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American Ghetto American Ghetto -We’ve gone from Machavelli to Milli- The pavement’s fresh on corpses, and up-on three wheels, spinning hydo’s The hats a high titled and down fierce to pride Dayton’s and the heart of America- Days defiling The six shooter A cowboy Strut of all struts Jazz to this jazz A man of men proud and brown saying the first were high or long, angular and hard like the concrete, always six feet, always fast, and there is always mother’s crying Moo moo’s cradled in dances up-on blood, stained, and red lights blink the faces for seconds of a night and beams Cheers of the crowd and men with sticks who every night chase the same man until blood is graffiti, 25 IS old The streets do have names, all of them only numbers and crying bones in back alleys sucking glass dick- five dollars for the real thing People pay Show’s are on Saturdays On the way to the zoo folks stop by and point The Betty Ford of gangs The heights Streets with names You’re my love Dreadlocks, and all big black colors-ancestors The brother high in palm trees tapping wine and dying, and we’re all dying Yes The American Ghetto of what never WANTED to say The rap dreams of wrap sheets Come and be falsified, and prettified- a death A stiff stone, loving hoes, and deep down- I know they’re women Soul- the pavements always circulating back, a Hindu on genocide The street game’s the only thing controlled Melodies-all steel melody, wanting only melody, something smart Just a line or two, the beat Getting older too The streets, all have names There’s no song but this, the poem Cracks so close to what it is to want to feel, so black- the night a thing that has weight, depth in this place The grooves and grids below can sometimes twinkle stars, backwards The landslides of people The humanity once called flowers, which use to mean white buildings and a gathering of the masses All once held true everything that couldn’t make sense because us couldn’t make sense, and us stopped studying just the white bounded books And they were great But mythology’s with too many gods Robes in all colors Now, the only myth that’s true is of choppers circling because of the fear on the ground The children grow old in spirit, ready to be warriors Take up the guns and die with tears, and bleed with every tear except your father’s words from in his cell He cries bathing in his love Each of his solitudes the only real possession, the only sanity Buried the youth of his own, and others, deep in his bowels with Rico balloons I’m scared too real I’m afraid of the reflection, myself on the backside of the mirror, and you I’ve always been but never seen Fragments coming through like chips in the street- love black, stained like oil, gasoline- it’s flammable, and extinguishable, somewhat durable I’ll never have you **** The man shot with 12 gauge, point blank, making the strangest sound like the sound you’d hear if he’d fell, or got the wind knock out of him Death’s nothing like television He lays there, and I watch him Blood runs from beneath, he just stares- looks out with one eye A forearm covers the other I don’t think he knows he’s dying? I think he knows he’s been shot? Blood- the cracks soak up I can’t stop looking He’s going to die right here without any music. I keep thinking that if the blood would just go back… -the hindsight of the bullet- He’s dying He let’s out low grunts The American Ghetto I hear you, you’re getting older, and I’m getting older too. The rats seem to be the only ones, surrealist beauty Surrounding landslides crunching inward from lack of understanding Bushes filled with beer driving expectations deep within a place to crawl at night Worries of the earth shaking, there’s someone inside It’s painting pictures, backyards Can’t put the reflection back together Doesn’t seem to be about a hand in mine, or the metaphors of a relationship, but only that you’ve been here killing my brothers, friends, little sisters Cain-killed, and we-killed, them blaming Jews They are All are Together, we’ve wore chains and laid with enemies Tomorrow, the music will be softer The streets pile in abstract trash, expressions of Graffiti Cubist guns buried under folding tee shirts sold in only two colors We’ve never been black We don’t seem to know what that means, to be White To be I loved you on television when no one was looking Invites extended to the Huxtable’s - Come too stay for a while- the Seinfield’s My god dam family of militia, wasting brains Bought soldiers on our own salary, or what was left of the governments They use to call it Welfare, food stamps White things that howl with race games like pool reversing itself to bowling The American Ghetto consumes it all And to say I love you sounds redundant, the least thing I’ve ever said of greatness Seasons Ghettos- Red stained lips, sugar chasms glazed lightly of a golden brown, grease saturated hands, yes I loved you. The only game we control- The only game Getting older I’m getting older in American Ghetto |
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