six shots six blood brown roses abloom on your body
and the street you tilled
red earth palms molding pavement into progeny
stretches its mouth around you, lips curled and belly filled
this is some Kronos shit
a native son spilled into the gutter
where all the hurt that cannot fit into his people piles up in liquid form
this is some Kronos shit
a creative devoured by the father he called Crenshaw, bullets cutting through him like butter
links in a life unstitched at the seam, torn
silent rises the morn as the light from Sunday night vigils dims
and your face adorns every screen
the Eritrean grinds that formed the veil of your skin
transforming from wavy haired boy into braided, bearded man called King
called kin, you look like my cousins look shook from a wrathful vine
look like countless brown red black boys familiar
all on fire all the time either extinguishing themselves or turning to vapor
you see, memories amount to more than electric impulses fired up and down the spine
they are the fumes of the lost, the doomed bodies laid in the ground, the wraiths, the bullet, the wound for there is no way to conceal a
man-shaped hole in the lives of those who loved him, for no matter how strong the bond, no matter how strong the will, bullets will always be the union breaker
another rapper slain, yet we did not lose a rapper
Nipsey's tapes will live on, his streams doubling up
Hussle will motivate the next generation of victory lappers
but, but
his kids will never reach up again, playfully pull on Daddy's beard
instead Daddy's seared into our minds in the last place, the place he was always in
in front of his store, pouring his chest out of him, his community crying, paramedics trying to shake the death out of him
and yet, we had yet to get the best out of him, we did not lose a rapper, we lost something far more dear
he was, at the same time, the root of the tree and the fruit of its limb
young lion, lying still as the morning rises silent and the light from Sunday night vigils dim
and their is a fatness to the air
pregnant with humid sorrow
human sorrow swallowed too long vented through the silent o of the lips, a steam whistle of collective despair
it is an un-sound, like the rolling waves of inner city night when the car alarms have died and the horizon hides tomorrow
an un-sound, like the eternal bass that must consume the deaf, so that they don't so much hear the shots as feel the air breaking open
and we live in that space, the charred vacuum of air pushed aside
of dreams deferred, loans denied, the wound that never stitches itself
the fields we toil in become our tombs, hoping
that debt the black body accrues from birth is paid by our own tears and not those cried
for us. Riches and wealth
for us, generational prosperity, the sermon always on your lips
even as the concrete consumed you
"too many chains need another chest," I wish
you had one, another heart to spark life to limbs, a set of lungs to blow breath into
instead we wait for the city to disgorge you, cough you up in pieces of kin
the brown red black faces you lectured with the grace of your walk and presence
the black excellence you prophesied coming to fruition
by the hand of those you handed keys, but even by those you excluded from your vision
and in death we will not forget your flaws, but boil you down to your essence
Pac taught us roses could grow from concrete. Nipsey taught us those that nurture them make the difference