What is this sense
between my eyes
Do we aim to do our best
Imperfect form
Intentions less
Creative flows
Mixed in with work and rest
See the signs laid out ahead
Connecting lines in time
Progress starts from the chest

What failures
oh the failures of leaving home at seventeen
of living and thriving as a minority foreigner
of working and studying to post-grad levels
of maturing wonderfully and being up and decent
of loving and marrying and creating a good home
of no crime, no debts, not a drunk, not a player
of no stained reputation, no borrowing or theft
of being easy-going, nice and friendly, an all-rounder
what failures
the failure of being successful and capable in grace
the failure of doing so well a white neighbor burgled
the failure of saying that's not right, you're rotten thieves
the failure of standing up to bullying thieving mobs
the failure of being gangstalked and destroyed
the failure of being an educated professional black
the failure of being a solid, courageous, wholesome man
the failure of knowing you can't do wrong and get by
Ladies and Gentlemen
these are my failures
Its all there in black and white
its the failure of being a minority
In the british democracy of the Socialists
for it is greed to work hard and be successful
its a failure for blacks to aspire and do well when your white
neighbor is a drunken, welfare dependent waster and thief
And Blacks beware, for if you dare tell them to go change
you will be stalked, hounded, smeared, defamed, humiliated
harassed, bullied, slandered, sabotaged, and basically driven to
suicide or a breakdown
They manufacture Failures to reflect their own failures
They call it Trading Places and dish it out to 'Uppity' Blacks

Nights Are For Stuff Like This

It's 3am.
The city's sleeping and I'm not.
Lights like scattered dots burn dim outside my window.
People are dreaming and I'm awake thinking of the
life that's been passing through me like second hands-smoke
lingering in the slowed-down traffic of my DNA.
Nights are for stuff like this;

stuff like silken roads through ragged hillsides,
feelings blacker than night that disappear in the
day light, prisms  bouncing off grey ash, tiny sparks
falling through trap doors, never again to be seen
nor heard, nor taken for granted upon the long
laid train tracks of this ongoing dance.

Memory like loaded simi-trucks taking me all
the way back through corn fields and hay, through
old hard hitting rain that goes clank, clank in my brain.
Scars cutting  through my skin opening again and again
like songs that you hate but can't stop singing  on endless
streaming highways-hitching a ride inside my mind,

pitch-perfect pristine and off-key in the dark,
on a night like this blue black over amber gold.
I'm a million miles further away and one mile closer.
Signposts loud and large selling  big hopes for
happy dopes, emerging eyes now gone from me
peering through clouds because they can, because
they probably always will.

Because who knows how far they've gone and how
far I've come on this night of all nights awake in the
grid of passing stars and dividing lines, now merging into
my lane for better or for worse where gratitude needs no
promotion, because it just is or is not. Because it can't be faked.
nor pimped. Because it has no need for
patronizing nor apologizing.

Because it's outcome, a side effect of nights like this where
everything makes sense and where nothing makes any sense
at all in this gigantic freeway of time that will eventually reach
a dead end. Where sleep will come 'cause the poetry will have
run itself off the bend.
Ah yea nights are for stuff like this.