Across one hundred and tenth street

 
   Living across one hundred and Tenth Street
There is a story within everyone you met
People just trying to make it another day
In this world gone weak.
.

A woman walking the streets
Up and down the block she keeps
Calling out to cars, hanging out in bars
 trying to met get  a John
to make quota for the week
Blood drips from her lips
 Eyes wide in the dark, body lay stiff
Where unmerciful had his way
No one looks for a missing whore these days.


He works hard to make a dollar
Because he didn’t want to be like his father
Working nights paid the bills so he wouldn’t have to steal.
He was the man of the family, the one who would provide.
The man his mother could count on, until that night when a young gun came into the store looking to earned his black tear.
On shot rang out and like his father, he watched a boy
lay dying, while the cops put him in the back seat.


A girl of thirteen seeks rest
Off these troubled streets and her swollen feet.
Full of baby, she was thrown out for the sin she alone bears,
 but made with the pastor’s son name Ken.
She finds a vacant building to rest her burden
 To have her child alone she bleeds, screaming
This child left crying, her baby she left dying.

These kings of the streets
Don’t know him, this child
The one they push around, ridicule and scorn
They don’t know the depth of him, yet
They don’t see him, this boy
Watching the game, seeing the players and keeping score
They don’t know him, not yet.
They heard of him, this guy
The one that’s making a name
That’s taken out all the old players,
While taking over the game.

 
He don’t belong
His color is all wrong
They hated him for his tongue
They hate him for his name
They hate him for his turban
They hate him for his religion
That they think is wrong, because only theirs is right
His store they frequent
They hate him for what they think he’s got
They hate him for what they think he hates
They hate him with a Glock to the face
They hate him bleeding with his family in church.

He shakes hands
All day long he finds new friends
On this street he meets them in cars, on the corner and in alleyways.
 He walks the midway shaking hands his
Eyes always watching, his ears always listening
Pockets loaded he sells his small plastic packets.
He shock one hand and felt the burn
He felt wet, he felt numb
Falling on the concrete he watched his blood  
Draining down the sewer
He wished now he hadn't shook that hand


Red lights, white lights
Blood showers down like rain
From the many brown bodies
Slang in violence, hated and greed.
There is no love on the streets
 where the blood is trapped in its concrete
Draining down its sewers
 Staining the young minds and killing their future.

 
Living across from one hundred and Tenth Street
There is a story with everyone you met
 In this world gone weak