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