Elegy with a City in It

There are men awed 
by blood, lost in the black 
of all that is awful: 
think crack and aluminum. Odd 
what time steals, 
or steals time: black robes, awful 
nights when men offed in streets awed 
us. Dead bodies sold news; real 
hustlers bled. The Post a reel 
for Rayful: black death, awe, 
chocolate city read 
as accumulation: the red 

of all those bodies. Red 
sometimes a dark and awful 
omen the best couldn't read. 
Death almost invented when red 
was the curse of men born black 
and lost in a drama Reagan read 
as war: crack vials and cash and red 
in our eyes and we not still 
with our pocket full of stones. Steel 
in hands, and a god-awful 
law aimed at stilling the red. 
But ambition burns, makes all red 

With a greed so damn real, 
Fattened by all that others read 
in the Post about how real 
it is in the streets. This reel 
is a flick that has awed 
fools looking for something real 
in bleeding streets, as if the real 
is only what drowns: think Black, 
Yusef, Moe; they all blackened 
the inside of a casket, all real 
flesh in that final moment, still 
and nothing more, still 

as men plotting on stealing 
time from death and cold, reeled 
in from the street like dead fish. Steel 
assured mutual destruction; steel 
should have kept us safe. I read 
the obits, the map of death, still 
as caskets holding men, still 
as the bullet. Who is awed 
by trouble? This awful 
gristle and flesh torn by steel 
turned into murder. Ask Black, 
dead in nights' ruins. Bring out the black 

ties the papers say. The black 
hole is now the block. Steel 
swallows men, spits them out black 
eyed, spits them out black 
balled. Reagan's curse might be real, 
might be what has niggas black 
mailing themselves, dancing in black 
face. Chocolate city red 
under the scrutiny. Asphalt red. 
When we heard about Black, 
there was this silence, awful 
silence, like death was odd, 

and still when I sing this awful 
tale, there is more than a dead black 
man in the center; there is a city still 
as all the bodies that make '86 real— 
a city still, and awful, still and stark red.