"Hood-Matters," "The Nigger Survived," and "We shared coffee and milk in a dream..."

Hood-Matters

I took a corrupted stroll through
​Scottland, good ol’ Louisiana, mainly hood manor.

The packed streets notify me the home team has won it.

Helicopters thud the sky with air commotion and caution
over brow crop dusting judgment light over fields of cement and barbed wire
Pot holes and cigars rolled.

The ogled eye of BRPD see it all.
          (I wonder what watch is being watched out for.)

The risky man business of being strapped
in a scene of colored,
and negro;

a color disguise for hunger
detached footsteps, strapless boots muddied
with the promise:

“There's no more cotton in our backyards.”

I found a pack of Kools, trampled dead on the sidewalk
Surgeon General’s Warning:

Not a state of mine.
Mind you,
the city is all we need
to relinquish the nine slash
eight steps toward humanity slash
felt we laid melted top,

we are the black ink given to the earth.

The price for govern-sent filth.

In sky-white cherishing black. Emotion
cherishing lack there of.

This is hood. This is why we read;

so that we can never forget the suffering life electric

of black seas,
under the dark sky of Scottland,
mainly hood manner.

The Nigger Survived

I have seen an eight year old white boy
use a word much older than him,
an attempt to stain

the innocence of a black youth.
Niggers and playground mischief.

“Boys will be boys,”

The Nigger survived.

I watched a man spit on,
and called a nigger.

Degrade an under-word
of black grind, and slave
bone.

“We call Niggers, spades around hea.”

The Nigger survived.

I watched as three white men
in front of white trucks,

white;

“Nigger” again the dealing card
for the abuse.

They fought the black man
as I watched standing behind a glass
mirror.

The Nigger survived.

I have seen black artist get called a “Nigger”
at an event underneath the phallic eye
of the state's capital;
where blood and protest never go unharmed
lining the sidewalks with inequality
and stubborn justice.

The Nigger survived.

Now the nigger man raises
a nigger boy. In one hand
love for the land his son calls heart.

In the other, my truth of how the words will unfold
when the world leaves him no choice
and the cards don't fall where they may.

I must prepare the boy to see the man, through
to the light, one noose at a time.

I must prepare the boy to know the difference
when he has no choice but to fold
and no choice but to go all in.

Because My Nigger Son will survive.

We shared coffee and milk in a dream;
a place...

where it was an easy sit
and easy to seem
a place of open
gestures.

            The sun’s lips cloud chapped
            eyes paved in solar old, ways
            of a new scene of an old song:

(The familiar dawn. )

A new setting to a sound

acquaintance of symphonic slightness

more than what greets the eye
behind silver smiles, this wintry day.

Between walls of lost air
overseeing the boulevard,

Lakeland Spanish Town Common
The Lower 9^th
The Bottoms

Erected boundaries to keep out
subtle gaze of monkey wildness,
an easy digestion of separate
and unwilling,

we black folks can be.

The falls have already been spilt:

The well-connected grumbling
of the 70’s met the end of Air lane 13.
Patriarchs are dying monarchs post media frenzies
Cops become executioners, concrete coroners
Black posterity live on whiter sidewalks
            cemented with blood
            dried footprints of ignorance
            at the cost of Bon Marche
            and History.

(We keep one eye on each other,
You and me, she and I.

The other eye on the coffee and milk.

Shared coffee and milk,
between coffee and milk.)

“But milk is more important.” She says.