10 and 2

10 and 2

10 and 2

I'm not anxious or angry,  I'm tired,

just want to get home

step outside of this body

Let my head hit a “Kush-and”

vaporize into nothingness 

No Officer, 

I //don't// know why you pulled me over

but flashbacks have all my lines 

melted to memory.

We've rehearsed this incident

I Can recite the lines

yet I never seemed to read 

between them.

So we can skip to the line where I step out

where you tell me that you can smell 

the sweet scent of skunk 

steams from my palms, //INHALE//

Like the warm exhale 

of a NY city street

comfort to a vagabond

we've been stepped over and stepped upon 

left for broke

but I refuse to be broke-in 

or hold my hands out

so yes, 

I've tilled soil with these green thumbs

Sometimes making shit work

requires doing dirt

yet you turn your nose up as if 

the Man-u-re has never reeked of manure

Lets just remove the line 

that says Don't Move,

I won't flinch

while you scrape the scraps 

of residue from under my nails

Don't want to leave me with a dime,

or evidence of your “roll”

when the smoke clears.

//Get em up, Higher//

those were your lines

but my natural reaction

already knows 

the choreography for 

this scene

keep my hands up to

keep them empty 

While you read Miranda's lines,

another sentence written into the bitter reality of this 13th amendment, 

this lemon law you call 3 strikes, 

pitching false justice to justify 

removing me from the game

so you can take the field,

confiscate the fruit of my labor,

then craft loopholes 

behind my back

to leave me hanging

while you cash in on the crop

half a million hemmed up for 

harvesting hemp, 

we baked,

set the table for you to eat good,

reaping what we've sown

while you farm out legalized lies,

like 25% of revenue invested into education sounds good,

but the Literacy Bell still don't work in the hood,

So no one seems alarmed

So I wrote A list of demands

on the palms of my hands in black ink,

figured this be the best way 

you'd see them

My Head Line,

written in black and white:

Cannabis removed from 

controlled Substance List,

only to provide sustenance 

for the pockets of lobbyist, 

but we won't be silenced by 

Hush money policies, 

//We demand priority//

you've undervalued our humility,

misappropriated our being,

didn't account for this resilience,

this inflation of consciousness

now knows that our 2 cents is worth 

more than the pennies you toss us

//We demand change//

for funding white privilege

with the richness of our existence,

shades of gold and copper

melted from the our skin,

as we cultivate everything 

under the Sun

We've supplied, and now

//We demand autonomy//

Ok now this is where you put me under arrest for resisting,

for refusing to recite a Fate line that has me shackled to poverty, 

for trying to improvise

for being too black to play the part of a white collar,

for going off script and reading between the lines…