Where I’m from
We turn crumbs
Into full course meals
In over crowded houses
Find room in a chair
Or a corner to go to sleep
Survive the night by
Cuddling with pain
Attempting to exterminate
The love like lightening rods
Coursing through our veins

Closed eyelids become movie screens
Where dreams exclaim
We are descendants of die hard’s
Common cause kamikazes
Courageously confronting fear
Cruising the block in unmarked crown victoria’s
Incessantly searching for the suspect
That looks like me…
Freeze!
Put your hands up,
Like we’re back to holding up half the sky

Where I’m from you will only find
Rainbow warriors
Planting resilient brilliant seeds
Into every crack on concrete
In plain sight
Silence is not an option
Alters on street corners keep
The voice of our dead family members
In the conversation
And they probably would say
What they died over wasn’t
Worth the life they wish for today

Where I’m from a name change
Doesn’t bring change or
Make anything go away
It’s just an expensive escape with poor taste
Then: South Central Los Angeles
Now: South LA
As if suddenly
These streets have never been
Uninvitedly touched
As if walls and bullet holes
Are no longer paired
Like candles and cake
As if….
PTSD
Fast Food death
Obesity
Diabetes
Depression
Addiction
Poverty
Were no longer rampant
And Foreclosure
Doesn’t have families
Retrofitting homes into forts
Fighting off banks to hold on to crumbs
of the American pie

Where I’m from
When we cry
Our tears water the soil
That knows draughts
Like Food deserts know
The hunger pangs for something organic
That exists inconveniently only 15 miles one-way
Yet we feast
We love
We fight
We hug
We forgive
And sink our taproot
And multiply
Where I’m from
We ride wind currents
To bringing life back into
A barren landscape
In Vacant lots we gather
We are the rise of the dandelions
And we cannot be exterminated