s on Fridays
Frying in the sun kissed blue-luminated algae surface of public pools
Sterilizing my head with holy water
I get high off the memory
Mix of Ghetto Puerto Rican icees – Deep frozen in styrofoam cups of purple or blue Kool-Aid
Served on the side of 3 star rent dinners
From state certified kitchens. Supplying
Grade A kush, eggs, babysitters, and braids to the back
2 jobs and some food stamps
Just working with scraps they were given
Black women make miracles everyday
I have never found religion
My mother always told me every child has to eat
But growing up there was never any compensation
I eat memories with a switchblade tongue
My mouth has bled with fresh blood
But I don’t cut myself anymore
I won’t pass the skewed bar to even be in that statistic
Never be a poster child posted up
For throwing up
Block signs
Weighing myself worth on digital rulers
As framed as faces on milk cartons
As white as holy lines that passed through my eyes
But never through my hands
My tuition was still payed – call it divine intuition
Or accessory to necessary niceties
Are 13 year olds whose lives stand stuck on street corners
No Ambers
Alerts for walking zombies
Fatal does not always mean death