Top 10 Posts 2017— No. 5
They Aint Our Neighbors
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they weren't neighbors.
they couldn't be.
they wouldn't let them be
because they were just
occupants
with an expiration
date, which happened to
be whenever those people in
suits with big money
and big ass empty
voices decided,
they sent those seeds
somewhere else so
that they could
recline on bloodied
grounds inside of
what used to be
Church's Chickens
& liquor stores.
the making of a ghost
town is all it is
with those unaffordable
houses to match,
shutting kids out
from books and life,
vacating areas.
no such thing as
'owners' until
they come & take it
all.
making all of
the room for their dreams,
still deferring the dreams
of those who could've
been their
neighbors,
still deterring flowers
from blooming on
the westside,
leaving them to dry,
to rot on the eve of
grand openings and
don't fail to mention
them white ass fences.
--
Smoking guns in
their hands,
they blow on them
with a smile,
wiping the blood on
their 'neighbor's' shirt
just to spite them
as they die,
right as they
close their eyes.
but the hands with
nothing on them get
stabbed and the people
they belong to took
the bullets.
they came with briefcases
full of bullshit,
set up shop for
yet another botched
procedure,
thinking that you rid
yourselves of
responsibility
because you thought
you made the people
disappear.
they're surrounding you,
medicated with syringes,
these sharp tools
help them to
dig ditches in
their souls,
throwing their life in
them.
sticks talking
and dead people
trying to walk again,
walking in death to
get a breath of
life,
she's posted at
that gas station with no
pants or panties on,
waiting for customers, strung
in the pits of her
wounds,
then found naked in
a field of kudzu
or inside a home.
they chased him up
the street and
shot him,
they didn't know
he was dead at first
so they left him,
they thought he was just a
drunk passed out,
until the sun began
to rise.
roll over that body
and see seventeen years
on his face with
a place in the world,
a site of mourning
the smell of that
dirty ass creek
accompanies his stench.
more wooden boards
and less life
they said,
it would be alright
for us,
they said
with no money
the winners didn't
think they could
ever win
because they
always seemed
to be draping in gold
while we tried to
just imagine
the scraps,
--
our voices are
tired.
our beings are
spent.
But they weren't
our neighbors to
begin with so
that's it.
reaping the disturbed souls
of the dead should
be their
nightmare,
their deepest
fear.
for they are near,
and they can't keep
taking and running.