Before the Beauty .Or. How Could U Forget?

locate the closest overlooked neighborhood — 

      at its core extract all humans living underneath

life’s bootheel. replace with millennials cradling

postcolonial guilt, but not. ignore the woman’s

      cardboard [help] sign tattered, stained & broken

like her: imagine being long-ago unseen, erased

in between the throng, an existing non-entity. ask,

      too, if gun be an instrument what refrain whizzed

soundless amid crestfallen shadows lingering

a decade. go from “a to z” to list the dead — too many

      to name, but try: antoine, byrd, carlos, delante ...    

no deader now than then. still a memory real,

cold steel, shots fired — death, what did we know

      of dying? don’t forget love, a love strangling addicts

caught in a docetic whirlwind with no blue sail.

before the corner becomes distorted remember:

      one more time inhale deep. inhale memory to include

the bad & terrible beauty just beneath the living.