Trackked In

​​There is blood seeping from the gravel in the Volunteer state
A misdemeanor that will never be noticed
Yet I've walked on that stone covered black earth
That is hollow ground of all the buried black women
Of deaths that go unreported
Labeled as suicide
Their depression just another excuse to complain
Keep men’s clasped over their mouths and their genitals synced tight
Made my way to the old state line where chalk outlines
Become a faded story
Just taking out the trash,
Throwing these women away like this weeks garbage
All you should do is stay indoors, girl
Hope they don’t find you home, girl
Cept outside can always be tracked
in the house between the soles of your shoes
Caked in between the rubber leaving bits of the problem on your floor
And after all you gotta take the trash out
Made my way to the dumpster
Saw a woman walking with a bit of a shake
She looked like my mother, thin frame humming to herself a sane tune
Black pavement skin, plaits all over her head
Skidish eyes as if the dice thrown by fate had left her here in this alley
Looking over her shoulder for the next bad break
Not quite dark, children laughing in the courtyard
Gossiping neighbors leaning out of bent blind covered windows
Men tossing those same dice trying to up the anty
Ticking fans on this late summer day
I couldn't take my eyes off of her
Of her fiending body, of the glaze in her eyes
Covering the pain
Of a woman who may not have a place to call home
Because she never possessed a real one
You see a junkie, but highs often cover the emptiness
Fill in the spaces left by neglect
We never made eye contact
She looked too much like my momma
My momma was a junkie too had those shakes of too much weight
No one to take the burden
Can't complain black woman
​Let it kill you
Her eyes never really made contact either
Just shifting eyeballs rolling with all the weight
Of being alone yet surrounded by people
I can still hear the woman's cracking bones
As what she was looking for pounced from his 10 speed bike
Catching his prey in the alley
Children went indoors
Gossip halted
Dice lay on unlucky numbers
I threw out my trash
Kept my eyes on the defeated woman that would be crumpled into the earth
Closed the door
Things just got good here
We were safe inside
Cept bits of the issue were tracked into the house
Laying on the floor resembling dead flakes of black skin
Suspended in chance
Here in Section 8 housing
With food stamps on the table
A hole punched Therapy card next to it
Momma sucking on a cigarette closing the blinds
Tuning it out
The sounds of the ghetto
What could we change without losing our place
Being nothing but faded outlines and covered in stone
All grown up now, sick of hollow ground seeped in blood
Sick of watching cracking bodies left to be crumpled earth
Show me state has too many named victims to not see this is a problem now