Day 3, Poem 3: Excerpt from Untitled long ass poem about the 'Hood


Cruel intentions
on your timeline-
got you sidelined
'Cause none of this was scripted
Try to tell yourself they flipped it
But the truth is
It's nothing personal to them
Just business
You wouldn't wish this on your children
But some of them did
when we were coming up-
Urban innocents-dumb shits
Didn't see what they were making
Breakin' in the next generation
and had us emulating
Pill poppers, racist alcoholics and junkies
Training circus monkeys
But my mother didn't raise no flunkies
They fueled rage and bred hatred
propagating their mis-educations
and their wasted youth
But they got us too
'Cause when you don't go along
They just rape you
Take you every chance
they can and try to break you
shake you
'Cause when you don't play
you're a throw-away
An anomaly
if you don't buy into gangster neighborhood mythology
This one's pops-that one's uncle
they were killers
chopped off limbs
in the backs of vans and
tenement cellars
and now they're fillers
in the foundation
of the buildings
that house our generation
But the thugs got locked up
and fucked up the stations
Their kids come up tryna' cash in
on a way of life
a West Side story that had passed them
Still the mothers let the
romance of a novel with
the fathers' mugshots gas 'em.