I Died
Shadows
Over-reaching
Exaggerated hands
Faceless intentions
Address obscure
But members
In the know
Make the gang sign
This way we don't burn alone
Our collector of souls
Has fangs for pockets
Dig a code name into them
And hear your private moans

Shadows
Over-reaching
Etched on walls
That mimic the prisons
We create
In and around us
Demons
Act as faithful addictions
A shutting down of sorts
Is necessary
If you want the walls to be still

Shadows
Over-reaching
But not getting
To the core of the matter
The original dis-ease
Before we learned
What a dark,
High-rise alleyway smells like
What an underbelly
Feels like
When you cut into it
See your twisted intestines
How they dangle
Promises of spiritual ecstasy
And then implode

Shadows, he said
Loud yet voiceless
Grabbing, pleasing
But never satisfying
Secret handshakes
Kept him on the list
To nowhere somewhere
Between the void
And the unmentioned
Right before sunrise
Or the last desperate attempt
To forget his name

Shadows
Over-reaching
And again all the hands
Until the surrender
When one of us
If not all of us
Gets to keep down his turmoil
And act like it’s ended

I asked him how
He got to be
How he went from
All the way over there
To there, to here and here
He turned away from his thoughts
Then looked back and said,
I died.

Falling
Falling / Leaning
Generational wounds
Now more like toxic screams
From having to keep changing stitches
That can't heal

Falling / Vacillating
Against tear gas skies
Coming down
Heavy and fast
People know their sides
Nothing like before
When someone had to show you how you feel
Wars have their layers
This one's the last peeling

Hands up / Don’t shoot
I was just knocking for help
I can’t breathe
Just showing ID
50 shots means die nigger die!
I can’t breathe
Your empire is falling on me

Falling / Imploding
Into pieces of police terrorism
Now more like children’s bedtime stories
Trained missiles going off on their own

Falling / Leaving
Like all empires eventually give way
To picket signs, civil disobedience, fire bottles and
White women being run over by Aryan militia
Nothing else works / This won’t either
It took a mystery for the Mayas to disappear
It’ll take an accidental President
To pick at the last scab

Hands up / Don’t shoot
I was just knocking for help
I can’t breathe
Just showing ID
50 shots means die nigger die!
I can’t breathe
Your empire is falling on me

All empires fall
This one is still dangling
But the young are strong
They can hang off moving balconies
And throw rocks at bullets
Rip open their shirts while shouting,
Shoot me / There’s another one behind me!

Falling / Descending
Crashing but not yet touching ground
Statues of great men who owned slaves
Now losing their horses and limbs
Bottom shaking so much
White boyz flipping police cars
Over another murdered Black boy

Hands up / Don’t shoot
I was just knocking for help
I can’t breathe
Just showing ID…

Falling / Leaving
No longer imperial
Close to finally becoming obsolete
Not like heroine bodies that never lose balance
But heading straight for the ground
Without grace or integrity

Falling / Dropping
Almost gone
One last dinosaur roar
Ground shaking so much
Karma pulling streets and highways apart
Soon come the chemical fog
And we won’t be able to see our way out

Hands up / Don’t shoot
I was just knocking for help
I can’t breathe
Just showing ID
50 shots means die nigger die!
Hands up / Don’t shoot
I was just knocking for help
I can’t breathe
I can’t breathe
I can’t breathe
I can’t breathe
Your empire is falling on me.