Friday, July 18, 2014

The Sounds of Summer

I have had a long term love hate relationship with summer,
between the whale like blubber that I need to get through the long winter months,
and my propensity for sweating when I do anything more active than lounging,
that period of May through September gets a little hard for me.
That being said I love swimming, and playing outside,
I am somewhere between a Labrador retriever and a 5 year old,
in terms of my enthusiasm for bouncing off of walls
and then out of the house
For a time summer meant
crashing through the perennially broken screen door,
Out into sunshine and scraped knees
Out into all the bruises and bumps that are part of growing up,
The loudest thing from my childhood was for a long time the sound of that screen door slamming.

Until it wasn't.

I don't remember how old I was the first time I heard a gun shot echo off the buildings in my city.
I don't remember at what age I became able to determine between fireworks and firearms.
nor do I recall exactly when the impulse to duck became second nature.
but eventually it did.
Flinching and twitching,
 dodging my way through the world,
I could never tell if it was the ADD acting up again
Or if my body was simply dodging bullets that weren't there.
I grew to hate silence,
if for no other reason than that it shatters
With edges like broken glass
So I wear sounds like they are a second skin
I surround myself in constant din
and I will never let the quiet in.
I sleep soundly through both sirens and thunder
but even then I have to wonder
because even dreams can be torn asunder.
and I fear being cut apart by broken peaces
of temporary twilight truces

Summers are scary.
There is a direct correlation between ice cream sales and gun violence
This is a reflection of an awful urban lesson
City kids grow up learning a sick sense of duality
It is a rather warped reality
to relish the vacation like every other kid
but keep in the back of the mind,
the knowledge that long summer shadows
hide many things
like bullets
like silence
and both of them scare me.
And I don't know what's worse.
The silence of peers
or the sounds of their screams?
I grasp at my ears
and they burst at the seams,
It's just how it be, That's just what I see, It's just as it seems.
And what worse than a bullet,
is the hand the sends it
malignant muscle memory
 and it's impact on the senses
bullets cross border and cultures,
 and bridges and fences.
Tell me why they can't mark that on the census?

So we sleep through the night when we can,
and we roam the streets when we cant.
Wish it were that only the gods own thunder
could wrench the sky and disturb my slumber
but right now, the cops and their kind got my city down under.

And even though my home is as quiet as it has ever been,
for the first time in my life I can't sleep past ten
and my alarm doesnt come from a phone or clock
My sleep isn't killed by guns on the block
but by badges in the street
and pain in my feet
and the point in my brain
where my shame and my pride meet.
We march because we hurt,
We fight because it works.
We lose because our curse.
Our wounds will never be as deep as Uncle Sam's purse.
Our ride will never be as smooth as the graveman's hearse
We will never be they who come first
Because that's America at its worst
patriotism nationalism and pseudofacism,
Secure in our faith that the State wont come for us
That the hands of fate dont lust for us
That our family has trusted us
enough to know our secrets and failures,
enough to know that we're in hell here,
enough that they would never send us to the counselor.
That's the trick ain't it?
everybody's broken
there pride in their silence,
their demons unspoken,
the violence of choking
their fire slow smoking
they'll say theyre just joking,
but they dont understand
 the coals theyre stoking

I don't have any answers,
I dont sleep easy,
I might get cancer,
I might like yeezy,
I'm as dumb as rock,
and mute as stone,
But if you come round my block,
you can see I'm not alone.




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