Part 1

GHETTO ANGELS

They come thick like winter hail

these tin projectiles cutting through the bustling air.

Each one rips into something, be it inanimate or living,

whether it spills tree sap or blood,

both is done with an equal amount of unfeeling.

First comes the sound of the first bullet thrusting out of the gun

The screaming and running in every direction

Mothers bending down to pick up crying babies startled at the sudden fierceness of the sound

Then there's the thumping silence that sings in everyone's ears

Looking to see who didn't dodge the bullet in time

The body always a mystery

Till a woman's legs give out and she falls o fractured knees

"Not my baby," repeat it. "Not my baby."

We try our best to console the mothers,

He gon' be ok ma. We got him.

We've come to take another black boy up there with us

but who really wants to hear that when all she can see

are his wide-open eyes, whose dark brown irises hold a sudden sadness.

His was slumped over body,

half-sitting, half-laying on the scorched concrete floor

the bullet holes in his chest

But we see the boy around it; the potential within ourselves

that we could never fulfill

as our bodies lay cold and silent and sometimes

forgotten in our graves and our spirits roam free watching over our neighborhood.

Rather than thinking of how he would add to our lists of statistics of brothers being murderers

Rather than thinking of how to avenge his death that would most likely end in bloodshed

Rather than planning the best way to uniquely add his face on a white t-shirt, 

we take a minute to hear the fracturing echo of the universe

and as he takes his last breath, a star appears against the black sky.

We've come to take another boy back up here with us.