The Cipher

How long will it last?
Til the poor get more cash?
Fools broke out, to be broke at home.
Goal get took out being broke alone.
In the struggle together -
Fittin' to make it mo better
Than the past was
Letter to the debtor
Writin' to let'em trus'.
Words in one ear, out the other?
No! So, you know we wrote about
Dough, cheddar, green
But the lines we spout
Just like the kettle at
Grandmas' house
Where tea run short
And syrup sandwiches
Let me have a crack at this
The capitalist tells me to sit
With all his shit
He owns his own house, his second house
And the mortgage on my Granmammas house
And what's he gonna do with it?
To wit: you care about the neighborhood,
suburban dude?
Where the cops stop,
Ride along side my radials, like riot squads
With the hummers from the video
They don't hear you though
My papers, registration
But they're the niggas with the guns
Gon' shoot, first to loot,
Scrap eatin' fat pigs and thugs
Taking government funds to shoot my nigs
Its rigged, system is,
When the wars is done on the brown man shore
Rich banker man starts to get bored
Ain't no future in shit that don't break
So staff up and protect the blue line
The lives that matter is color blind
Blue little police man, got the gun in hand
A note from the tax man
Bullets and guns, is good for the people
Two wrongs is right, like fists and fury
Turnin cheeks in the steeple
But on the steps, mothers wept
In a hurry, funerals, buri-
als and the street its videos, twitter - digital egos
And images, murderous villages
Where the money pours in
For the stored weapons
When the peeps on the street wanna a bite to eat
Aint looking to end a life
Strife, kids, ills, wife, bids, bills
Like it matter
With no cheddar we sittin in sweaters sweating
Til they come cash collectin'
Or just to put me back in prison.

The Freezin Scene

Take forty-seven:
Skunk lying in the middle of the road
Johnny mixing the medicine
Woman descending in her old red dress
ACTION
Bags of dope dangle from the arm piercings
Tattoos fed on blood thirsty ink
Mothers crying in the streets twisting like folds of a frock
In the wind the trees twist and turn and cascading leaves
Leaving seasons turning and turning and turning and turning
The calm look of satisfaction streams across their faces
Cut!  From the top!

Take forty-eight:
Deer look over the fence of a slaughterhouse
The hurricane escapes
Ships arrive in the harbor
ACTION
Starvation is one of the most familiar concepts
Children from decrepit nations and fat wealthy woman tired of their own sloth
To feed a pig and to feed from a pig
The animals in the forest don't care about the corpses they consume
Since bacteria has the last laugh before life emerges
Full of maggots and penicillin
Eventually the cures to all mankind can be found in the hope of today's child...
Cut cut cut, that's not right.  Try it again.

Take forty-nine:
Sewage bloats a body floating in the river
God is on the right side
The woman's child is allowed in the house
ACTION
The lights of the stadium show the lions and the Christians
Praying to a higher power has never been the same for everyone
Dungeons of greed torture the dreams of the future
Even outside amidst the burning trees and swelling tides
The doomsday device, the blindness of primates to conceive their limitations and achieve their expectations
Where the explosive nuclear power plants charge the imaginations to far off lands
That books conjure what science has disproven time and again
Yet text book functions as the check for the spirit
While the Bible promises anything one hopes to inure
Caught in the cross fire are the muddled minds and creative bellies of the less fortunate
How long will the guns keep them busy?  How long can they really want to hate their neighbors?
When the sun shines and burns away the dismal distortions of kindness, the antiseptic light of our own awareness becomes a beacon of...
Cut cut cut, I hope that's not right.  Take it from the top God damn it!

Take fifty:
I cooked the fish floating next to the boat
The artist has everything he needs
Put that woman in the red dress back in the attic
ACTION
Fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire
Yeah, I went to the movies last night.
How was the show Ms. Linco...
Cut cut cut.  Who wrote that cliche crap?  Again!

Take fifty-one:
Slaves still clean our shrimp
Working with Maggie, pa and her brother
Have them hold up today's paper
ACTION
We're here talking to all the servants about man and god and law
All the good stuff the men talk about when their thinking about
Screwing the other guys wife.  Or screwing the other guy's daughter.  Or just screwing the other guy.
Ain't never heard of no God actually making a law.
I heard of a lot of men making laws that God said he made.
Hearsay, is what that's called in the court of Man
But in the word of our Lord for anyone zealously representing the great Father
Hearsay is but a dream, or a man from a mount, or that man upon a cross
The world of the Lord is bandied about in the thunder and lightning of curiosities.
The images of those miracles where the water walkers and fire finders moved amongst us
Seamlessly the stories built like a bonfire built not just on faggots
But on the words of others.  A contemptuous plagiarism in the form of book burnings.
That man can only stand to hear himself roar from atop the mountain.
When the echo comes back the stench of the breath of each and every respondent
Singes the eyes and burns faith to the ground.
For a faithful man has no fear
When the foul mouthed echo of his prison conjures the hate of those that are different.
No, the faithful man knows the different are just like him.
A belief that rages into the mind of righteousness and love will have no fear of those whose drummer's rim shots bounce recalcitrantly off insecure foreheads.
Cut. Again.

Take fifty-two:
Armed warriors next to ignored opium fields
I'm on the pavement.
Lobotomize the woman in the red dress please.
ACTION
I've been thinking about you so much
When are you coming home?
Soon
When?
Harry, can you come today?
Yeah... I'll come today.  You just wait for me, alright?
Harry?...
I'm coming back, Marion.
Yeah.
I'm really sorry, Marion...
I know.
Cut. That's a wrap.  Nice shoot everybody.  Have a great weekend!

Order

What is happening
In the ballgame they're playing
Happens all the time -

A random sequence
Bouncing between hands and toes,
Balls doing as told -

Constantly different,
Outcomes unpredictable,
Rules always the same.

One eye up, Captain

Dancing shadows of the things
We don't  know a slow intoxication
A frustrating burn that does not think
Again, this will be the first time?

Cascading hope, don't let me think.
That this will be the first time -
Mighty might be somehow
Sung here unto to me now, please.

A twisted turn of the wretched cargo
Then there is nothing left.
The ocean floor makes the beautiful music.
Only when it is in sync.

Odes to the M.C.

Kicks flicks sticks
what sids flints
wicks pricks licks
fools that kick and rhyme
like those old times
souljas cut inside my DNA
like flows past from Rakim
old steps danced to Sugarhills
gangs flows for the thrill
kill, will still
flow inside the restless day
moves inside the public square
twisted rifs licks and spits
inside the way we play
hoops and goals
like class and schools
where we know we don't want them
explain laws not to let them
regret those who let them
not true
shoe drops on the fool
that the dudes who once spoke the truth
ruthless scruples
gangster ripples
concentric circles
lost in the gruff rough tough stuff
that decides
for fickle fate
for the black man
don't wait for the main
strain and pain no gain
for the tan sand
blasted but lasted
upon the man where beats bit
like whips that kick
against the back slits
where thin flits
and the blood bursts to squirt
don't think these words fall
so seamless, the team with me
that they spall
and sicken, to quicken to hurt
to thicken the words
the gravy it burns
the poison it stings but the rhymes the sing
master of ceremonies proceed to do your thing
classist - fascist bash this
beat like a skull
beats quick
why do you live with me
the maniac Pyscho
society
pulls out their jammy
it might go
you like me know
did the rebel not allow
or was he all to inviting
exciting the rhyming and biting
the beats and the timing
was the who was trying and inciting
for the records they were buying
the maniac psycho
believe that and you might go
where?
there?
who knows how?
now?
wow?
to try and contain and maintain
just fights the blinding stain
the stinging rain
that's who comes crying with pain
through tears and hears
years of fears
and the law is not discreet
it tears and it sears
to cut the wrinkles and time
they cut and the clip like beats
as they stick and still the
master he ceremonies
the horses the ponies
they run in the circles
like the records
the mic it spits
the rhymes they hit
and still we sit
that's what he did
hid
bid
and that's what they said
segregation topics
political politics
syllables that don't fit
they don't want to hit
where it might stick right
where you think it fits
they been lying
dying trying hiding
they got us fighting
lights blinding
fact finding
searching seeking
lurching sinking
times is crazy
folks is lazy
eyes is tight
trying to get it right
money is slim
budget don't fit
wanna grip
waistlines trim
is shit grim?
well don't believe the hype
get yo ass up and fight
cuz they figga like you figga
my nigga
please they gonna come try and take you out
that's what its about
ship em our and get em gone
and when we fighting ourselves
they know it won't take long.

The Albino Mexican

The bald bleached Californian and the backs of McDonald managing poverties.  The names roll of the tongue - the easy ones: Jaime, David, Isaac, Jesus, Pedro, Juan, Miguel - so the list goes and the challenge increases to name the many: Rafael, Leonardo, Jorge, Fernando, Benito, Ramon, Vicente.

Moctezuma, Itzcoatl, Tizak, Cuauhtemoc, Acamapitchli - these are harder.  They do not roll of the Anglo tongue.  They didn't roll off the Latin tongue... and eventually the colonialism bred the new world's first mixed breed:Andrés de Tapia Motelchiuh, Pablo Xochiquentzin, Diego de San Francisco Tehuetzquititzin - something you can understand.

Names are the forgotten casualties of conquering, lost in the victory ceremonies of feasting glory or the rewarding rites to rights of rape and the bloodletting of the warrior spirit currency does not get change.

Names and names and names.  They come and go attached to deadmen dreams or the infantile perfections where mothers see the enternal spirit in the eyes of their child,  the untroubled babe being the closest man comes to perfection.

Then the name - naming the body, the hosting address which assumes the cloudy tempests of each and every civilization, fight and slaughtered and reduced and reintroduced with a new address, a new name for the babe.

"What's in a name, what's in a name, what's in a name," ask the refugees.  Wyclef answers, "You sure you wanna hang with old Eddie Kane?" Hey Mona Lisa?  No Eddie can't play the mysterious white lady.  An actor is an actor is an actor... the actor is not unto themselves a fantasy.  Just a name.

America Verspucci, we all stand for thee.  And God, I stand for thee... how do you name justice for all?  Tiffany, Jeremy, Brandon, Melissa, Annie, Alice.  The blind statue of free market arguments often can't see the money that tips the scales.

What happens to the mother?  Is she the unnamed deus ex machina, artificial intelligence of our souls, an annoymous source against our greedy talons and incisors.

Mothers have stumbled the streets after their mad children for years, howling for their bodies, their corpses, their restless souls, in order to the name the grief and calm the rash of this planet on the skin of all the starving babies.

Convention is such a bother.  The nomenclature disguises the fact that we don't care.  Like one would name a sandwich or a meatball on the dinner plate only to devour her young as if were the sandwich or some litter of meatballs.

Mothers have let these children run nameless through the streets, roughshod in the alleys, pirates of the arcade.  The many children who have come to know the legend of Zelda, or PcaMan's villanous spectres, the assaults on donkey kongs

Sabrerattling never felt so good.  To hear the icy iron clang from the scabbard and the cold fear that lingers on the brow of the opponent.  Where you look for them the next morning - yes, you now you find grave men.

Fiction has the heros that we all adore. Romeo, and Juliet.  Sara and Abraham. Han and Leia. Popocatpetl and Iztaccihuatl.  Iocasta and her kid.

They have names.  The same names we tell our children.  All the tales we make believe.  Those innocent and lewd, those tales we've told before, even in centuries of solitude.  Those good days with colonel.  The lover.  Ursula.  Becky.

The mothers have names at one point, maybe before they are bound to the agreement with nature.  When the whole of a heart warms the eternity of the soul - the calm of the world rests sweetly on the songs of our mothers.

They do not need names only defense.  Their patience and quietude rattles the nerves of only the rowdiest child, bullying and tussling with the other children because homework is boring and hugs are infrequent.  We name those children.  Give them lofty names to calm their fears.  Their silence is a somehow deafening indictment.  But lay blame.  Do not lie blame.  For an honest accounting is what the kings request.

A loneliness strikes chords against an angry harp and my eyes roll back to the top again.  Pinball machines of dreaming and waking, scoring again, words colliding against that similar frame of reference - to exclaim that the play is the thing when the sentence itself is the rub.

Words landing into the wading pool of my memories or contemporaries and dreams divided and collided.  Things that might satisfy a reckless mind much as the felled tree and man can sit for a while - this is no satisfaction.  Time rages on like a fury men cannot understand.  Women are seemingly more patient, hoping that time might heal all the wounds that man has made.

Dissatisfaction naturally sweats off the brow, and the drenching anxiety of morning attacks the bleached sides of youth.  Where the colors leap and dance across from the imaginations of babes to the wailing screams of sophomoric music, the painted sides of the nursery dull after all the years when the colors must be dampened for the sale.

Mortgages that could be paid off in pickle juice and peanut butter jelly snacks for sandcastles in that lot just outside your parents window?  Those are much more expensive now.  Those plastic trucks and GI joes are more real now than they were then and they are actually way more expensive.

Educating the saddened mind meditating on dementia aloft above an abyss, dismal heights above the perilous depths of a mortal souls.  Curious minds make for restless bedfellows, slumbering into the late mornings when the dragons whip and swirl through cocktail chandeliers and champagne fountains.

The weddings that we witness now are ornate dedications to our own fears of solitude. The loneliness screams and screams and screams like a baby, death chamber marching an all, this ode to all of those things that comfort us.  The madman howling to the witnesses, "You may now kiss the bride."

Such a comeuppance for the human web of sheer dissatisfaction - constant treachery in the houses of others but in galaxies quite near to hear, a refrain comes from mysticism, "Never his mind on where he was!."  The excited voice in the desolate land - the immigrant hides a scalding fear of recognition.

The negro samurais of the underground railroad do not receive the credit they deserve.  You say to yourself that there were no negro samurais.... to which I say, "That is because there were so silent and effective you did not even know they were there."

African Kings, and Aztec Rulers and Chinese emperors, Black Jesus, Moor Generals, Islamic Presidents - words that sting the entrenched hypocrisy of todays kings god emperor children that monitor this life for failing pulses and limited brain activity, hoping that mindless children in prisoncell classrooms still make for deposit slip taxes.

You cannibal legislatures - we point to your dinner table served by the myths of time and the impoverished realities of the servants to your cups, overflowing with bloody fictions of meritocracy and cooperation.  Blood runneth on to the floor and drowns the dark skinned monkeys you insist swim to your table side.

What is then nonsense?  Nonsense? The blanketed Fort Whimsy of my youth where the truth can find a shelf and sit like a vase while the histories of nebulae can absorb the million opportunities for myth and love to collide upon a rock like, eagles coming daily to disembowel the slumber of the great adventure.

For across the seas when the truth happens it falls to the ocean floor like the souls of those that never mattered to begin with, so they never existed in first place.  Creating fictionalized realities to sort the wills of Man - in return for those many baskets of gold to the court and it's undying servitude of the rotten original sin.

And when the court is finished counting the many ends of their many rainbows and they insist the jesters come to dinner the invitees and the menu share so many of the same names:  Tomas, Judas, Andrew, Diego, Samuel, Anthony, Michael, Kyle, Steve, Harrold, William... that one almost hopes they are not invited to the royal feast.