PERFECT HUSH PUPPY, DonJuan Carter-Woodard

 

Reading thru the lines of this high powered military issued magazine/

I love the smell of poverty in the morning/

Dilapidated buildings tell the same story heroine addicts do/

Tales from the hood/

Glory day stories that start with the line “you know back in my day youngsta ”/

When I reminisce over you/

My God/

Excuse these tracks I choose not to hide/

The road map to heaven and hell/

Can you taste the history in the perfect hush puppy/

Gives me the feeling I can survive through anything/

Everyone says they would have joined the Underground Railroad until they ride along I-20/

Water moccasins are not the only things to fear in marsh land/

The swamp plays it’s own tune/

Thelonious Monks tells me ‘Round Midnight you can hear Lady sings the Blues/

Or something of that nature/

My birth right is in the walls of West Oakland’s California Hotel/

But I’m waking up here in Hotel California/

Maybe they are one in the same/

They say justice is impartial and objective/

But they never said she was color blind/

And you don’t have to read braille to spell out the injustice on a runaway slaves back/

These cattle brand marks on a dead mans corpse shows how much he was loved/

The comfort of this smoke in my lungs suggest in my past life I use to breathe Fire/

Or use to work in a refinery/

Which ever sounds best on my tombstone/

Caring more what’s written in my will then in my obituary/

Change of perspective comes from change of Vantage point/

Wondering how tall you have to be to stop being afraid of heights/

I swear the world looks so much bigger when you are looking down on it/

Significant contusions on my head shows these glass ceilings are real/

Does breaking through damage the people that choose to follow behind me/

I apologize for not coming back to remove all this broken glass/

They say scars build character/

Blood teaches better than words/

Well the ground knows me better than I know myself/

Excuse me as I send kisses to the sky/

I’m sorry if your cries for baby formula falls on deaf ears at 3am/

In this heat you can smell bullshit from a mile away/

Or maybe that’s from constantly trying to smell the roses/

Putting sugar on shit doesn’t make it easier to digest/

Black folks are use to this culinary delicacy/

The shit they feed us in the news/

In our history books/

In our own community/

I mean you have no idea how much history is in the taste of the perfect hush puppy/

You can find how we took what we were given to survive on and created comfort/

Turning leftover to meal/

Making a dollar out of 15 cents/

Turning our Blues into America’s favorite genre/

Crazy double entendre/

So as I read through the lines of this high powered military issued magazine/

I realize how common the smell of poverty is in the morning/

And I notice/

If you sit in shit long enough you start to smell like it/

Also you get use to the smell/

Get use to the taste/

Excuse these tracks on my arm I choose not to hide/

These hoop dreams of mine died years ago/

But I still find a way to fly/

With my back planted firmly to this concrete/

So excuse me as I take this ride to Heaven/

Because as you can plainly see/

I already been through Hell/