Five Poems and Photography by Leslie King

We. The(m) People.

They killin us. Dead.
My Mama is dead.
Killed her, too.
Them CIA drugs.
Them “projects.”
Them homeless shelters.
I am an experiment.
Black life in America is a science project.
Like welfare.
No acres. No mule.
No real liberty.
But plenty-o-methadone
laced with signatures
on bills that act.
Soothe them with
pseudo freedom.
Kill ‘em with
Black claustrophobia.
Black desperation.
Black plagues.
Black plaques
for Corrupt Cop of Year!
Slaughter the best of ’em.
Shepherd the rest of ’em.
Keep ’em alive long enuff
to drain ’em
and meet the need.
The insatiable need to
devour divide diminish deride.
The executions are televised.
The message is clear:
Extinction level eventuality.

The natives are breathless. Muslims are the new niggers. Blacks are disposable.
And the rest of the people of color feel special–until.

 

The Turnaround!

“saints, saviours, soldiers, scholars”
negroes and niggers
bend your fealty and
be defined in others’ words
NOT YOUR OWN
with not so much as a
whimper of protest.

quit your fuckin’ whinin’
we pinin’ for sum
his-t’oracle DIE-gresshun n’ we
always git what we wont

feel free to
fight aloud
for what
white’s allowed

while we continue to
pillage in private
sectors and backrooms
courtrooms and bedrooms
charter schools and barter rules
history books and noosey hooks

the meek shall inherit
their inherent worth
at a fraction of the cost
to silence a generation
with felled litigation and
armies of gangs
with badges

yes, we designed it
that way so don’t get us
started with Barbaric black on
black on black crime

just like the corsairs of Tripoli
all colored people are
short-sighted and half-assed, except–
African-Americans that play football
at our school

 

 

The Alchemy of Hate: michigan’s wolverines

If my right hand could talk
it may well tale me
How to get to
Sesamoid Street:
a tiny fracture
displaced in a
tendon
near the thumb of
The Mitten where
once the air was sweet
when the middle-class
was assembled
(and decimated) on a sunny day

That’s where we meet
in the cartilage and
bare bones inhabited
by the newest
war veterans:
legions of dark toddlers
that thirst for acute
pneumonia and
endearing influenza
while governed by the
infectiously un-parched

According to Gov. Dick
everything’s A-OK!
He’s banking on the
fiscal cure at the low cost
of Black physical currency.
He’s prescribed increased levels
of heavy metal lead converted to
adamantium steel alloy that when
systematically
bandaged with bondage
and soldered with sable
kidneys, livers, spleens
nervous and reproductive systems,
it is characterized by the practical
indestructibility of the aim
to eradicate all dark matter

In Flint, you won’t find
the governor
sweepin’ the shrouds away.

 

 

The Very Best of the Moors

the killers cloak
before dawn
they put their
blues on

they droop painted faces
from the arbor gallery
and they chalk the
fruitful windfall

they prey a visit to
homes where the
coons live
and then they

they raid zones
where the
maroons live
then they

And they came to The Moors
festooned in Allah’s pride:
                                                                      this is the end
                                                                      indentured friend
                                                                      this is the end
                                                                      powerless friend,
                                                                     the end
                                                                     of our elaborate plan,
                                                                     the end
                                                                     every un-dead Black man,
                                                                     the end
                                                                     no safety no more lies,
                                                                     the end
                                                                    we’ll never mourn your
                                                                    stillborn lives
                                                                     again

 

 

The Preying Kind, of 1863

 

birds drink scotch
in these towns
and they shit
books for kids
at every sermon.
these droppings
pollinate hate
fertilize fear
and reproduce
legacy.

we gave rise
to these false
phoenixes.
they don’t sing;
they speak access
feed on dark mint
kill death
and drink some more.

Hitchcock gave
fair warning
but no one regards
the Techni-colored under
aerial assault.
and the fledglings
lap it up.

tiny-winged pictures recoil
at the sight of a Black man
walking
eating
a golden apple
in his left hand.
how so did another of these
Ten Little Nigger Boys survive?
Seven Days of sober logic

suggests reciprocation
by any means necessary,
while the lore of the exalted ones
demands three-fifths of
the impossibility.
And flight is right.

rite is the stupor
of apathy
vindication and lush
nights with stars
seen only under lids
in murky crevices far
less often than a
spangled
shot across the heavens
from Halley’s handgun.

that kind of hope
and keen veracity
don’t fly
‘round these parts.
so when I see
birds,
there is no mystery
to my affinity for fried
chickens.

Agatha Christie made it plain.

we ARE contraband
behind Union lines—
marooned
since before 1865.
thenceforward,

on any given day in the year of our Lord
my closed fists
blossom
where you can see them
and I do the math
by hand:

Ten little nigger boys
stalking in their Timberlands
some got away
Six met Zimmermans
Four little nigger boys
joyride for fun
Three dodged bullets
One got Dunn
Another little nigger boy
big, bad and Brown
puffed and gruffed
got his ass gunned down
Two little nigger boys
of Common Pleas past
auctioned by the Court,
a nigger boy cashed
Last little nigger boy
on tobacco road
Garner-ed 44 years
until he met a chokehold

No Union bailout
for civil refugees
sub-primed for existence
under nigger boy trees
Too big, too black
to allow, to breathe

 

 

And then there were none.

 

---

 

 

Leslie K. King is a Black man, father and poet from Detroit, MI. Leslie earned his MFA in Creative Writing (Poetry) from The New School and has lived in the NYC area since 2001. He currently serves as the Financial Aid Director at CUNY Hostos Community College in the South Bronx. Find him on Facebook l.k.king.17 and Instagram @lessthesaint.