What the deal, son?

Will those dreams
I had as a child come
to pass Will I fall
through the sky
landing in a pit
of purple rats as
the apocalypse
loosens its belt
and beats the
pavement until
welts the size of
africa's left nostril
quakes my puny
bones leaving
me levitating
in pork as I
scramble beneath
my folding bed the
darkness so prison-like
that even my mother
southern warrior
that she is cannot
scrape the tinted
windows off that
child's imagination Will
I die the day that I am
born the gunshot residue
of my mother's two failed
abortions black boy richard
wright detested himself
and me twin negroes
who dream too damn
much about death 'cept
we a living death and
a living lie because ma
said the truth shall set
you free and a lie will
leave you dead as the
bleached lips mister littlejohn
would brush with
the stories snared between
his gangrene tongue and that vaseline
they call bacardi I had a dream
about old man littlejohn
and his bacardi dreamt
he was trying to set
the world on fire and ain't
had no matches so he
poured that bacardi all
over his body until
him smelled like baby
powder with a 72-year-
old butt infection and
well Will you understand
when I say mister
littlejohn died the day
he recognized his back
had been a throw rug
longer than it took that
bacardi to burn the corns
from his feet he dead
dead like a ghetto baby
slurping the dust from
his crack mother's nipples
dead dead like the drug
dealer harvesting crops
on this concrete plantation
dead dead like the black
leader whose chicken-greased
oratory sounds like the slave
master's booted foot caving
in my skull dead dead as I felt
in church every Sunday
as reverend right on
stretched forth his mighty
pockets and emptied hell
into my lap its fiery flesh
heated like a jigga who
thought this kiss of the
glass straw would be the one
to put him in orbit without
the space shuttle bringing
him nearer god to me
bow-legged black boy
who became an insomiac
as a man so terrified of sleeping
'cause, like nas said, sleep
is the cousin of death 'cept
death ain't got no cousins
so sleep must be death
and dreaming must be
god usurping salvador
dali's juice and bypassing
the most fundamental
question of a dreamer Will
you mind if I tell you I
believe in god but it
just might not be the
god you believe in

------------------------------

Kevin Powell is the editor of the forthcoming STEP INTO A WORLD: A Global
Anthology of the New Black Literature (John Wiley and Sons, November 2000), which will include 103 young Black writers from around the planet. His essays, features, criticisms, and poems have appeared in Vibe, The Washington
Post, Code, Obsidian II, Ms., and elsewhere. He lives in Brooklyn, New York