Inflation made buzz-chasing a group effort, & so we’d throw in our fives
til’ they added up to an offer worth the weedman’s crosstown trek.
Split & gut-dump cigarillos preparing for the arrival of our cologne.
Our blood-shot slits. Our giggle fits we were too man to call giggle fits.
& in da homie’s sky blue big body, we cruised the countryside
of our small college town searching for spots to park & spark
convos that, once high enough,
always landed on our fathers—how they are moons orbiting new planets,
or stars that died so long ago their light is but a celestial whisper
—& our mothers—how they dirtied their hands sculpting us
from the mud of their gardens, how a nigga can die over that one.
This was our cover anytime one of us let a daisy fall from our lips.
Blood had to follow or you risked looking like a sapling.
& we smoked all the trees back then, so it was best
not to mold oneself after something that couldn’t withstand the heat
of a ruthless ribbing. It was all in fun, but say some soft shit
& you’d be every color of baby-bitch, even as we choked back tears
yearning to be un-dammed. It’s not that we didn’t know empathy,
it’s more that we were told flowers had no place amid man-talk,
lest they be sour, & sticky to the touch, & made into something
we could inhale & hold on to. Something that wouldn’t leave
unless we blew it away. & so, bless the burning in our chests,
the near suffocation. Bless the choke & sweat & the first nigga to crack
the hotbox seal. Bless the highway as we glide atop its hum
heading home. & the bag. Bless the bud & the hands that prepared it.
& bless the times we, almost, slipped free of our mannish skins
to become boys again—not burdened by anything, not even gravity
High Times
Sunday, January 15, 2023
Sunday, January 15, 2023