A Toothless Crackhead Was the Mascot
[An Outline for a Film]
A woman leans against a man who leans
against a brick wall watching cars stop like dead men
on this one-way street. Some dude glares
like O-Dog from Menace, his face towards some street
we'll never remember where a man some man
we’ll never remember smokes white rocks from
an aluminum can that smells of death.
This begins the concept of tragedy:
infinity the image of smoke running
from a soda can split & crumpled into a makeshift pipe.
There will be music because there is always music
& in this film it will be modern: a man rapping ’bout bricks
& all his homies in the pen & pouring out a little liquor. . . .
Call it the story of a man pulled under by
a dollar’s gravity.
Flash to the film within a film: reality TV, the young mother
of our star starring in another sad reality show calls
the Underground Railroad real, as in a train
that black people hopped on with one-way tickets.
At some point a photo of Malcolm &
his peering eyes staring out that window will flash in
the background as the young boys use a Gemstar razor to cut
up product. You be a fool to think
this ain’t revolution.
We need a name: but we can’t call this Menace
to the Hood or Boys in Society or no shit like that,
names already taken & used to make black men
rich peddling the prophecy of the doomed Negro
& broken Negress: Timberlands & Glocks & don't shoot
my baby cause that football contract. . . .
& yes, there must be guns here, cause ain’t nothing more
Shakespearean than death in the summer.
You see, a black boy says sorbet
justifies one thing—a black boy says get the fuck
out the car justifies another.
Copyright Credit: Reginald Dwayne Betts, "A Toothless Crackhead was the Mascot" from Bastards of the Reagan Era. Copyright © 2015 by Reginald Dwayne Betts. Reprinted by permission of Four Way Books, www.fourwaybooks.com.