Born in a loveless vacuum,
I found acceptance in violence:
embracing red flags, twisted fingers, and automatics.
Martin's Dream died in the shadow of triple beam
wealth:  cooked up crystallized utopias
peddled for nickels and dimes.
Black Panthers became Black Guerilla Families
as a cracked out Percy died chasing
a dope fiend's fantasy.  I cried into
a glass of Seven and 7, hit
the one-hitter-quit, and posted
back on the block.  Money don't stop
for yesterday's fallen heroes,
no longer remembered today.
Betty X died at her grandson's hands.
What happened to Imam Al-Amin?
Barack excites the masses like Osama:
demagoguery still has a place in the Republic
where a nigger might be lucky enough
to become the next assassinated president.
At my homie's wake, tears stain my creased
khakis, staring at his ninth grade picture--
he didn't make it to the tenth--his face hidden
beneath a cherry red casket cover.
His mother swallowed a shotgun and now
she lies beside him.  I'm seventeen
attending my seventeenth funeral,
my eyes shedding their last tears.
Tonight, I will kill for the last time--
dreading sleep, I will take my first hit--
anything to keep the dreams at bay:
the face of a three year old child
exploding in a blood halo as I squeezed
the trigger of my AK; as I
squeezed the trigger of my AK;
as I squeezed the trigger of my AK!
Tomorrow begins a new day and I
will still be on the block, cold
in a hundred and two degree heat,
dying inside a loveless vacuum.