uploaded March 25, 2015.
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I grew up fast
But my brain slowed
Stuck
On an one-track road
Bombed
By an unseen force
More cultural than foe
Not an enemy
But still damaging
How can a rosary be a curse?
Ask the officer
Who snatched it off my neck after the war.
The same rosary
That once graced my grandfather's neck
While sitting in a hospital bed
Only memory I had left of him
Snatched away
For throwing gang signs.
For having drawn names
On my skin with a pen
I remember hiding in the back
Of a homie's van
Scared.
Heart racing
Mind filled with visions of the pen
Not the one spillin' ink over paper
But the one sucking life and breath
Out of underprivileged women and men
That box
Which desecrates human nature
Four walls
That make you feel more animal
Than intellectual.
Destiny.
For a man cursed by color
To encounter only the stench of horror
Atrocities committed in darkness
Like a pillow pressed over silk eyes
Or pulling the IV from a dying arm
Leaving a heaving chest
Failing to conceive breath
Life
Like artificial lungs
Surrounding your entire physical
Leaving you physically dead
Like C.P.R.
Only giving you life for a couple of days
My life
Encased by metal bars and concrete walls
Feeding me artificial air through a tube
Disguised as ventilation
So even if I scream
My words will go nowhere
They will bounce back into my ears
To wrap themselves around dreams
Dreams which got lost
Inside every piece
Every piece
That chips off my skin
Denying me the freedom to exist.
✖
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