Sunday Shine* { O.G. 2009 }

I'd been typing, drafting, writing, crossing out, erasing, deleting, trying to build a cohesive thought for the things going down socially, communally, globally - but the sentences never formed.
Sometimes I need to write a poem. Just about forgot I started this life for myself, 15 years old, as a poet. How did I almost lose myself?


O.G. 2009
(a poem for Oscar, Sean, Robert, those before, those to come & my black boys)

if anything

you have reminded me
"good mornings"
are not to be taken for granted
there is nothing more appropriate than
a student trying hard to show
he loves

you have done more

on the newest day for many
another chance for most
you in your daughter's eye
your body and the platform
your blood dyeing our heavy cloak
reactions uncontainable like your smile
a people known for their good memory, even wiser

it is never over

a plaque on the station bench
a march to nowhere
a rock to a window
a flame to the gas
a misstatement of your name
but violence also begets
a spirit as aflame as the streets
the first protest from the last breath
a daisy sprung from the bullet wound
I hear the soil is rich in Oakland