A poem a day for 2013 - day 120 - This just in. Still.

This morning on Crenshaw just north of Hyde Park

I saw a full sized mattress
Leaning against a tree
With its sheet on the ground
Both mattress and sheet were covered in blood
And holes

Blood and Holes is not a poem
Blood and Holes is a cry
Blood and Holes is a knees bent
A wailing
Blood and Holes is at least an emergency
A cautionary tape
A breath sucked out
A heart collapsed and smushed into the cement

A bloody mattress and sheet
Against a tree just outside a motel
On Crenshaw Blvd.
Where our babies walk to school
Cannot be counted common

Hey, you wanna see where somebody got smoked
$2.00 extra I show you the sheet

Blood and Holes is not a neighborhood game
Where we guess whose mama didn't come home
Whose big brother is missing a gun
Run get your science kits and DNA tabs
Winner gets free Del Taco for a month

How can I wipe away Blood and Holes from my memory
I can't even stop saying it on this page
Blood and Holes
Blood and Holes
Blood and Holes
You say it enough times
It will have a ring to it
You pass it on repeat
A blood soaked mattress with holes
Becomes as much a part of the boulevard
As much a part of nature
As the tree it is leaning
Against