500 Days To Survive

I open my eyes and look at the day as it stands;

The conscious greed & the avoided need

are constantly overwhelming me with

wishes of a Disney-laced past where

Latch Key kids get by with Genies, Wishes & Robin Williams;

Days where Purple Packed Graham Cracker PB&J’s

were our tastiest kid currency, not like the

rising cost of living & the wealthiest 1% currently;

Days Super Mario World was our chop and challenge

after Standardized Tests be our apprehension.

Back when Lady Gwendolyn would recommend Black Love

And it wasn’t in response to the expense of Black Loss;

Days where Hiding & Seeking was a neighborhood activity

and didn’t lead to a screaming need of an activist’s “Me Too”...

Cause “Me Too” was just a phrase of being inclusionary,

Not a phrase rooted in hidden lives of standing solidarity;

Back when streetlights coming on was our call for coming home

And home was more than just where your ticker tocked

And Good Times wasn’t just Jimmie Walker’s Dynomite at 10 o’clock;

Days where saying Black Lives Matter was an evidently, tangible truth

and your community proved its certainty in your developmental roots;

Days where Magicians and Musicians were the same thing,

Cause even though we couldn’t pronounce it, they both created magic

That our feeble minds could never comprehend.

Those were the Days, my friend! Watching Racist Archie

meet his comeuppance against the Meathead again and

meeting Sammy Davis for the first time after Sammy Dwyer

was over and tapping, my tumbling’s antithesis.

Tracing & retracing a time step, a Stomp, Hop, Step, Fah-lap Step,

Stepping in time as an American Made English Maid instructed.

Stepping in Time; Stepping into a Time that keeps on slipping into

a future my wonder would never be ready for.

That was the time, the first time I heard Death’s call.

Grandmother’s Cancerous Cells, Bursting on the 4th;

The red rocket glare of my father’s bloodshot eyes

holding in his star-spangled tears of loss and the cost

of the glue that bonded us together, fading as the fizzle of fireworks;

Days of bonds paid when The Scarlet Letter revealed itself

to a vicious mother and the dismay of a benumbed father

who, because of night’s like this, fell under the camouflage of Eddie Kane

at the stop of Grandmother’s five heartbeats;

Days where sweet cups of coffee accompanied journeys to the set of my dreams,

As stories of General Hospitals became the Guiding Light to a Young & Restless mind;

The Days of simplicity in Chi-Windy exchanged for lost breath and

Losses of the wind; Losses of the wins; Long after Bully six-peats

And before Cubs and Sox Repeat, we’ve lost so many.

Well beyond the reach of family, well beyond diseas-ed company

Not just to the cancerous, but in the many ways this illness plagues this city,

Leaving tumors and, in removal, holes where the wholeness of a people used to be.

If I could have anything, it’d be 500 of those old days back.

Days of no adversity...

Days of no traversing...

Days where the astral plane of existence kept our worlds intact.

Days where pain, suffer, disdain and the word of rougher days is all we’d lack.