I grew up by streets
where rain dropped down imaginary gutters
and made drums beat
the sound of old radiators

that sat inside abandoned apartments
carpeted with rugs and animal bile,
where fantasy worlds came to life
as I played the single-man clean up crew.

Lived in catacombs chained to the hollers
of tenants with slave-master mentalities
that demanded plastering, painting,
and labor at below zero weather.

All granting me plenty days with fevers and shivers,
where baby food tasted like a full course meal
and room-temperature-water hit the right spot

the right spot
you can find on every crevice of the block
with the child dealers selling that good crack.
I walk passed, look back,
and realize this is our day to day

day to day
knowing my life is five wads worth
on any given night on Wadsworth St…
that feet dragging my way on Hungerford St.
means one less meal lil’ sis hungers for.

Momma’s chained by a felony,
papa’s finding his survival in Cheshire,
grandma’s tears pray for some hope,
and I find answers in rocks
wrapped in a high school diploma
of an empty job market
in a city waiting for the great White light
to return in a downtown district
closed-off for Latinos and Blacks.

They’ve fooled us with a middle class
so let my means to a way for a daily bread
remain so crass you ignore us 100%,

Because I prefer a pure truth
over a city full of factories
for the making of hand-out institutions
covered in the plastic of black and brown skin.

Truth be told I’m the re-birth of ancestors
resisting to be anything but human
so sages’ wisdom is intuitively whispered
into my membrane.

Truth be told, I’m the re-birth of ancestors
who bore the most dangerous kind of man,
one who has nothing to lose.

I live by streets
where the drum’s beat keeps my heart beat
in sync with the inner divinity
that helps me step into life’s heat
like solar eclipses walk on moon craters.

-Osundara López