Alley

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Take with me a walk down this alley,

an outdoor museum where the corpses of your ancestors lie.

Look at these pillars,

standing bones of your fore-fathers holding the

hem of this lane’s fortune together.

Pray you don’t inherit their patience,

that you don’t bend your back for whims to ride on.

See these streetlamps,

they’re your mother’s eyes.

Here she has seen the blood of your brothers spill into the gutter,

flushed by the rains into history.

“Do not become another leak my son” she begs,

“for my eyes can’t take yet another overturning.

They mount us here as watch nights

to watch our sons bleed into oblivion.

We watch our tears ascend into thick clouds,

fall back and scrub the very surfaces your melanin stained”.