Violence Is An Everyday Thang For Me

Violence is an everyday thang for me

An unnerving feeling I've never been able to shake since the first time I witnessed a pistol take aim at my own body and discharge. At the age of 14 when the flash opened up squarely in front of me it wasn't my life that flashed before my eyes but rather the life i would never see if I allowed this bullet to touch me. Dreams of happiness and family, children and grandchildren simultaneously screaming for their very existence sounding off in unison within my head and my body "run nigga run". And I ran. In the midst of running from bullets your leggs feel like led and you feel so slow. I felt slower than i had ever felt. Terrified I run. I run for my life. I run from my own death which is never far behind. This will forever be my understanding of gunshots on the streets. When its over I want to cry but it never quite feels over. No time to process the threat returns spontaneously. Standing in front of Joe's on first street Deep C Richmond, holding my swisher waiting for my big cousin to get the tree from her patna in the st johns projects.... enjoying the warm summer night i see a figure emerge from the darkness and just as he does a flash opens in front of him. My thoughts are "this nigga's tryna kill me". I run into the store to the back of the store lay down on the floor and prey for my grandchildren to be allowed life. After it's over I frantically search for my cousin screaming her name "may......may.....may" I find her around the corner looking almost dazed... lost in her own neighborhood but not lost she says come on little cuz we runnin home hurry up before these niggas come back.

last night seven shots sound off. I am instantly 14 again running for my life in richmond. But at the same time i'm not. I'm 25 in west Oakland... I look out the window to see if one of my neighbors just got killed (I like my neighbors).... no bodies in the street everything seems ok...... I watch a little further as three women emerge from a house across the street.... they're hysterical(not because they're women but because they just got shot at) they are trying to tell my other neighbor what happened he is walking towards them. They tell him not to come because a man was just shooting at them and could return. He does return he jumps out of a car with a shiny pistol in hand waiving it in the direction of where the three women were. They've scrambled into the house he's walking up their stairs "bitch I'll kill yo mothafuckin ass" he gets back in the car and drives off. I feel implicated. i watched this man assault the women of my community with no immediate consequences. I want to knock his ass down. But if I knock him down I do life in prison probably in solitary for my political beliefs. I'm up against a wall between a rock and a hard place. My soul remembers a time we would have ripped him to pieces. Now we watch from our windows hoping no one we love gets hit.

Violence Is An Everyday Thang For me