Robert Lashley - Three Poems
Why All The Wino’s On 25th Street Turned Down God's Offer To Write A Book Of The New Testament
And the mad dog bottles close.
And the dirty suits get buttoned .
And corner hangouts, erased
by the mysteries of a blackout
are as if they were never there.
Who will write a book on my son?
To his aids altar, Willie went to pour one.
To his sons dead sea Shermed Herman saluted.
To his rocks, the defrocked OG spat bars
for those he took in( and out) of that life.
Who will write a book on my son?
He commands among a sea of dice.
He commands the men to witness
but they disintegrate (again)n the dus .
Holy words are adjectives of absence
and absence evidence unseen
from the trap house to the bar.
Dawn draws god a to make an exit.
Who will write a book on my son?
Ode To The Sister Who Sells Hatbands On The Commerce Street Bus Stop
Summer hides
In the wildfires of August.
Hot grey obscures
new fading paints
In contrasts to her neons.
Posters and signs mush
beside her glitter tints
and wine dark accents and highlights.
Sidings aside her autumnal yellows
and brown-blues
accent her space.
The hatband is a cover
both fixed and fluid,
both structured and flexible
in accompaniment,
both highlight and background
of creation and form,
in the hazy dilapidation
of late summer.
Under new lights, the city
is a miracle of artifice.
The thick of fire smog
dims the promise of sight.
In glitter ash, her hatbands
in the designer summer
are the last colors you can touch,
see and feel.
Not a Pop Trap Queen Funeral
Trees take after kinfolk, both distant and too close .
Holes in the 85 cracked walls play and replay
and replay( evidence of processions unseen).
The Bankhead service, the families in Lincolns
the going meal in the fish and hook spot,
the steampunk chariots from the pull yard,
the bright blacked scenery in the Chattahoochee park
where we send her remnants to the river.
Phones playing homegoing bounce horns clear
a path to her requested hiding place.
Funeral bois and gangsta girl vets burn
violets into sage into violets that fly
to where we lead her element and soil
From this valley, our b-girl is leaving
We shall miss her fly self and sweet smile. .
Sons come and come back again to store fronts.
Allegories of the saved ring from the red soils
and in old and infirmed hoodlum heads
( who only have solace in exodus).
Homies stretch ragged hoodlum hands
amid the exile of altars and temples.
For drugs took all the street sista sunshine
That had brightened our block for a whole
We kneel now, the conquered, the unsaved.
The roadblocks and antagonists to victory and fable.
The pestilence that spurred both walls and mansions
too close to jails and fallout shelters.
We tarred and sent away as Faust’s side kids
offer our heathen witch to the water,
offer our trap queen more human than fable
way from the tyranny of narrative.
Lord, come sit by our sides if you love us
if you hasten to bid us adieu.
Just remember our green river valleys.
and niggas who wanted to love you.