"DISTRESSED DISTRICT"

Introducing
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You see the problem I have with tourist Is that they are free to leave whenever they want
But Me, I am bound to this city By way of shotgun marriage
It is fused in my blood stream My veins look the same as the redline
Heart beats percussion Nerves pulsate go-go
I impartial to the sounds Footsteps have drummed
Many of solos on the artful grounds of U street
But you see not the sections left out by brochures,
Reroute you and yours to my city, minus THE allure
Come catch the bus with me
Hop on the W4 and out the window
see remnants of Darfur Atom bomb stricken As it glistens with gentrified sulfur
Come see the babies in jezebel attire
The Princesses and Pill Paupers Turn Protocol for Pregnancy Into that of stomach ulcers
See the doctor to get rid of it
See the roses yet to fully bloom In commute to school
Scraping though concrete like quicksand As bookbags are carried like back tumors
For it is rumored that learning is DEADLY
Hear the Medley of damnation Placed in the ears of scholars
as Articulation get mistaken for witchcraft
It seems Learning, is borderline sorcery So bare witness to the crabs in Nike Boots
Torturing the ankles of tomorrow leaders
Come watch the elders drunken with amnesia Forgetting why they struggled
Watch the village that used to check others kids be muzzled by fear
And then watch them turn around and give diagnosis with out prescription
Fingers pointed in the direction of afflictions, far more than the remedies
We are policed by robots, Their native tongue is machine gun
Shoot young, speak no type of compassion but are affluent in the language of Artillery
Until the point where Mourners become funeral connoisseurs
Pros at sitting in the second row As the glow of death shines truer
Through the stained glass windows
There were blacks in that “White”house before the Obamas
Come Tour the crack house, Where Pipes are passed like bills and legislation
Witness a fiends devastation As syringes fondle veins
Watch crack cocaine commit molestation and make it look like recreational use
Saved by NOTHING but Gods grace The Youth drowning in sexual transgression
If the Dow Jones rose as high as the HIV rate We’d be out of recession
Can you see the Potomac Gardeners as well as the Barry Farmers
Grow fruitless harvest Remaining project products No Crops just poison
“Weed killers” infectious in every way
And everyday I inhale the toxins
The Doctrine of the ghetto Tattooed on my eyelids In awe with my mouth wide
Neutral in midst of a civil war being fought between Uptown and the Southside
Fighting for a freedom they have no patent to
Too far gone to wake up and smell the apartheid Irrational in every sense of the word
And oh how it hurts to see one eye be blinded by the other
And oh how I sometimes long to smell sweet musk of concrete burning rubber
As the tire tracks of a Greyhound Bus write my Dear John Letter
onto the pavement of which I was raised
Combing through the road Parting ways forever Straightening kinks in my head
Formed from many days of no relaxer in this city of disaster
This asphalt purgatory With Carryout cornerstones
And Gentrified facelifts Hiding its ugliness behind its fakeness
But I love it like a childhood best friend, whose immature antics I’ve outgrown
But can’t seem to disown because we’ve known each other since we were little kids
And who needs peace when we’ve got years
There has been not a fear that I have yet to overcome here
DC in all of your ugliness,
I still will always love you…

3 comments:

Sandra G. said...

I Love Rasheed! By far my favorite writer =)

NAE NAE said...

yess! Beside you, he's mines as well =)

Sandra G. said...

Awww!!!!!!!! =)