As a duet, my mom and alarm clock yell to get up.
Half asleep, I nearly fall asleep while brushing my teeth.
I choose my outfit, maybe I’ll dress up today.
I run out to the bus as it screeches to a stop on the curb.

My friends are leaned against their lockers.
I stare at the clock all of Algebra.
Pizza for lunch.
I die of boredom as the school day comes to an end.

Gunshots and screams full the air as they tell me something’s wrong.
In shock, I nearly faint while people shush us through their teeth.
I choose where to hide, maybe the teachers desk will work as a blockade.
The gunshots subside, the shooter has left the building.

My friends lie dead on the hallway floor.
I stare at the puddles of red that stain the tiles.
Cries of grief.
How did I not die?

If I had known my school would become a battleground
I would have invested in a bulletproof vest to keep under my desk
Just in case the lockdown drill doesn’t work.

Are pencils to erasers
As guns are to bullets?

Honest,

that meaningless word left dangling before children,

a damoclean sword held fast in a gordian knot tied with scarlet thread,

finer than the spider's that once tied men's souls to an angry American God,

birthed in Transylvania,

over the woods, and through the dale, no lie

There is a tale of lies told in Nobel houses, never reachin' ground,

Down here, we situations manifested to, vain, again, stem the tide,

We flounder, fish out of water, why are we sent if

wait



he hears, he listens, haps he knows, and

how such as we came

to be here,

Welcome and see, dare ye ask me in? Might I ply you with lies

and you, believe 'em?

I could make a mindless robot out of your parts, but

that would take forever and

that's not how

Wisdom's child would tend to be, for first,

You must believe a lie and I, amusing as can be,

can't tell lies.

Discernment, fine points, per-spicacity per se, the only way.

Good luck (Luc, said luck in many tongues, is said Lose- as in Luc-ifer.

It means light, as in light, regular old granted light.)

Lightifier, good, take some, good light, for the travail, in the night.



You see, not so long ago, for me, five years before I'as born,

my momma moved to town.



What was that like, I axed my old uncle, while back,

movin' t'town, in 1943?

Well, he says,

We had electricity.



USA, 1943, some folks still was poor, and all the good men

was gone to war.

Cities, it was different,

if the movies got it right, Bowry Boys, n'em.



In the desert we did, okeh, in town, though,



we had electricity.



He was ten back then. He'd been huntin' rabbit's,

to buy Christmas presents from Sears and Roebucks,



since he was five.

C'mon, I say. No lie, he say,

BLM or some gover'ment

whatsajigger, was payin' 2 cents a pair fer jack rabbit ears.



'Said he bought Christmas presents for his mom and dad,

and my mom, with his first rabbit money, at five.



Shootin' with a single-shot 22, 12 cents a box,

Jack Rabbits, 2 cents a head.



Three Christmas presents, plus postage, $2.56.

Do the math, I think, and go -



Five years old, at ten, he moves to town, 1943,

we had electricity. That's all.

Come see me like the normal man that I am.
Have a good look into these forgotten eyes.

Working on the beauty of bullets in my mind.
Blistering skies, whispering skies.

Cant find me...

Underneath my skin a flare of a violence brand.
Bullets live in the black holes on the wrong side of my face.

Dreading the regrets brought by a steady hand.
Waiting by the altar to pray for the wrong kind of grace.

A quivering echo that was not planned.
Below the dream, teeth and soles lonely stand.

Ready to train.
Ready to maim.
Ready to blame.

Anyone, anything, anywhere,
everywhere, everyone, everything.

Hollow oil in the tips of my aching hands,
come find me and make me the lesser of a beautiful man.

Fun in the gun,
outrun the burn,
hope there is none.

Let me be the worst moral lesson to the common man.
A beautiful man with blood on his hands.

Making these feelings year around and round in a festering sky.
Nothing but the troubles of an old man.

Raise away the razor wire spinning around your neck.
Restoring the hollow idea of a sun to spy.

Ready to break.
Ready to wake.
Ready to ache.

Bullets fall like rain,
ahead of all in pain,
this beauty is not in vain.

You found me.

These shots were never taken by chance

They were of anger taken under sunshine

This smoke can oh so muddle your view of the truth

They use smoke of their own to hide their intentions



But the truth can be seen rolling by, glinting red

The weapon of black turns their eyes white 

One shines with tears; the other dull and *****

The greedy man hides the youth of all seventeen



It could have been stopped

And the young could continue

This is preventable

But he continues to enable



His smiles are swamp green

His words are shiny gold

But he hides it all behind his suit of blue

an arid earth can suffer to gag
through the suffocation of its tenants,
flailing with torrential—cataclysmic—seismic
limbs at the cold-hand smothering by
a race in apathy.

though, let's not just yet, not yet
pull the bullets from our guns.

What do you know of war?  
First person shooter
Simulated gun fire
computerized blood splatter

What do you know of war?
Tag team alliance
Kids slaying kids
for virtual dollars

What do i know of war?
I saw the carnage
Devastation, the horrors
The smell of death

What do i know of war?
The pain haunts me
every day
every hour
It NEVER goes away!

War ain't no game, bro!

Green night in the middle of the day…
Fire rising to ****** the moon,
Uncle Sam’s praying in my room
And the 8-ball will not say

Why a woman holds a gun
To her husband’s sleeping head;
Does she play or just wish him dead?
An armadillo’s included for fun.

Uncle Sam’s lost his hat in the fire
Maybe that’s why he’s praying.
Not for the country he should be saving
While we are conquered by liars.

I’ve tried to make sense of this before:
Masked fiddlers strum in the conflagration,
Dead books, butterflies and chimps run the nation,
…there is luggage on the floor.

Should I run from the scene,
Or stay and try to fight?
I can’t read my books in the deepening night
And there’s a skull waiting just to scream.

The man sleeps on with a gun at his head
And I see another skull by his side.
It must be a sign saying: “run and hide”.
But why can’t I do it?
There’s no way to get through it,
But I must wake up and fight or I’m dead.

June 1, 2006

I am somebody
Shot in the Head...
Found the bullets.
Coroner Said.
A child of God struck dead.
Gang related disputing Fools.
Aiming cowardly bullets right at you.
I guess praying prayers just won't do.
There is no safe in these hard knocks realities' Truths.
Our Sista child!
Our mother child!
All the while the bodies pile.
Her body now adds to that 'the shootings aren't as bad as last year' body count.
Can't even stand anywhere in your city NOW?
Something has to truly give.
There's a plague of rigid legalities, relaxed moralities, and political realities stealing the 'safe' from our dying breed.
The Black man withering away in siphoning inequalities.
Doubling unemployment stretches outward like a statistical wild fire....
Our present fact.
There is a genocidal component to these criminal acts.


Copyrighted (C)

Published in the 2018 Edition of the Reconstructed Literary and Visual Journal at Governors State University.