Shooters (Edward's 7/30)

There are shooters in this game
Not with bended knees for free throws
Shooters
With syringes and needles
Shooters
With 9 millimeters--the heat blow
And police will trap you
So you'll have to split defenders
Between 13 other dope boys
That can't afford attorneys

When I first met
The Ferguson's
Zedric carried the weight
Of his father's sentencing
Like he was palming a basketball
He was set to use those hands
To execute with finger rolls or triggers
He chose the latter
Would rather
Be a shooter
Than be on lock
Like the safety on his weapon
Now Zedric's
Laid up in a box
Like a basket
On a fast break

We already know how the game ends
With the buzzer sounding
And two dozen shell casings
Like buzzards surrounding
His body
The buzz word for "found dead"
Is "Blackmale"
So Zedric's statistics
Won't show up in boxscores
Of the sports section
His statistics
Will show up
In some sociological case study
It's socio-economics--race and money
Left Zedric the 16th seed
In an income bracket
Where the Final Four to survive the hood
Are never tge shooters of heroine
Or loaded pistols

He was a Ferguson
Who wore the expectations of his last name
Like the streets were his jersey
Repped his block
Like Dikembe Mutumbo
You wouldn't dare ever cross him
He never played man-to-man
Him
His canon
His hammer
Made a good triple team
And the only time
He aimed high in life
Is when he was blazed with the triple beam

Shooter
But bullets aimed with triple beams
Still don't care who you are
Shooter
Fiends hooked like shots by Kareem
Adul-Jabar
Shooter
Bullets with no name on them
Like John Doe's
Waiting to find a home
Some won't have
Exit wound evictions
Zedric would rent out
The back of his cranium
Like it was a stadium
To shoot bullets with his name on them
As if Zorro initialed the shell casings
With "Z"

Zedric will fade away
From our memory
Like a Jordan jump shot
Except for the archived
Star Tribune article
We already know how the game ends
Shooter
With 9 millimeter let the heat blow
Left Zedric on some black top
Behind Wendy's
On Lake Street
With chalk outlining
His body like the NBA logo
Some shooters
Find out too late in the game
Well into the 4th quarter
Of that raw they slang
That sometimes
The streets shoot back

Day 7, a whole week!

Inheritance of Waterfalls and Sharks
by Martín Espada
for my son Klemnte In 1898, with the infantry from Illinois, the boy who would become the poet Sandburg rowed his captain's Saint Bernard ashore at Guánica, and watched as the captain lobbed cubes of steak at the canine snout. The troops speared mangos with bayonets like many suns thudding with shredded yellow flesh to earth. General Miles, who chained Geronimo for the photograph in sepia of the last renegade, promised Puerto Rico the blessings of enlightened civilization. Private Sandburg marched, peeking at a book nested in his palm for the words of Shakespeare. Dazed in blue wool and sunstroke, they stumbled up the mountain to Utuado, learned the war was over, and stumbled away. Sandburg never met great-great-grand uncle Don Luis, who wore a linen suit that would not wrinkle, read with baritone clarity scenes from Hamlet house to house for meals of rice and beans, the Danish prince and his soliloquy—ser o no ser— saluted by rum, the ghost of Hamlet's father wandering through the ceremonial ballcourts of the Taíno. In Caguas or Cayey Don Luis was the reader at the cigar factory, newspapers in the morning, Cervantes or Marx in the afternoon, rocking with the whirl of unseen sword when Quijote roared his challenge to giants, weaving the tendrils of his beard when he spoke of labor and capital, as the tabaqueros rolled leaves of tobacco to smolder in distant mouths. Maybe he was the man of the same name who published a sonnet in the magazine of browning leaves from the year of the Great War and the cigar strike. He disappeared; there were rumors of Brazil, inciting canecutters or marrying the patrón's daughter, maybe both, but always the reader, whipping Quijote's sword overhead. Another century, and still the warships scavenge Puerto Rico's beaches with wet snouts. For practice, Navy guns hail shells coated with uranium over Vieques like a boy spinning his first curveball; to the fisherman on the shore, the lung is a net and the tumor is a creature with his own face, gasping. This family has no will, no house, no farm, no island. But today the great-great-great-grand nephew of Don Luis, not yet ten, named for a jailed poet and fathered by another poet, in a church of the Puritan colony called Massachusetts, wobbles on a crate and grabs the podium to read his poem about El Yunque waterfalls and Achill basking sharks, and shouts: I love this.

10.30 Sitting with the Going

Enter the room open
erasing the word death from the end of every sentence
won't make it go away
may even slither it out
baby elephant from incisor
it's more important to take deep breaths
be awake, imagine yourself as sponge
soak this
the word reckoning in your pores
forgive now
and forget never.

Sometimes fighting is lying down and resting
especially when Live. Every. Moment.
becomes capitalized, gasped,
marked by countable grains of sand
in the hour glass.

The imperative includes
not doing anything but noticing the sun
move with hours across the room
watching awful movies on purpose in small hours
making small talk about tomorrows
swapping gossip, secrets, lies, dishing dirt
living every moment
includes the slow and lazy, do-nothing ticks of time
even frivolity matters
just as the eye to a peacock's feather
or the swishing sound taffeta makes on an evening gown.

We do not bring illnesses on ourselves
any more than we ask
to be born
or pick our families
the reality of this brings self-help books
down to where most of them belong
as lavatory reading.

Sit with the going
really sit with the going
by not thinking of anything in simile or metaphor
let the machines beep and wheeze and be the machines
respect every object for being exactly what it is
the drips, the plastic tubes, the furniture
including the biohazard symbol
and the stink of fluids.

Let the going be fully who
not "like" anyone else
this sitting not "like that time"
still those echoes for the return drive home
the small hours alone with insomnia
ball memory up in yarn
unspool it when you resent random objects
teacups, books, lamps, heirlooms
for still existing, improbably, without their owner.

When words fail
mark the room with your eyes
read aloud the letters, sing an old torch song
release the cries
but then embrace the silences
in arms, hands, the language of touch
noting how words
begin as root systems.

When They Discovered Rome (Edward's 6/30)

When they discovered Rome
They played powwow
Instead of piano
Drowned opera
With rain-dance
Replaced the tower of Pisa
With totem poles
transposed cave paintings
On the concave of Sistine Chapel
Conclaves spoke messages of Animism
And myths of European cannibalism
Man holds no positions
Divine rights are primitive
And gold
Isn't worth more than Buffalo

When they discovered Rome
They bushed their face
With war paint
Wore moccasins
Like combat boots
Poisoned grapevines
Til each sip of red wine
Brought disease to 95
% of the population
Each Roman citizen
Was written in the census
With invisible ink
Stories of Da Vinci
Were told through oral traditions
As Mona Lisa begin to look more
Like Pocahontas
Each treaty ended
With the Greeks being moved
To the Island of Crete
On barren reservations

When they discovered Rome
The rivers of Venice turned red
And so did it's people



Cellmates with Jack Johnson (Edward's 5/30)

My sister-in-law
Is the latest housewife of Mankato
She balances checkbooks with child support
She can stand stable
On the seesaw of Black men
She used to bear children
Treats her womb
Like Obama’s inauguration
Alotta “niggas” attended
The swearing in of biracial babies
And I say “nigga”
In the most racist-miscegenation
Sense of the word
The same way her great grandmother
Would say “nigga”
With the taste of slave ships and whips
On her saliva

But I’m not judging my sister-in-law
For refusing to repent the sins of her father
Cuz I got a two-sided ancestry
That double-dated Klan and Panther rallies
So my sister-in-law doesn’t have to say “nigga”
The way she uses Ebonics
Offends me enough
Because Europe
Never had to sew broken Yoruba
Tongues back together
Her language will last forever
As long as America
Keep militarizing Third World countries

I can’t help but to see race
So she tells me “blood is thicker than water”
As if family history
And the blast of fire hoses from the 60’s
Are separate entities
For my grandmother
But my sister-n-law
Somehow seems to know my experience
From birthing babies with a similar
Skin complexion to mine
Says she doesn’t see color
But the backbone of the country she lives in
Had Chinamen building its vertebrae
With railroad tracks

And my brother would’ve been cellmates with Jack Johnson
For trying to get white women to jack his johnson
My brother would have never gotten
To take my sister-in-law to prom when
Her bloodlines were pure
It’s only when her first two Black baby daddies
Dump tar and toxic waste
At the base of her family tree
That her parents accept the Jim-Crow landfill of my brother

They gave him their blessing
So Madame C.J. Walker works with COINTELPRO
To infiltrate his wedding
Because he’s not supposed to get
His white woman so easily
Without first obtaining the Bluest Eye
So he won’t stop fucking his white woman
Until Toni Morrison writes a novel about him
Or atleast
Until his little brother admits
His wife loves him as a man
And not a Black one

Forbidden Fruit (Edward's 4/30)

The Garden of Eden
Has a higher proportion
Of incarceration
Than any other Utopia
So even if it's the land of innovations
And state-of-the-art technology
There's a troubleshooting guide
For their lives
But it's not your version of the Bible
The disciples of the Lord
Will come in the form
Of Arch Angels named
Rudy, Ronald and Richard
That double as wardens of Hell
and gatekeepers of Heaven

But Adam says
He don't need a judgment day
Claims that while he is a made man
He also appointed himself Godfather
He believed he created his creator
Because Geppetto's story
Is worthless without Pinocchio
And the strings on a puppet
Are God's self-esteem running thin

But Eve
Isn't arrogant enough to think
This is a world made for the people
And by the people
So she waits
For the voice of the creator
With a Tommy gun
In her right hand
Because she
Has already lost
Her left fingers
For paying off
The loan sharks
Sent to collect interest
For Adam's ribs
She can't fathom
What her phantom God
Will do for poisoning
Her body with Forbidden fruit

But she's grown used
To paying for her crimes
And she can't hide
God has already wire tapped
Eden's black market with his omnipotence
There are no covert operations
So Eve
Might as well eat
Forbidden fruit in the open
Cuz Eden's
Department of Investigation
Already knows where to perform
SWAT raids
With flash grenades
And tear gas made
From the glow of halos

But Eve
Wasn't the first to be criminalized
There were 13 and 14 more gangstas
Before her
Lilith had her fig trees seized
Without convictions
The Serpent consumed Forbidden fruit
The angels sprayed with herbicides
And was told he deserved to die
Because there were 332 legal fruits in the garden
So God will grant no pardon
To those who hallucinate
That they are naked
God will laminate their nightmares
To their humanity

There will come a day
When Eve wishes God
Would have taken her fingers
From the other hand
Cuz Tommy guns
Don't carry the ammunition
To ease the birthing of children
And epidurals will do nothing
For the pain of Cain killing Abel
And God knowing the murder
Of her youngest will come
Eve will look at what used to be her left hand
And they bloody face of Abel
And wonder why God
Was so intent
On passing laws
That protect her from herself
When they needed safe havens from each other

But prohibition isn't about protection
It's about control
The way Geppetto weaves his story
Into the strings of Pinocchio
Giuliani, Reagan and Nixon's
Propaganda campaigns
Will be pulled from the pages of Genesis
Only when the Bible
Has government subsidized advertisements
So to identify bias is blasphemy
When we will confuse morality with politics
And criminal justice becomes oxymoronic
When 435, 000 will die
From tobacco leaves
That don't grow from the tree of knowledge
And I promise it won't be by the hands of Al Capone
But by government officials
That have God complexes and a collection plate
Where lobbyists can pay
For scriptures that say
Which plants are legal and illegal



We Need to Tax White Privilege (Edward's 3/30)

We need to tax "white privilege"
Taxes on income brackets
The higher the class
The higher the tax
And taxes on privilege brackets
If you Mo' Black, No tax
And Since they can't donate privilege
They need to donate cash...
It ain't charity
If they returnin' what they sto'...

Go
To the nicest house
The one with a 20 acre yard
Take that shit and tell the owner
"you owe me 20 more and a mule"
And those who get tanned,
Should get audited
By the IRS for tax evasion
Property taxes
Should increase
Exponentially
If your house is passed down
Trans-generationally
Kunta helped built it
So pay that shit
On tax free weekend
The CEO of your multi-billion dollar company
Can finally admit
That his night job is Grand Wizard
Tax Exemptions
Given to all white people in the hood
That know Ghetto is not an adjective...
It's a place you try to move your mom away from

Sale tax
To every white person
That buys into Fox news
Sale tax
To every white liberal
Who buys into the belief
"I'm not racist, I have Black friends!"
And contrary to popular belief,
Obama's Presidency
Will not decrease
The tax rate
On white privilege
Whiteness
Is an economic good
They won't trade....
So tax that shit
For the public welfare
And by public
I mean NOT back to private schools
And by welfare
I DON'T mean
Social Security programs


White people wont be able to write-off
Their privilege by saying
"But I did Peace Corps...
In the country of Africa...
At the risk of catching AIDS"
1st generation Europeans
Will NOT be able to say,
"I don't have to pay, I came here after slavery!"
While simultaneously blending in
To the crowd that NEVER gets 51 shots
Courtesy of NYPD

Whiteness is currency
Old money passed down
With dominant traits of racism
And phenotypes of lynching
Them accidental-passin'-Negroes...
Who grow up "White"
Later to trace their genealogy
And find
Granny was a mammy
They will NOT get tax refunds
There will be inflation
As long as they deny citizenship
To immigrants
And ban gay-marriage
There will be a toll charge
At each intersection
For everyone who drives a Pruis
Because I NEVER seen a
Black person driving them shits
There will be an inheritance tax
For every white baby born
That doesn't know that Walt Witman was a poet
And so the FUCK was Tupac
And the further you live from the hood
The higher you must pay your accountant...

And the white people will boycott the taxes
Dress in Blackface and dance
To hide their identity
We will laugh
And this will be the closest thing to reparations
We ever cash...
And they will wish
To be as comfortable in their skin
As we never were
With the stigma
And the reality
That struggle
Has always stemmed from money
It's just they stole our dignity too
So if they don't give it back
They will lose theirs

6/30 "Piece Be With You" by Gus Wood

It just sits there.
Mocking us to our faces,
lifting it's layered skirt, showing leg, wagging oven-baked figurative breasts
at Us.
This, last piece of Wedding Cake, all kinds of chocolate nanny-nanny-boo-boo
Bette Midler flirt and icing smile.

My fork quivers, resting on the shake plate.
I am all adrenaline build-up, bear trap twitch.
Staring at the necktie hyena across the table,
this guy actually thinks he can take this cake from me?

We smile, pasta-strained wet noodle aggression.
We laugh, because it's frowned upon to plastic dinette-set
butter knife-fight to the death at a relative's wedding.

So it sits there,
mocking us to our faces.
This last piece of heaven, we circle it.
Hungry territorial roar under our breath,
ready to Don King rumble for this-

We are interrupted,
Thunder Steps...

We stare in horror as the obese flesh toolshed woman,
made of chainsaw heavy breath and lawn mower rumble walk,
Fat Aunt Sarah rhino charging towards us.
Time is running out...

We lunge forward.
Fat-hand cobras biting for the cake knife,
our wrists become varsity linebackers blocking each other's end zones,
we antler-dance bucking for our prize.

My hand opens its jaws, chews his wrist, and alligator rolls it off the table.
He stifles a wolf-howl, and scurries away defeated.
I, now rooster cocky, turn to back to my lion-wrestle-won zebra leg,
But then I see it.

I puffer fish gasp to find it gone.
Crumb Aftermath in its wake.
Some empty plate wasteland.

In my mouth open turkey stare,
I spot my seven-year old second cousin,
icing-smeared smile in my grandfather's lap.

This...
this just takes the cake.

9.30

two young girls
stare and comment at the edges of paintings
string bean pants
and strawberry tops
they are american flag colors
flapping, twittering, giggles
they are paired in a way
that makes best friends
mistaken for sisters by strangers in elevators
all the time
then they open their mouths a little wider
decay in junkie grins
too young
for teeth that bad
suddenly their brunette hair
straightens with a hag sheen
they become two sticks clicking together
tied by yarn thread
dry as wood knots
some inferno waiting for them
back in the outside of dumpsters
and crumpled fast food containers
their colors drooling, nods beckoning
a modern crucifiction