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April 19, 2013

Paying Your Dues 4/14/13

Who owes you? Surely someone is withholding a grand amount of money, land, property or some other such valuables from you? Why else would you be walking around with your mug on mean, thoughts obscene...words to match if you won't be denied something due to you?

Oh Ohhhh, you're angry at the world and pissed off at your parents aggravated with your aunties cause, lil sister ain't sharing, big brothers been out of touch, and even your wife's got you wondering. But I ask you again, who owes you?

Okay, okay, yeah yeah, it's your situation, because you deserve better. Because you shouldn't have to live like this. Alright, I can respect that point of view but is it really whats gong on, on the outside that dictates who you are, and how you feel, or is it whats going on in the inside? And does anybody really owe you anything, or they simply failing to meet your expectations?

What? That too close o home for you to brush it off like dead skin? Food for thought, thought provoking, hopefully opens where your heads been. Boxed off, get your rocks off on, holding a grudge, screwed your love life, lost in the life, to much mean in your mug. Drugs have stole your ambition, left you hoping and wishing for Maybach's and Bugatti's, but there's no food in the kitchen. Ramen noodles and spam, Bun B was on to something. So anything moves your spirit until it's on & jumping? Shots fired, cops, sirens, yellow tape and paramedics, crack, x, dro, meth and it's all copacetic? What about the tombstones and cell blocks, visitation and 'mail call', the other side of the game, what the rappers didn't tell you? I pray I never fail yall, as I shine to bring the truth. And the truth is, You owe somebody...that somebody is YOU.

April 14, 2013

The Faces of Change

tonight, over seven years after the fact, while in bed reading a very good novel by Harlan Cober ironically titled "The Innocent", I realized that I don't even remember her face. Whether her hair was blonde or darker, the color of her eyes, her fear, her features all register a blank, something fictitious and conjured by my imagination stands in mocking the truth.
I cannot remember any of their faces. Their voices have become inaudible whispers, their lives the vapors of my memories.
Not one of them knew that the gun was not real, or that I was depressed and seeking martyrdom, or that the man who's sitting in a lovely prison cell right this moment was buried so deep within the foolish monster who threatened their very existence with an empty BB gun that he is unable to recall one detail about any of them.
It was never about them. I can remember the guilt and the murmured words of apology at the scene of the crime, but none of that undoes or justifies the wrongs. not even the most sincere apology could reveal to me a true image. Maybe I blocked them out so that they would not haunt me, so that I could torture myself? Maybe I really was not in my right mind? but how? How can I explain not having any trace of these peoples faces in my mind.....the people whose lives have probably been forever impacted by the thing that I was a robber?
In their mind, can they see me? Have they forgotten my face? Have they disconnected that I am a father, that I love to cook that I'm a momma's boy....or do they even care? Most likely, I will always be the "Guy who robbed them", who made them purchase a pistol, who made them lock their car doors when they see black males near their car, who fed the stereotypes, justified the racism, and poured gasoline over the flames of torment  hatred.
Is it fair for me to have forgotten when they will never forget? is my 40 year sentence perhaps insufficient because I've put the actual events behind me and I only suffer with the harsh realities of my own life, the after,  that which never goes away, that which I long for, that which torments my soul?
I should remember, I want to remember, but I can't. All I can do is hope and pray and plead that the victims understand that people can change, and that they do, and sometimes you have to let the past go in order to embrace the present, in order to move freely into the future.