The Poet

The Poet

Sunday, November 13, 2011

Urban Poetry? ©2011 By Ronald S. Porter

You want some "Urban Poetry?"
Okay, here, I'll give you some:

Asphalt, cement, a brick upside the head
old men with brown bottles, in alleys, propped
up sitting, against a garage door, dead
drunk. Not really dead; we don't kill
our old folks down here
at least not intentionally the way we do
everybody else. We revere them
they are relics of the past
from back when people here lived long
enough to collect a social security check.
From back when everything wasn't wrecked
and nobody had
a thirty-five year old grandmother and girls
didn't keep on getting pregnant
just to stay elegible for welfare checks.
Back then, so they say, Black people from
this very neighborhood, ri-chere owned
grocery stores and resturants and clubs
to provide for community needs; when old folks
and children and church folk got respect.

Right about now Po-Po rolls on by
they pull over and click on the loudspeaker
"Okay, there's twelve niggers on this corner.
You boys know the statistics, one in four, three
of you sons of bitches, get in the car."
J-Dogg, Leon and Rashantay mumble
"guess it must be my turn" and we all
trade handshakes and make
the four-one-seven L street sign.
They walk to the car without a stumble
I'll miss them dudes while they in the joint
see 'wm in about eighteen months time.
That's a long time for doing nothing, but
you just can't argue with statistics.
A brother has to be realistic.
All we can do is blaze a joint
pour out some beer in memory
and look around for some way out
of this fucking Urban Poetry.