The Turning Point

[Poem: Thabisile Griffin]

Render you unstoppable

Take the red lights from which we arose

Let 'em slide into your nervous system

Broil down, melting into bone marrow

Let it glow more relentlessly than fresh wheels at R. Kelly night at the skate rink

And since you got the juice now

Pour back in a fruit rines

String 'em to trees

And stand wide-eyed as the unspoken gets fermented

When you'll be labeled powerless, unfit, unworthy, hood dirt, too black, white, damage, change confused

Exhaling humid phoenix breath and shade for the winds and you not normal

But when you be labeled, explode in it

Cough up homeless fireworks

Hold them arpeggios close and extract pride off broken train track

When flashbacks bust lip open and you've got beef

And heated heart rate refined

Stumbling over shards of memory

Roaches and cereal bowls, snow storms

Let it be known your bullets breed benevolence

Your aim is clear, you alchemist of archetype

Your hiccups be autograph

Counter to mismanaged history

You return to us

Reminiscent on tomorrow

When you were a miracle

And yesterday, when become legend

When you were born before you were conceived

And interrupted it all