I was the girl in baggy blue jeans
who smoked blunts in the bathroom and the cracked front seats
of cars my mother warned me about. Those boys
with waxed back braids and shifty gazes
never fazed me much, too cool
to feel the hot breeze they tried to blow
between my knees. I thought
high school was an act that never made it to the stage,
wisecracks and punch lines locked in a cage
and so the only classroom I graced had EXPERIENCE
engraved in the wooden slate on the door, no more
a gateway than the tabs I used to swirl black and white
moods into color on the bathroom floor. I saw more
to my plan than a master who called himself a man
every time he raised his hand to my cheek
then ordered me to get down on my knees and bleed
words, too weak to speak. Please, I never
tried to be the type of skeeze who made brothas come
for weeks just so they could leave boot tracks
on the sleeve where my heart should be,
never really getting to the heart of me. See,
there’s more to me than the size-C cups
that fill your dreams, lips locked
on the mouth of poetry and ease
of livin’ cuz I know ain’t nobody gonna give
me what I need but me.

Now I’m a woman on the morning commute
applying shadow at red lights so as not to stain
my only suit, and I cry inside for the blind
eyes of our wide open youth, too stuck
on platinum grills, Playstation and loot
to ever see the truth about the institutes
they willingly commit themselves to,
serving their lives up on platters to heathens in blue.
Dope shoes mean nothing if the feet don’t move,
so I stick to paying less cuz I’ve learned
the expensive price of having something to prove.

09/29/2005

Posted on 09/29/2005
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