 Welcome, welcome, welcome. Come through, booming on this thing. Welcome to the last day of poetry month. What can I say? These are my favorite sentient beings that are about to come to the microphone. It's going to be a beautiful, beautiful treat. First up, I don't know why I'm lifting this thing up, because I'm going to have to lower the microphone for my brother, Landon Smith. Easy when you seven, nine. There are two less feet in a tent this evening. In somewhere, a prison guard gives another closed fist speech about order. The air fans above a tentpole eviction notice while a new jumpsuit is handed to a tooth on a cement floor. Nicky bass photoshoot next to gentrified housing while Noel Gallo votes to steal more fruit veiled money into patrol cars. Leech van braid to pile up bodies just to bleed corners dry for development while Gary Yee red tags another black school for prison bed construction. At least there will be clean street corners, a dirty mouth and a suit, we'll say. At least there will be law and order. Dirt is always better when swept under a rug or at least onto the next encampment. And three tents blown on the other side of 580 will lower property value just for more protest signs to pop up and be ignored next week. But did you know there is no such thing as an empty bomb threat thrown at a black house? Greenwood and Pine still can't move past the cement with Merrill mixed in. So excuse me for taking white history seriously as I walk down these HBCU steps with a target on my back for what another white board member bans a book from speaking on and another black mayor steps up to a podium to say it is a shame or in these troubling times or we are better than this, despite all the evidence otherwise. And matter of fact, who is we? Who be this we in backroom meetings? Who be the we turning the wheel on the ship? Who be this we saying we are part of the problem saying we do it to ourselves, saying we can't get respect until we respect ourselves? Who? Who does we come in sideways out your mouth talking about mow pay for leeches to put up see something, say something signs and turn around in Pachadale bomb thirds to black campuses talking about we better watch our back. We better hurry up and die. We better go back now that labor costs more than the ground meat on my back. Who? Who does we we supposed to be a part of? Who does we we supposed to be better than sitting on the left side of an abandoned building because I took white history for what it is and spoke to the remains of the last threat shelved on to a whitewashed MLK quote, shelved on to the left hand of a Philadelphia cut short, shelved on to a Tulsa, I mean a Rosewood. I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean I am on pace to be called a nigger 212 times by summer. It is January. There are only 10 days left in this month and I refuse to be a courts by the third but catch me physicals on the fourth and I might be gone by the fifth if this white woman in power has her way. Which is the same as that white man in that seat which is the same as that last mischeck which is the same as that eviction notice. My mother says the cloth of my ancestors makes me bulletproof. So I put on a new head wrap every time passive aggressive head shots fire off of cradle tongues down into the gutters of unswept streets where I'm told that I belong. And I walk around with cash just in case I pass another cardboard sign giving a fortune to crates just to see more hungry mouths the next month. It's almost like I cannot fix these encampments on my own like starvation is intentional like billions in surplus don't exist. Maybe by the end of this poem you can tell me what the cause is. While I kick three more election pamphlets off my doorstep since I don't do drugs on Tuesdays ever since my neighbor overdosed on Kamala Harris bumper stickers. Meanwhile, city of San Francisco made 90 million of parking tickets just to not have affordable housing just to hire more pigs to put tickets on windshields to pay for pigs putting tickets on windshields and my last $60 goes to the cardboard sign again. You know, a fist fight is always fair to the waistband with a gun tucked inside. You know, an eviction is always fair to the feet standing on a bankroll. But my cousin told me that not all skinfolk are kinfolk. So I keep two feet in my back pocket so I land on my feet when I'm sucker punched between line breaks and the neoliberal slides of judge lump sums to slide me into solitary silence so that a white tenure professor can tell you that these are not poems, that these are lyrics, that these are a soap box and that they are too unhoused and must cut their hair before they deserve a home. Did you know there are children in prisons? I was not a punchline. Sometimes I just like to interrupt poems with facts like capitalism is a plague or there is no such thing as a white South African or there are too many white people walking dogs in my neighborhood. One had on a yay area shirt, called the pigs on me said my hair is disturbing the peace. You know the first rule of fight club? It's don't listen to white men. What good is a fight club that they never fought for the spunners in my back? Took me three summers to find my voice, had to use violence to do it, preach violence for violence's sake and break the jaw of the softness nobody would listen to and then y'all consider burying me with my poems. When I started to speak from a Lorraine Motel balcony about the gun tucked under my tongue that I stashed behind the curtain waiting on the next bomb, the next bomb. The next time a bomb shows itself in my doorstep I will arm myself with thoughts and prayers and the hot takes of white people because ain't shit more violent. You know imperialism been walking with a hole in its leg the last three summers. Threw up flares about Cuba and China again. You know this empire shit ain't gonna last anyway and I got all gold teeth so my poems would appreciate over time. So you would take my words more seriously. So you would AFRICOM nightmare yourself to sleep on a rocking chair made from my great-grandmother's little bones. You know I talked to my childhood home on Sunday nights? Hoping I find a time where failure doesn't mean I'm two puddles under a tax-paid tire while my child learns to fail while being fatherless for the first time. I hope I left enough time in their palm to be a reason they keep trying. Warden co-pressed every fallen brick of my grandmother's home into my ashes before I left and maybe I'll learn that violence only fails when violence fails and I was never successful after all and I only have enough love in my heart to fail this one last time. So to make it count, I leave you this poem in my will. A message that you have to be quicker when they come for you. I am ready to know home, wherever that may be. Spinning Tracy Chapman records under my still body while clutching Walter Rodney in my rigor mortis fingerprint on my way to find peace somewhere. Florida back roads talking to the skin on my upper back saying it got some leather for me if I don't keep moving and on the wrong side of a train track you might find my solitary body. Sundown Sheriff caught a whiff of it started unclipping holster not knowing that in my left palm I packed the souls of the field but in my right I shoot back at cops. Ain't no sunset long enough for the last breaths in my left palm so I sing blue spiritual before you ask me why I choose violence I can't know peace yet. Not with this grass slice and ankle bones not with these worn down tires still begging for freedom on behalf of the hands gripping my left palm I have no choice but the back alley the back woods buried disposition between Polk County plantation fences and I might dance tonight too. Cut a rug one time for the ones who cut bondage from their left leg to kick the bucket with their right. I stare this plantation pig in the face knowing that to be invincible is to carry the souls of the field with me and to tell that judge that I am not sorry because talking to hope is dangerous. Especially when hope puts weapon to palm dim the lights and can't see itself anymore. Decides freedom means finally returning fire pulling shells from the left hip and turning coot into a three course meal flicking scraps out of molars with a new appetite for finding freedom in one less uniform and a rear view. One less speech about the law one less press conference about this land this land this land that breathes genocide every morning from the breath of its latte while hope gets pulled from its home while the toenail asking itself why not shoot back. Before the lights cut out and peace gets pulled from hope's bicep and the only body that hope has left is the one picking bullets out of teeth because if you don't carve out a healing space a legislator might use your flesh for sacrifice. Fascism fed farm to table grassroots campaign can't rid the stench of shit in the soil National Guard on bureaucrat speed dial Tell them niggers not to loot or air fresheners gonna spill blood on the ready-made caskets. Democracy just a fable we road pass crossing into the cemetery we wake up in on a loop for the shards of black protest to get beaten into another voter campaign for Obama to stand next to a black woman waving clinking chains of Asada grinding bones in the soil back by Biden budgets virtue signal and progress just to express it Billy clubs and kill the English dictionary union you might be a revolutionary by nightfall. Offer your last breath to the asphalt and it'll ask if you at least fought back Shane Holder made a quilt out of your ancestors sewed it loosely and told you let it keep you warm never had a dream within this colonial opiate. Capitalists uttered a railroad worker then Silk Road traded them for dirt threw pig at a labor strike and watched the bodies fall greasy palms oil prison pipelines while a moderate still preachers reform property tax still funding school budgets and they got the nerve to tell me to grab a picket sign while a rock laying right here smoke and mirror breeding in fighting over blood money all money is blood money I thought we made it out the cotton fields just to be grandfathered and heard a whip crack and a handcuff class in a sentencing hearing in a salary negotiation behind bulletproof plantation windows but I drag infected minds through the broken tires of my unread poems. McCarthyism smashed into my dinner plate hoping to crack the communists from my swollen red knuckles. John Ehrlichman shoulder shrugs my car upside down to the part of foothill buried in flashing patrol lights while Reaganism hovers above my neighborhood like smog in my kid's new lungs. Biden era pen strokes flood Lake Merritt with pay stations hoping to drown outside shows there is blood on your overcoat Libby. What good is a progressive leech Libby if I will still be three courts low after the confirmation hearing confirms me to be a necessary sacrifice on the white Jesus altar just as harmonizing about the beauty of my execution South Carolina fire and squad triggering my last rights before I become a useful bullet in the throat of my comrades and empire sells bombs in the name of my great grandmother's dirt scraped knees but I dragged my lineage through dirt roads sandstorms scraping knees on cement center block stacked in the way my wrist cut deeply on the journey saltwater stinging bones shown before someone else tells me I'm healed tells me to move on because I dragged lineage by their wrists wiping off a race of dust mixed with diamond flakes they sold back to us saying that's all our hands were good for a losing lens between borders some European gave name to that I should be proud of that Singh Bay PA revolted to come back to maybe my wrist bleed on the chains he broke just to be Spielberg in a white savior hood when I feel my lineage weighted down belief beneath the long old war for man's paved over just to be paved over just to be built the top under silk cover smelling like liberation strangleholds while I dragged lineage to a native language not a native language in hopes to speak with lineage between borders and sandstorms I was told I didn't need to know enough Monday for struggle I dragged my lineage with dislocated wrists separated at the broken tree branch telling stories in contradiction to a tall tail pillar by monument and sand in my shoes you know a real poet told me once that not every story has to appeal to the heart it can appeal to the spine sever vertebrae shout and hear me out from straight jacket buckles and scratches on cement walls that made my spine property of the state that made me two thirds of a past the future left bloodstain baton swing slush from bomb exploding outside what used to be my bedroom wall just long enough for the taste of rubber to be family heirloom nobody even asked where I wanted my body to be buried I am talking to this soil like everything is a weapon formed against me melatonin making meger ever is my docent on this impending bullet train woke up 10 times lost coroner can tell you jokes three minutes past America if you wait long enough I might diagnose you as a rebel if you speak too loudly about the cause of death every 20 minutes another puppet dies by teleprompter tells a revolutionary to just vote if they want change tuxing sheets on deathbed for preparation hell how you gonna make it out alive anyway we used to breathe air now all we do is drink water and pray for the fire next time burning flag flapping around a body somebody deemed illegal somewhere drew a border and said I dare you to cross let's see if your lungs had taken more air than this bullet can take from you first step is to dare you to dream second step gives you to fall in love with the sound of a growling stomach third step puts you on a postcard sacrifice to a tree branch what good is the poet with no neck the coroner will joke only half of half of the half he spoke to listened anyway and my burial plot plays center stage for encore viewing you know floating on a Sierra Leone river I am less weight than tree tree telling my neck it meant to shield me before I became a dash somewhere within this project where I can't even float you know a white poet told me once but not every poem needs to be a revolution like my pen not attached to a fist with scab knuckles from punching through oak memories trying to talk to my uncle and Haiti I never met who's trying to talk to my aunt's headstone in Brazil these crop dusted palms never got the touch I must be a carpenter from all these splinters stinging white prayer circles gathered around staple corners I was born a poet and I have hitchhiked my way to a last meal beneath this tree so let me pause for a second and see just how much Sierra Leone is left beneath my fingernails thank you give some more love to Landon Smith please next up for your listening pleasure Melani Clay a trip south Maryland has more trees than one might think long limbs covered in ghosts like weeping cherry blossoms his mother trails you deep into Maryland waving goodbye every few miles crying as you accompany her son on his chase for a freedom he never finds Midwest much of this country's highways are little more than asphalt Benadryl he resented doing most of the driving you resented pissing on the side of the road when rest stops were deemed inconvenient your mother taught you to bathe your pubescent body by stopping you in the hallway before your shower pantomimeing where to wash a stern reminder your cursory rinse would no longer suffice for godliness you imagine that same 12 year old you grasping hold of your vocal cords begging for a proper shower after two and a half days of fast food bathroom washups but he drove like you were fugitives like you were on the run he drove like channel orange was not synth and bass but the hollow plink of a silent movies piano soundtrack on screen he appears as the hero his cape a du-rag flapping in July breezes face max by aviator sunglass riding hard to the rescue you as the damsel outfitted in yoga pants and poetry slam t-shirt hand to forehead in exaggerated distress as you await his arrival uncertainty barreling down the tracks to crush you both he fashioned himself your savior and you let him let him convince you if he only deposited your life just three-fourths of a mile from where you first drew breath your lungs might cease to remind your heart of how he once left them wrapped in grief's ever tightening grip before you took him back before you spent humid mid-atlantic nights cursing his name and weeping into empty shot glasses mountains Montana startles with the deep emerald a firmly rooted grass Utah sores into the sky limestone and rust some parts of this country are beautiful enough to make you forget you've been stuck with the narcissist for three days still mourning the creative books he shamed you into leaving behind not yet knowing you'll soon be shoving him into walls threatening to leave if he won't stop treating your love for him like the grandest curse west on the last day you rose to shockingly crisp air at a rest stop just over the california border hovered above a trucker's toilet open tiny blue cups until the gas stations reheated coffee felt more elixir for a moment your belly knotted with fatigue and plastic burgers you thought about leaving calling your mother to come rescue you the way she promised to junior year when your blood was late and it was all your fault instead after the tank is filled you're in the driver's seat he spent the morning feeling proud of himself for furnishing your apartment from craigslist after three and a half days on the road you'll spend six more hours traversing the east bay to gather it all without much more than a high five from the love of your life east two years later at your rehearsal dinner held in his hometown to accommodate the fact he didn't want to marry you in the first place friends will laugh about this road trip as the defining point in your relationship since no one wants to recall the way you berate him when you're wasted call him names you don't remember and he won't repeat in the borrowed community room of a lush apartment complex blocks from the nation's monuments to its own sordid history he raises a toast seated to his right a smile plays at your lips but your eyes hold memory of his profile once silhouetted against the setting sun and a flat expanse of highway the last time you looked at the side of his face believed he turned to you and smile a bullet is a bouquet until it is aimed at a black body same way a machete can be a butter knife a rifle a balloon animal squeaky clean depravity a mental illness same way a bullet entering a chamber can be a prayer with a white man behind it every question from a black mouth becomes an assault refusal to comply with their death sentence forever being sentenced to death forever caught between capital and finality a wallet is a gun a stereo is a gun slick tongue gun psychosis gun turn back gun loud voice gun sweat gun everything is a gun except a gun when it is in a white man's hands then it is taser it is shield it is a punity it is stiff breeze blown across the fragile sands of a human life rendering it an echo among the grains all my attackers must be R. Kelly's and Bill Cosby's pedophiles or perverts for me to have half a chance of being taken seriously but the friend who trails his hand too far down my back the lover who chooses to bury my no beneath all the yes that came before it the boy I called myself falling for who played bass in church none of them are monsters yet memories of them still hide beneath my bed breath hot with denial whispering doubt into my dreams without being pinned down without being drug without being underage without dark alleys and strangers with weapons and even with any of these my story has no teeth nothing with which to attach itself to righteous outrage we are never victims even when there is a fight and DNA under fingernails even when there's video and scars even when the world becomes the dumpster behind which you leave our bodies contorted and trembling our stories are still little more than think peace fertilizer growing clicks and traffic but changing nothing about how we feel forced to sleep fully clothed with lights on feel forced to never be alone even when solitude would nourish us feel forced to keep our stories buried out of the blazing rays of unrighteous indignation for multitudes there is a place between monster and human where too many travel a Bermuda triangle where accountability and remorse vanish in the swirling turbulent waters of patriarchal violence instead of telling the truth instead of shouting our stories into the storm to be swallowed in self-righteous solidarity we watch as monuments and murals accolades and opportunities are heaped upon these beings instead of grief we survive I'm tired of writing poems for white people so I gave birth to one they can't read a copper skin poem revised for 37 weeks and five days a poem with my exuberance wound helix around each curl laughing loud toward the sky a poem with my resistance etched into a tiny furrowed brow I gave birth to a poem with my rage alchemized into a gilded voice never backing down never silent on command a poem with my hope sewn carefully to its sternum a little patchwork yet certain all the same I gave birth to a poem that doesn't know any words but synonyms for love and freedom a poem that careens down sidewalks ecstatic shrieks prayers laid at the highest altar this poem's eyelids are lined with the silk of my faith this poem is invincible still one day though I gave birth to this poem this people's poem I know someone will try to read her anyway failing they will demand I translate but the poem I birthed was never meant for their understanding for between the lines of this poem's lashes I placed a single dream a future that is this poem's and this poem's alone to write thank you uh please weigh more for a maloney class you know I'm up here playing things goofy you know but these these poets well you know Landon he's more than just vertically challenged he's also he's also the most amazingly principled human being I know brilliant on the page brilliant in the classroom just really stepped out of a holy land into our lives and maloney clad as you witnessed is a hurricane and also a brilliant educator I think it's actually not a coincidence with all of these poets coming up so we call this little shindig the west revisits Harlem because you know we are a couple blocks away of what used to be called the Harlem of the West you know now it's it is the the Sausalito of San Francisco what do we call it now I digress up next is somebody we're we're super honored to have in the city and county of San Francisco right now man the outerworldly Dante Clark Lions and lambs gather around the porch light near the praying man to hear his banana clip theory and hopes to keep the devil off before being buried in gold and joining the vanilla sky club he said we hasted through the fires the south sent after our feet unintentionally carried the flames of Mississippi burnings with us on our exodus trailer tears up north and westbound covered by the ash of Jim Crow with the smudge of smoke seeping deep into our lungs crawling through our veins and hardening its thick coat onto our blood leaving our children to be birthed with a mark that's profitable when persecuted he said we be the prophecy that the bible speaks of how in the silence of the lambs there is a ghost that walks through the tall grass during the keeping hours and every time I died beneath the leaves the legacy of the bones rebirth between worlds so I imagine if pain was a person it'd be from the projects in my birthplace where fed babies walk head strong with secret scars on the black feet near demons with cold shoulders and no chill holding on to switches and drakes on the purge for days and nights with no prayers no features no dealings with real love over thoughts for hurting more than yesterday whose image is not shallot with a pistol by the bed under the influence of 28 bars no word for word of a 7-11 in a brain dead jungle and when truth be told in federal pressure clears this air this reckless mind frame will be blind and relentless again and again and again sitting on the dock of the bay watching the ties roll away sitting on the dock of the bay just wasting time or sitting on the block in the bay watching my kind fade away posted on the block in the bay this rage of mine I'm high sitting early sunrise Richmond with some of my kindred sipping reminiscing about when we were children outside empty buildings feeling all of the feelings of living under no siblings yeah yeah wish to prevail no work under fingernails so we inhale to escape while we inhale with stale dry well impaled by corner sales I'm replaying my ails I wear my public fails with yells and random screaming dealing with inner demons keep leaving out of my body I probably won't need a reason to I probably won't see a reason for breathing on any longer faded almost a goner I want to go to them heavenly gates if not the case I just sit on the block in the bay wait because I imagine brash men with brass skin lag gonna drag with the evil sidewalk huddle with their people's feebling spirit gaze and stock on Broadway you know the sights doing what niggas do all day ass chasing and fast-pacing we hand to mouth forever standing out a spiritual drought left the heavenly house to go sleep on a devil's cow street life we call it paving way for new day murderous thieves and alcoholics hollocks hollocks hollocks posted on the block in the bay know of my time I could fade today posted on the block in the bay it's wasting time and it's quite usual see it like nothing's new to you limited to these cubicle circle corners like hula hoops hard knock was a school of youth thugging from wound to funeral gang case on my cuticle's making poverty beautiful yeah overgrinding knowing that time is winding backwards oh not shining so we invest in diamonds I'm trying but I'll be lying pretending that all is dying don't have me clutching that iron to keep my mind from crying while I am my soot staining my new coat buying me new suits with flowers over my view my cuffs now feel blue tripping nothing to do but tie up them war boots go shoot hop pursuit just another body dropped in the bay losing our mind I'm living this way posted on the block with a K this rage of mine young prophets and visionaries cover obituaries thick as dictionaries and it's scary be wary of the suit sails and fairies and the spiritual seas they carry now tell me this if you knew the streets was a devil's bride would you still get married to the gang think about that sitting here drying my bones and these evils just won't leave me alone waiting for the damn car home this rage of mine because where I'm from the town there's a graveyard so to see no evil wouldn't be a west side story in the hug the block is churched with thugs who seize remedy and rocking the Jesus piece more than running into heaven's arms with peer pressure and project hallways be having shook ones live in eye for an eye from crater to grave as blood sport stuck in a trifle like what nighttime boats would get dealt with left in a place where they can't drink they paint away so they smoke it but I say let this be my apostles wanted with some flavor for non-believers my attempt to spread love and drop a gem on you before the party is over and I dump this backstage past the mayhem for the adrenaline rush that they dreaming about pearly gates while waiting to excel like find me on a jet life the foreign summer sipping jamaica rum under elevated music where I don't have to breathe drugs to be kicking clouds in black heaven having to stand off with memory lane because my eyes hurt when I miss who he was doing cartoons and crayola before my avenue was pain and I believe that black babies didn't mourn when accidents happened on the loners boulevard and suing after another one of those benevolent shooters aim pieces through the air to leave a queen and slim broke in a minute haunted by a voice flaring I told you I told you about chasing them enchanted waterfalls which will only bring you us pain even when the joke song you us too so peace in my heart is wrapped in Egyptian cloth buried beneath the pavement of cocaine paid corners where a thousand corpse lie like their flowers and family secrets out of fish fry sitting parallel parked at front lines of bricks and murals and fenty seats counting 30 shell cases and black spoons compiled after Reaganomics then left scattered brains on the Bosquiat reaping an aftermath of a juvenile hell hole when our beloved saw left a slack box with bullet holes in their throats when red beams are highly praised like we ain't the sons of kings like we ain't sons like we ain't kings like we ain't the son to kings so mama told me always keep a machete should ain't no takebacks from the grave when a fire be kicking tree limbs at the ligus though no gotta be a blue moon on a swivel or in these fields you'll become the new negro spiritual and life sings me sweet songs i would love to dance but i'm afraid of my feet you know peace in me is trying to piece together a piece of mind like whatever piece of mind i find is fine you know let's by design what i find don't provide me a peace in mind you see peace of mind is peace of mind my mind want peace of minds to come back way back back before this trap black this piece of my mind been outlined in black to black black the darkest hue with a pack black that dirt kneeled in the thirst field work first before it's the feed off your scraps like life um sing me sweet songs because i would love to dance but i'm afraid of my feet i'm a walking prayer negro spiritual cry from a broken heart that bleeds up city and try not to be a cup of bitter sip on bed table apps in the soul food in the kitchen out of reach from grandma's hands in some trap towel section eight miles away from life that's living no i want to empty out be baptized in honey and drip for eternity for eternity for four eternities like life sing me sweet songs because i would love to dance but i was born pissed without a pot to piss in raised down the poverty street over which make us opposition losing common sense to bottomless pockets picking and picking fists is probably going to profit us poor people willing our shit not in america we chocolate children smiling cavities duck duck goose chasing underground red roads of safe havens of heaven with white men's dreams fall from a fourth of july sky all while we still catching hell hell that's just a freeway exit away flow straight blow through the light break two lefts into the right till it be there hell you'll see hella people hella high hoping like hell to spread wings above telephone wires and shoestrings past shoelace jimmynum puffy eye leaning back to a time worth dream about a hell of a winner these past 60 years been still ain't figured if where i'm at is hella hot or cold as hell all i know is these bullets burn and there's some cold young brothers shooting up when life um seeing me sweet songs and i would love to dance but thinking the thoughts that trauma teaches the thinking see they trying to train those of us at stirrup red to talk tursley and timmy you know the teeter teeter till teetering teaches us the traits to the third trace of tyler to be tripping tumbling 10 000 times so we're tossed over to the tango of taunting tales that's told to us about their tenacious taboos the tragic traffic that trackless the torture that's tattooed in the thrusting trial shrieking with tribulations always there to twist and touch the torso of the talented ten the targeted the ten toes of the toughest teenager traumatized by the tactics that the tyrannical task force used to tame us by torch huh they're trying to tear through our time huh by there be too many teachers thieving the temples taking to the temples be tilted tie to tie then this piece be tipped to them the tongue tied tied ticks that tricking the people the trap tripled out their treasure trash to the totality of the treacherous pterodones the taste of territories that the thugs tend to where there be telephones that televised the tirade of toxic tears um that's true ism the thinking of thoughts that trauma teaches the thinking how we are go through total turmoil just to tell our tribal testimonies through telephone um telephones um telephones um ring ring the boogie man tell him i got a song that a string that ghetto bird his grave will sing alone why that's happening i'll be on the run from the solar's barking by the body count because those are offerings made for the devil's team and by the time i get to arizona they would have you believe that we are prophets of rage and mine terrorists because i don't want to be called yo nigger because i wrote a letter to the new york post and made a boast that we have shut them down bet they say we too much posse we too much rebel without a pause like black steel in the hour of chaos but don't believe the hype we only bring the noise that's louder than a bomb that erased the roof to the security of the first world because we all want power to the people but the cia snuck and set a time bond for a mega blast to turn our revolutionary generation into the night of the living base heads not because my uzi weighs a ton but simply because they fear a black planet and if y'all knew about the family ties of the freemason pirates and the presidential white house who were hustling moving base and got rich off cocaine turning our silk road into a 9 11 free enterprise a black opium where prayer and where prayer over pots and pans could turn into gunplay hella smoke and brimstone just for the face to be riding through my ghetto in the valley of death speeding in the ashton marten music super high chucking a peace sign sucking down pice punk sucking down dice pineapples drying their tears of joy as others sleep talking russian roulette with free guns on private property then you'll know how to stay dangerous speak the truth and beat the odds ring ring the boogie man and tell him i got a song that a string that get over his grave thank we know what to do give some more to dontay clark you know why why else we we call it uh the the west revisits harlem because you know especially concerning the realities of oppressed people we don't have the same relationship to chronology you know for us you know these ancestors is right next door or sitting all around this room the struggle is the same mandate right so for your listening pleasure another mind that you can drop off anywhere in the space time continuing the poet laureate of san jose shocker camber how y'all doing no that sounded like bullshit uh how y'all doing okay i am honored to be here honored to be invited and share the stage with uh some of your amazing souls so i'm just gonna do a couple poems for y'all and land dude that memory i used to have that and then i had a daughter and all that shit just this was not a choice made thumbs twindling rocking a chair somewhere i was born to this there is nothing to be removed or altered this is how i i stand this is how my calf roots me how my fingers hold this is what the air tastes like when i breathe this stride is of centuries of journey sunken into the ball of feet and the anchor of hips no this was not a choice it was purpose take me to the river i want to know this could be a poem about pain but it's not this could be about justice but it's not it's not about a festival of raised arms inciting smiling bullets no it's just about bullets just bullets period bullet lonely bullet needs warm flesh that's what bullets told to do train to do holster to unopposed at escape to a burning caress to push through skin like moving tunnels to excavate like first hello bullet likes foaming mouths likes a thick ripples made when it hits blood pubbles bullet likes how muscle fibers massage is back on entry but muscle tissue too boring bullet likes bone likes bone better likes the fine bone likes how the ricochet is more fun and more lethal bullet likes how random pain can be easily inflicted but bullet really seen bullet ones too fast to be coveted bullet always covered always covered in human in smoke in blood always covered never seen only bullets footsteps examined its pathways re-enacted its fingerprints analyzed so bullet gets jealous bullet jealous bullet jealous of how blood cells clamor in unison like families how they hold each other close how after bullets graping handshake leaps onto the concrete they all join hands and sing hymns bullet wants family too bullet wants family bullet wants to be plural so bullet threatens t kills r and kidnaps s bullet now bullets bullets now swarm like bees like locus like religion like control but still bullet wants more than control bullet wants more than religion bullet wants to worship to be worship bullet needs more than just family see family just regurgitated pain gunpowder in a cold embrace bullet wants more than just warm flesh more than just puncture bullet one open wounds bullet wants to be remembered bullet wants to aim wants to aim high but bullet can't aim by itself so it aspires to be infamous like like the american dream bullet wants the american dream like like memories of bedtime stories with malcolm martin oscar amadou bullet jealous again see those bullets when hollywood bullet wants to be a screenplay adapter for ghetto boys other bullets gone indy wants to be a cult bullet wants success wants to be admired wants netflix original series bullet wants red carpet wants vip wants new stories prime time coverage wants to be interviewed by oprah bullet wants a facebook page better yet twitter hashtag yes bullet wants his own hashtag hashtag best bullet ever hashtag dopest bullet since christmas addicts hashtag dopest bullet since lincoln since tray von since elinor bumpers but bullet needs pr so bullet hires an agent bullet learns spanish and practices street slang ibonics bullet studies swahili and penal codes bullet gets to read for the role bullet gets killed for the audition and flow flown to missouri the first day of shooting bullet scarred bullet scarred and scared of the lights of the action of the body cameras but bullet steady bullet focus bullet believes bullet can do anything it wants to do with the right motivation so bullet wins bullet gets casted for the next genus six sequels bullet gets used to the glitz bullet wins bullet gets nominated for an oscar bullet wins bullet gets a home in the hills bullet gets famous bullet has fans bullet wins and when asked how bullet made it so big bullet responds i was just pointed in the right direction bullets always win thank you i'm gonna try remember this one but if we're just ordinary men retracing the paths of our forefathers better yet what if we're the combined memories of aborted pharaohs confusion in blackface puppets passing time by granting others the rights to our identity and strides are what if i told you that last night i decided to swallow mirrors and i fell asleep looking for a new view of myself i woke up to an odd image an image of the president hustling the pope for the underground blueprints of the ghetto mona lisa blowing in his hands for good luck conda lisa up his sleeve i heard him whisper red top raises makes blacks fold by the thousands he said i raise you society poured into a petri dish filtered through microscopes we've held them between church and state but now that we control their money we need to constitute their faith see all the view of us to date has been seen on the atomic level since the days of sand rain on the atomic level since the days of sand rain i told you about that daughter right because i want to do this but usually i'll just move on to something else i want to do this so it's gonna happen uh-huh control their money we need to constitute their faith their view of us today has been seen on the atomic level since the days of sand rain between tuskegee experiments dictators dictating creation from standstill dreams they stretched me recreated chromosomes published connect the dot field slave manuals for easy replication they advertise free free national geographic headshots and vibe and double xl but now i have double x than i appear to you as cloned black man kalimba capillaries fed by cnn drum beats in my heart hallowed echoes reverberating slogans clay claude mckay stokely county cullen mohammed moustafa ali g k o c oak re use of tubman c l r james bordering the thanio hannibal giovanni osiris ices shaka manelik imhotep today you tomorrow yesterday we were philistine i am revolution brush with doggone serious b vision serious about walking down a famished Broadway block using da Vinci coast to hack into disneyland because y'all they've been slipping us mickeys tightrope around my neck tomorrow in a sling sorting through sugarcane sweat record labels to define my ingredients y'all i played bet i played bet on nintendo gameboys worldwide they've gained black boys in the world while mtv tutors held handcuff kindergarten classes in their mouths i found the word pepsi an ms word spell check pepsi ain't even a fucking word y'all best believe niggers and spicks will be in version 10 point oh i am cloned negro africa in my veins carrying my nigger named american express black card member since 1804 they forced me to leave home without it i'm the usual suspect with a permanent limp from krip walking with shackles a starving vegetarian in a herd of buffalo i can only be as i am told even when i'm told i'm not wrestling with demons that resemble progress i am a brooklyn slave inside of a crack pipe in the middle of afghanistan picking cotton with black panthers at my heels black jackabins on my birth certificate using malcom x posted stamps to shop at target bullseye tattoo to black boy mosquitoes these blood suckers think i can't feel them bite i'm america's hamprint on who to machetes wearing mudcloth blindfolds and cotton fields stuffed into my ears to muffle the sound of severed generation charl i can only see the moon's orbit and metaphors ready for the world armed with cliff note heritage a jamaican terrorist plot to recapture reggae music rewind selector bobby lon soon come i am new brand negro brand new negro franchise negro with nike shockers included preloaded ice grills sold separately at conflict with conflict diamonds creating conflict around heroes being made out of pimps and convicts y'all i'm the stakes from the pope and the president till we realize what's really at stake for the pope and the president i'm a black man at the age of confusion and i'm just looking i'm just looking i'm looking for a new view of myself thank you y'all still all right y'all still good okay all right i'm i'm gonna end with this one uh it's funny that we talk about bringing west to to Harlem because i grew up in new york so the Harlem makes sense i'm on the west coast so the west coast makes sense and i got a poem called black on a pacific so that makes sense the act of yawning is revolutionary it's the ancestors riding a breath to escape but i'll need you to change yourself this breathing is normal is reloping vinyl to scratch out a party from a buried eulogy it's in the song right it's in the movement like the second great migration that brought us west in the first place we hear corralled in the bends of california like like when the sleep of words hanging the corner of your eyes they may look as if they see more of you than the mirror that you're currently grooming your grandma's life's recipes from out your natural hair picked from your own like cotton looks a familiar nappy from here but here's where the sun sets darker than blue and a cut of salt from the pacific ash our brown and black skin to a fleeting white but we still boy though we still underneath a noble savage but still boy and told multiple times that boy is only trunk muzzled track boy boys paraffin skin will ignite in the west coast sun so boys bones buried alive because body too violent see how it slices when it moves boy too damaged to move by himself boy body not his own to control boy frame must be framed must be how segregated prop 14 see look what happens when you're let free but i'll need you all to change yourself this is normally screaming awake in silence because our souls speak and whispers as to not wake the dead i fell asleep last night thinking of why funerals hunt for graves in the same places over and over and i woke up with a mouth full of exhaled whispers aching to ascend i said ain't no shame in the not knowing who you are i don't need you to change yourself this be display a play right writing us out of the series finales but the network keeps sipping us under the sight lines and we watch from a distance from from project fairs fire escapes of downtown buildings cast a mural of shadows moving to a dark dance to a zombie a copulate see see 25 20 don't know it's really just a family reunion and code switch deep fried turkey and collards and asking each other which burial site you hail him from ain't no shame in the not knowing each other though he say he say my side out of Manhattan under what they now call we wall street then he say well my people's my people's out of oscarville way we always laid on accounts our bodies hold too much water so you may not recognize the resemblance but i think we kin from my mother's side see this is normal as red lining churches and liquor stores time we swallow and eat from our own plate is full it's full recipes season like how sundays are already built into the journey since grandma mar gave you birth and told you leave home prosper honey ain't nothing but pain in history here so go west my dear we so full of food and the past and taste like the whole earth like the whole earth been been needing our children in dough and still we rise each morning to checking for any rebellion stuck in our throats don't cover your mouth is going to stop changing us i said don't cover your mouth ain't no shame in the not knowing if you yawning you already woke and can't nobody tell us how to be awake we know how to we how to do wake show we perfected how to mourn who can say how to hold on in flight this this serum sweet like jeopardy and chocolate kisses pulled out from the black of our own dungeons it's like it's like we time machine downtown san jose fifth street in san fernando and we push nigeria back into the mouth of lord legard and coughed ourselves from whence we were born into ourselves when we owned ourselves pigmented till our skin cracks open and its soil seeps into kingdoms we are beautiful we are beautiful we are so so beautiful this original flash so so mine so ours so so torn from pieces that caught wind like prayer breath like like we looking for ghosts behind the spirits as if it ain't the same shit as if we ain't the reckoning slip between the heart of a revolution but i'd never but to never know it's to never doubt so you you can't study their fork tone story of who we are as their seed was born of empty and we are and have always been able to own the language to conquer drought and call for thirst but like i said i don't need you to change yourself ain't no shame in the not knowing we all growing into our own eyes and eyes just like i myself am growing from a purpose soaked into a slow burn i am a character that of life is fire and stone the backbone of pharaohs left to alchemy worlds into trauma or trauma into words a black pearl spawned southeast london born fed into the mouth of brooklawn i am lady well and albie square moral melting the asphalt beneath my feet house music carved into the belly of a breakbeat all that just to say i am the what was that is the foundation of what will be spitting a dope 16 where there is no guestless tonight i'm from an era of black migration black monday's and black nights done at the first smile of street lights heathen work in the muscle bully pushing a pen to hustle this heavy 50 years combined with a jamaican struggle i'll be my father's patua dripped into the wrist so that each stands the ends with an island breeze i am the sheath holding the edge of midnight a sharpen bullet cut into a chamber of a boy named nigger but retold black man husband father poet father more than a poet being a father makes more of this poet further more i'll be a run on sentence running on like superfluous if not handled correctly spoken like the embedded memory of appeal backward at any point nigger can see through the seams like code switch i am as if a kiss grew into a poem and turned its cadence to a mantra code switch motherfuckers may be made to maybe hear the meandering mean of my mentioners meaning anger when in fact it's more my moving mountains made to make my momentum momentary but still i move through these moments with code switch i'll be these words caressed around a quick 24 12 more than a written testimonies folklore rocking jays and or electronic or laid before ancestor's therefore i am the lacerated stare of rebel africa sitting in the witch's brew fear not that i see you but how close these words resemble the resurrection that lives in these poems i am when you swallow lines and realize you are what you eat in triumph or defeat i save each tear in a pen so that each can write its own peace who am i i am the past that is so present i start the day first by just surviving death code switch motherfucker i wish you would code switch i am always the only roar and a still of stairs who am i i am hot and top venus and the boys in the eye of a slave ship a silent tea holding a bull whip tongue calling back the thunder these eyes recognize how close we are to the share and crop how the drip of africa left in the drum peels the sound of capture from the heart so i i beat these words like church fire and bullet trayvon and bland tubman in a rope burn set to erupt a revolution on an alabama plantation gunny sacking cotton gins and flames i am brown and here that is to say i am black and california that is to say i am black on the pacific that is to say i am black pacific that is to say i am broken god speaking obsidian in a land of ramble i am named from berth shocker manelik in my hotel camble thank you so much for your time you off the clock you got something on you i had this dream planted dead in the weekday that i was laid up in the hospital and people kept coming into my room by the dozens and each dozen had special handshakes for each other and occasionally current dance moves and they would kick my hospital bed from time to time to let me know that they'd be dancing from this room on out to my grave strange child childs and soft shoe shuffles disco spins like they were dancing for a white sundial marking numbness in their feet drum race ride and i was ready to die because you know i asked the musician in the tombs after quarters to surround his themselves it is the uniform but still i just couldn't bring myself to visualize against god one of them stood over me like a conductor waving their arms over my body directing my heart to beat fainter and fainter directing the tubes to turn the fluids back and i kept fading from consciousness with that after that on the legs of my bed as they dance wilder and wilder wild but meek or artificially meek like a artificial pastor told him to be always to be some kind of projection or character to be laid at their feet that you the only one participating in the revolution today they mock me now i was ready to go because now there's plenty of pianos that could use a new soul and i'm going to be in the revolution for as long as it takes so you can punch me out now i mean i was born with one foot in a line pit anyway but check it she had no one bothered to ask the doctor if i was really dead it was just too busy strutting too busy kissing and i kept fading and fading with only enough breath and sweet consciousness to count their smiles one two three four five and then i heard a voice a whisper and it was counting with me six we said seven we said eight another voice joined us nine ten and another you see i haven't been eating mama i've been in the trans i haven't been sleeping i've been washing my face off the port of charlston there's blood on the fall now these little societies wander together like hopeful drops of a virus citizen testament's bent on offering me a nation of breadwinners to hold me back like it's a brinks i wrinkle the concrete sometimes like flesh my marlitha king permanence turned away from a podium into the reads like god is the dangerous twin black august to the mountaintop balcony on my bedroom floor you know they steal you from the earth itself and suspend you when you're broke your neck from their foolish euphoria from the lord tiota their great superstition lord tiota their gradient reform i returned to my mother completely disrespected for peeling the heat off a purgatory they kill poets like me walk me away from my poems never to be heard from again and this final industrial complex of bloodlines picked over picked through a sporting spiritual death of your devil at least have made police become a pretty word i'm reading a nizmab shoe strange like they were tea leaves teaching you how to write about cities it's the 25th century in the mirror people tearing it against your chump chives your chump to be mocked even with a gun in your car a cuban of neither workspill tune for the proletariat the relapse ministry town to people curled up in a fetal position next to a diamond dying just another service day in the theatrics of teahouse fascism in a bouquet of surveillance cameras in the poverty of god new blue eyes corpses of water a newly potted presidency of one big shiny coin if you ask animated capitalism another non-literal voice killing this white freedom the deification of hyphens medicine bread and picture shows great protestants in LA guests of our ink drop kicking roses in the graveyard dc mink like a stone 20 and half the pen advances despite cia godpost despite non-african passing futures of metaphorical but not surreal day in a horn written life horn player improvising king like a radio prize fight feature in shongo himself a real hand sweeps the land of racism now return to the ground now make progress with the gun on our mother a manual they put on music that evening a swing type body language for you to drink with four minute five dollar bills for your body language some applause my past stomach lining either a good thing or a bad thing like being psychic on the way to a lethal injection it'll sit you down with lady day lady day leading youth who surrendered their souls to africa too soon potty thought floating in the cup of water she saved me accessing my stomach accessing the love of the american lynched cold sleeves wooden avalanche to the rest of our mother a manual avalanche to the sharp keys pain or the deal you make with pain a piano makes sense for them laying hands on the world gradually addressing the bender next on the streets of the north traveler sailing in pain repeating pain in the north ten trick of fingers on that piano harmony would have me putting a hundred fights on every direction over the lady day leaning on trees again recruiting the country side itself sam lay your plan out on this lightning make your pawns a corner pocket of men i greet the blues itself america may clean my dead body but will never include me there goes the boy killing without killing never mind this little painting of your language may i be a meaningful lynching a crow's passing good and dead by the afternoon i go to the railroad tracks and follow them to the station of my enemies a cobalt two man pitches pennies at my mug shot negative all over the united states there are toddlers in the rock i see why everyone out here got in the big cosmic basket and why blood agreements mean a lot and why i get shot back at i understand the psycho-spiritual refusal to write white history or take the glass freeway white skin tattooed on my right forearm ricochet sewers near where i collapse into a rat infested manhood my new existence is living graffiti in the kitchen with a lot of gunslingers hack up house of god in part no cops in part my body brings down to christmas the new bullets pray over blank is made from the old bullets pray over the twenty eight hours next beauty mark extra judicial confederate statue restoration the waistband before the next protest poster hey by the way time is now in the losing your honor i will save your desk for last you're with your honor you're moving money again your honor it's only raining one thing down white cops and prison guard shadows reminding me of spoiled milk floating on the oil spill a neighborhood making a lot of fuss over his demise a new lake for a black Panther party Malcolm X's ballroom jacket slung over my son's shoulder the figment of village a new news to a new white preacher all in an abstract painting of a president boss labor is some time didn't it the tension screeches the military boats in election Tuesday cars a cold-blooded study in leg irons proof that some white people have fondle nooses their sundown couples made their vows of love over opaque peach plastic and bolt action audiences the medgar ever's second is definitely my favorite law of science found the news clippings and primitive method is my arm changes imperialism simple policing versus structural frenzy elementary school script versus even wider white spectrums heartless bleeding and a challenge of watching civilians think and terrible rituals they have around the corner they let their elders beg for public mercy we'll go ahead and sharpen these kids' heads in the airs myself and see how much gravy spills out of family crest modern fans award with their t-shirt poems and t-shirt guilt and me having on the cheapest pair of shoes on the bus I have no choice but to read the city walls for signs of my life apparently too much of san francisco was not there in the first place I mean this dream requires more condemned africans to put another way state violence rises down and still life is just getting warmed up army life is looking for a new church and ignored all other suggestions or folktale writers have not made up their minds as to who is going to be their friends this is the worst downtown yet and I have bought a cigarette everywhere I've taken many a walk to the back of a bus that let on out the back of a story tellers prison sentence then on out the back of slave scars but this is my comeback face I left my watch on the public bathroom sink and took the toilet with me through that the first bus I saw eating single mothers half alive it flew through the bus line number then on out the front of the white hall hopefully you find comfort downtown but if not we brought you enough cigarette filters to make a decent one a coat special species of handshake let's all know who's came what's the lights man this coffee needs to put acting like those are birds singing let's eat now let's have no wings have no voice other than that of a white world dining at book pages in the gas the way three news is the rule of the way potato sack mask also well with radio calls of the way condemned Africans fought their way back to the ocean only the fine waves made a 1920s burnt up piano parts european backdoor deals and red flowers for widows and spent all day in the sun mumbling in san francisco red flowers but what's the color of a doctor visit there are book titles in the streets book titles like hero you make a better zero or hey fur coat lady the president is dead or pay me back in children or they hung up their bodies in their own museums another book title is pulled from a drum solo run here hero lie at the hiding place all the bullets and tamperies things know where to go there's no heaven nor any other good idea in the sky politics means that people did it and people do it understand that when in san francisco and other places that was never really there i bet this ocean thinks it's an ocean but it's not it's just 60 mission street i'll know who's came came and then as you know like america i'm proud to deserve to die i'm gonna eat my dinner extra slow tonight in this police state candy dispenser you all call a neighborhood no set of manners goes unpunished never mind the murderers insomnia or the tea kettle preparing everyone for police service all right thank you very much for uh coming and hanging with us uh in in order of their groovy appearance first landon smith give it up for landon smith melani clay john tay clark the shocker camber i'm your i'm your friendly neighborhood tango man and shout out to the library you know and and and my man michael lambor right there the city librarian you know i mean leader of this here circus king of the pirate ship but uh man travel safe for or sit right here if there's something else coming i appreciate you