Wednesday, January 7, 2015
a poem for Funky Rat
these streets were not designed to carry the soul weight of our young men and women.
this asphalt and concrete laid out to carry trucks and cars.
not the gentle soft feet of young ambition.
streets is watching.
waiting for you to fall, fail, return
to tell you
"I told you so”
and
"your tiny ambition is worthless your dreams are shitty and useless"
why?
Our souls are heavy with failure
this is why we simultaneously rejoice and cry when one of us ascends
“either to fame or death”
“he made it”
“yo.he DID that shit”
yo. he did it he got it
fame and fortune
but in the end he died alone
he didn’t deserve to die like that
so young ½ century
he should have been surrounded by those who truly love him somebody should have been there to massage his weary feet to cradle his head in their lap someone should have been there to tell him that it was okay to go
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I got sucked in by your entry on gil scott heron (http://deepculture.blogspot.com/2011/05/damngil-scott-heron-died.html). I was just moving (silent and cemented at my desk here at work) to "The Bottle," "Me and the Devil," etc.,etc.,etc. Was going to write a short story once about Gil after reading a piece on him in the New Yorker (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/08/09/new-york-is-killing-me). But shelved it when I realized that it would be radically unfair to him - I've known only addiction and misery... I've never known Mr. Heron. I liked your entry from 2011 though - gave me hope and a sense of peace when thinking about Gil towards his end.
ReplyDeleteI'm still writing - just chasing my own demons now, leaving other people's alone... Keep moving with your poetry, man -- good stuff!
Thank you so much for your encouragement and compliments. It really helped me today. We all have our demons to fight, every single one of us. Please don't stop fighting yours. You cannot let them win. You can not. That time, all the times I got to see Gil, helped me. I saw him up and I saw him down. It was all him whether it was tragic or glorious, it was all him and the blessing was that I got to see it. I appreciate him as a man, a struggler, an artist and an elder. Life was incredibly painful for him, and I'm glad he found his rest.
ReplyDeletePlease do write that story, Gil would tell you to write it because it's in you to do.