Somnolent

President’s Day and Black History Month 2022 Poem

there are late nights
and there are late nights

the ones where you make moments
and the ones where you rewind them

wishing for moths in memories and
odorous spheres pocketed in the precious
to don on the best of my fake smiles
'cause the real ones don't get out enough

see, lower class, is being born an empty clip
fit for frames of mind with no safety;
and a bit sawed off, scattered thoughts
penetrate long pains deeply

only the vested interests are protected
by complexes of industrial grade, layered
on amiable marriages of concrete and steel
meshed in a thick poverty's consequence

for perfect attendance to advanced alley lessons and
exams illuminating streetlight level avenue aptitudes,
but we found out a bid too late to catch the cement wet
if you want your own star on the sidewalk on our block

and it was the first to effervesce in months;
I dreamt the muted tones of a nightmare
where dreams were too suicidal to exist
and follow lullabies of abused steel

we waited for a school bus next to a dead president
laid sideways to rest across a bitter city's busy zipper
unaware that our route led down a crowded statistic
littered with the shackled remains of pure indifference

it pulled up at the south side of a burglar's favorite hour
with its occupants divided neatly by station and genre
passing notes across unexplained parental prejudices
and sharing heaped apprehensions of authoritarianism

it let us off shy an advocate smack in the center of retributivism
facing a courthouse eating entire school systems in seconds
and spitting the vacant desks back up into empty curb spaces
next to sign that said, "oh it does pay... to parties unaffected"

so we bent towards the unassuming parking garage entrance
for luxury vehicles to mock our presence with sarcastic alarms
and shine hyper-white headlights on our most unflattering sides
as if honor amongst thieves is limited strictly to class and caliber

though we felt more like staircases, we rushed to an open elevator
just to see every floor button gleaming red with the number 13 1\2;
and were all pressed in, so we scrambled off on the first hard stop
and into the first courtroom that even remotely resembled a chapel

specters lined the pews drifting in fast fading familiarity, eyes facing
thirteen marionettes, their strings shoved in the backs of their pants,
while a decorated swine read a paper with headlines glorifying news
of a current fad in elephants trampling over the bodies of equines

there was regret pressed into the rug at the podium meant for us;
a skeleton wearing a suit was handcuffed to the desk behind it,
free hand grasping onto a small nameplate that read, "defense"
and at the last moment, pointed it towards the room's essence

a clock's face was wrapped in a black bandana below the 9 and 3
as honor slammed the black polished steel handle of a hammer
and a state with a ski mask bared a smile of perfectly lined .223's
reloaded from the recurring miseries of blindingly flashing greed

I woke up in a state morgue
stacked with a hundred
thousand other bodies
frozen below the skin