2019
The Middle
They say young one riddle
Me this
If it is
To be fiddled
With
Then I guess this
Is truth
Who can say they truly have love for you?
When into that category they threw
Their hardest worker
Greatest observer
Who tries and fails
As all humanity
But they burdened him with things
Greater than humanly
Possible at present
Don’t understand his presence
Or worth
His turf
Scattered and infringed upon
But to them
Nothing’s wrong
They can’t see how hard he works unless it’s for himself
At times feeling like his cares are set on the shelf
The difficulty
Of something so faulty
Leaves him a mess
A man dressed
In tears and tears
His heart torn and mind stretched
From all the stress
He’s pressed
But can’t signal distress
They don’t truly understand
What it’s like to try and be a man
With so much going for him
How that weight leaves him trim
Slim
Cut down
If he fell who would hear
Truly, who is here?
For him
When he feels the pain
Overtake him
It shakes him
To the core
The lack of care bores
Into his heart
Its hard
To be one
When he is split
In two like twins
The weight of it all pins
Down
Sewn to the scene
He hopes to breach
And break the seam
Fight
It’s hard for the man to fight
Chest squeezes and lungs tight
The time is worth
The wait rough
To make it and succeed
To attempt the deed
Is trying, he pleads
For mercy and strength
He banks and pools
The issues
Wondering who he fools
The pain etched to his kin
Taught not to cry like most other men
It’s in
His moments of weakness
He gets
Lost in his attempts
Almost exempt
From expressing something clear
For fear that it falls upon deaf ears
Or those who hear
Might take offense
So in his mind, a fence
And walls
Blocking; barriers to all
Poked and pried, honestly he’s tied
Down by the expectation of expression
But he won’t let him
Advance and grow, for not he knows
How to feel and let know that it’s felt
Scars
As I walk and breathe
My lungs seethe
And my back aches
For my ancestor’s long hours without breaks
It takes it’s toll
Set the ball a-roll
The farther I push
The faster you slay me
6 feet under
Mama’s prayin
Baby boy’s pushing up daisies
2 shots, 4 shots, 8 shots
16 shots and a cover up
The pain you inflict burdens my body
Riddled with bullet holes
Eyes closed
Rip Nip
Thinking like him
“You got me”
Trenches on my back
Built from whips
It dips and dents
I swell up
Tail tucked
As you’ve beaten and broken me
You cut my neck
And break my bones
And tell me watch my tone…Boy
And yeah that cold water cuts
High pressure
No ifs, ands or buts
In a cycle we’re stuck
Strung up by our necks
While you stand on our shoulders
We’re forced to move boulders
Up that hill
And you watch as they crash down
On black and brown
Tangible horizon cleaved by your still
Foot atop the rock you watched me push
Cruel smile aimed down as you kick all
And again I fall
Crushed by the weight of expectations
The words “you’re smart for a black kid” cause lacerations
Slowly I’m losing my patience
Tired of torn down and worn out
An existence paramount to 3/5s of a man
Yet here I stand
Ugly and battered
A life shattered
Covered in the scars you gave me
Eyes
Closed until I wasn’t given a choice in my situation
And when they shot Laquan like that I had a revelation
Got down to the real truth in my population
Slavery has been ended for generations
But again it continues with mass incarceration
You see, they took the chains off our wrists
And put ropes on our necks, again taking our breath
Our voice choked
While they freely lash out, their tongues of silver, whips
It trips and tricks us
And for the sake of discipline
We’re locked in
Confined to cells no better than the ones they brought us here in
For therein the mind decays and body erodes
Bars on the window the same as the ones my ancestors looked through
I have physical form and yet still they look through
As black men we are all the same
One face, one body, one story, one background
Truly chains are not needed to tie us down
We are stuck in one moment, one place
A cycle of oppression and hate
Has chased us into a circle more vicious and malignant
They hide the truth because they want us to be ign’ant
Communities deprived of life
By design
In which you will find
A truth about black lives
Cuz they don’t matter,
Not to us nor them
We shoot down brothers
Killin’ each other
A bullet in my head is better than a diploma in my hand
Cuz they don’t want you to know what they know
And even under their blindfold
I refuse to keep my eyes closed
…Eyes wide open
Easy
It’s funny how
It’s so easy
To take a knife
And slit
Neck or wrist
Or take rope
And twist
The noose
Ain’t loose
Asphyxiate
Time and date
Dead and gone
Not for long
The pain returns
It’s diffuse
A brand-new urn
Tear drops are loosed
Ignorance is bliss
The feel of her lips
The last thing he hopes to remember
His mind goes blank
Loss of control
He punches the wall
Cuts his hand
But he enjoys the pain
At least he feels something
To anyone else he might seem crazy
But just maybe
To the one he loves he’s true
See through
She understands his troubles
His issues
He simply fights
Looking for light
Trapped in darkness