Wednesday, December 5, 2007

For Yeheshua, Emmet and James: speaking to young Black men

He walks along the familiar streets

Passing familiar faces

Waving, smiling, shaking hands

It is night as they smile back

Leaving him unable to see

The devil’s gaze behind those eyes

For looks really can kill

And they will tonight


They embrace like normal

As he is numb to the daggers in his back

He goes with them

They’re his friends

Yes, the white man’s friendship

Is always inticing, isn’t it?

He’d follow them to hell and back

In brotherhood he accepts

What they hand to him

They all inhale

Yes, the white man’s world

Is always intoxicating, isn’t it?


Their muscles relax

Enough to make it fun and easy for them

And enough to numb him

To their stares and grins

“ya know kid, u’re funny…

Always were one of the cool niggers”

His smile relaxes as he notices

A tattoo on one of their arms

he’d never seen before

“let’s play a little game, boys”


He’s caught off guard

Like Hampton

Trying to rise to his defense

Like a Panther

As their fists knock him to the ground

Knuckles tattooed COINTELPRO


He’s barely conscious

They must have slipped me something

He thought

“I have to go to work tomorrow”

He mutters

“TOMORROW?!

Oh there is no tomorrow for you,

Boy…

It ends now”


They beat his face

Like our streets

Knock the wind out of him

Like deflated dreams deferred

He raises an arm to shield himself

And they bind him

His fingers are cut

Paying the old price of literacy

While the beating never ends


He bears the pain

But can’t help but cry out

Like the street’s son-less mother

“stop cryin boy!

Do those girls in the videos cry?!”

His tongue is cut

To silence him like Malcolm and Huey

Next are his eyes

“now we’ll make you as blind

As you’ve kept yourself”

And his ears

“hell, not like you were usin’ ‘em,

But we will

And keep ‘em

To remember you by”


He can yet smell the gasoline

That they’ve doused him with

Where they’ve brought him to

Under the cover of darkness

Castrating him

“let’s see how many lil

Bastards u make and leave

Without these”

Lives snatched from him

No wonder he still holds his own

“we’re gonna light ya!

Like Watts, Detroit

And the words of Leroi Jones”


He tries to scream

“no, you don’t have to do…”

choking on his own blood

Faintly hearing the matches struck

He braces himself

Like a boy in the 9th ward,

Watching the water rise

They toss them at his Dunks

The flames rise quicker


He tosses and flails

Like an addict in withdrawl

without methadone

reaching towards the heaven

he was taught to be eternal

but was never sure existed

hoping this trouble won’t last always

and boy, are they laughing

“BURN NIGGER!

Like the hoop dreams of your children!

Like AIDS burns your women!

Like bullets tearing through young innocent flesh!

BURN SLOW!”


One of them stomps out the flames

Like the hopes of the young hustler

Behind bars 25 to life,

To get a good picture while he smolders

Like grumblings of revolutions lost

In this grotesque, contorted form

They take his body for a last joyride

Tied to the back of the truck

On this jagged road

And one by one

His limbs roll away

Beginning with his head

Leaving a trail of what was once

Beautiful Blackness

1 comment:

Julia said...

This is Awesome! The flow of the words and the vision they invoke are fire!

Well Done!
Julia