It is not all that complicated
No need to ponder the deeper meanings
of Hegel or Nietzsche
try to deconstruct it by way of algebraic variables
or right angles
that brings evidence right back to cause and effect.
All you need to know brother,
is that Dreadlock Mary’s dead.
I know she was a little crazy
But she was a good kind of crazy,
her crazy was a gentle smile
on these streets where you’re supposed to look hard.
Her kinda crazy
was cutting models out of fashion magazines,
then making do from the resale stores on the north side.
It was hard for her to keep a job,
but damned if she couldn’t dress for success.
So she smoked a little weed now and then
she didn’t harm nobody.
Dreadlock Mary’s kinda crazy was a cool kinda crazy,
Singing To be Young Gifted and Black
and it’s a fact that
she kinda sounded like Nina Simone,
sitting on the front porch
turned safe haven for little girls to jump double dutch.
Her kinda crazy was being sanctified without being judgmental.
She did unto others by respecting the humanity of the winos, the crackheads, the thugs and hustlers
enough to speak to them.
And they did unto her
by appreciating the evidence that not everybody hated them.
The neighborhood’s more lonely now.
Despair swaggers down streets and alleys listening
to faith crunch beneath it’s heels.
All they know is that Dreadlock Mary’s dead.
The simple irony is not lost on me, brother
I remember
all your conversational rants
about how we need to get the hell outta Iraq.
How we need to live and let live
Stop shouting, cursing and loudly ignoring each other.
To back away from the 24/7 savagery of
back to back black killing black.
And just … be cool.
You used to say
that all the 10 commandments could be summed up in one commandment;
Thou shall not be an asshole.
I remember you on the home front
in front of your building
telling the youngbloods to stop all that gangbanging
and running down the neighborhood.
You broke up fights
armed with nothing but words, gestures
and the insight that comes from watching calendars
blur into hallucinations of meaningful time -
they respected you cause you did your time.
Did your time straight,
came out greyer but seemingly stronger.
It was you,
you who in your poems and raps who described
every woman as a queen, sister, precious treasure
and well...
All you need to know brother
is that Dreadlock Mary’s dead.
If there were as many words
as there were raindrops
that fell on the day of her funeral,
there would still be oceans
of symbols and pictures,
songs and stanzas and raps testifying
how our meager but essential faith in the world
has been diminished
again,
some more,
into a bleeding gunshot trauma.
Brother.
The last good thing you did
is to deliver her from
this earthbound hell
this slimed together mosaic of suicide nations
into the heaven she believed in
the one where she could sing and dance
and dress up sunshine fashions
and smoke stardust with satin magic angels
and not have to worry about a
love that turns, snaps and kills.
All you need to know brother is
that Dreadlock Mary’s dead.
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