Paper

I have never won a poetry award
I did not graduate from college
I am not the best poet I know
But I know that this is the work of my life
I wish I could save lives
I wish so many children were not killing themselves
Each death makes me write another poem
Because that is what I do

I don't know how a ten year old girl knows how to kill herself
At ten I didn't even know how to live
Let alone die

I wish so many women were not missing
I wish my poetry could find them
I wish so many men and women were not the enemy of police and lawyers and judges

What my melanin do to you
Why my nappy hair offend you
Why I got to die

When it is my time to go
My poetry will not save my life
Do you know how many dead poets I know
Wanna count with me

I wish boys and girls could love who they want to love
Without fearing losing their families
Their homes
Their shadows
Their wings
Their lives

I wish my poetry could protect all my children
Your children are my children too

I wish my poetry believed in time
I wish it could fly
I wish bullets could bounce off my stanzas

I don't know why I belong to this art
Or why it belongs to me
I am obedient to the call
Who
Who
Who else would I be
Most days I love it

I saw families being moved out of their tents on Venice and Cadillac
Their belongings thrown into a dumpster
I wish people didn't take over other people's neighborhoods
I wish we could all eat and be rescued from the sky and cement

I wish I could sleep at night without writing all this down
But I told you that this is my call
I am so outraged on many days
The news
The killings
The prisons
A woman gave birth to her baby alone in a cell
Did you know that
Is there a poem for that
What would it say
How would it begin
What good is this thing
I would go insane without my prayers and journals

Who are you
Why are you driven to do what you do
How do you fight off your crazy
How do you release
Let go
Tell me
I want to know