Have You Ever Before Now

Now Before Than, Afterwards

Now I laid me down to sleep, and prayed my soul your God chose to keep, I awakened from a slumber in a land before my time, trying to fast forward back to my familiar thoughts where family's love was once.my familiar territory, first class top priority, but now I'm constantly being hunted by privileged stepped on brothers, widowed father's, and left alone mothers. Not forgetting to mention pushed aside daughters and runaway sons, who only remembers how to play Dead Man Walking, constantly trying to avoid Pitch Black moments, avoiding life setbacks of Chronicles Of Leave Me Alone, we search for abandoned homes, well leases failed to be paid, from severe layoffs and single parents housing, where did the structure disappear to, where did patience slip under, what happened to the neighborhood community, where we come together to lift each other up? Did we not forget the struggling struggles of our ancestors, had we not remembered the taste of our own blood? Had we forgotten the whips and chains, the hours and miles of cotton picking, when Black lives only matters when another race disgraces our indigenous inheritance. My blood in my blood, my tears shed for my sisters and brothers, who no longer wish to be helped by each other, too many I can do it myself, I never needed a man, I'm superwoman I. I have. my own two hands. Damn.. Where do a man stand now.

Five toes up five toes down, we hop around one leg at a time, from place to place, house to house, either one foot on the ground, or one foot in the air, we dare not share the blame, but who really cares, as we try to save face and we misplace places, we readjust our spaces, until find ourselves out of bounds, patiently waiting on New games, as we Wheel Of Fortune our dreams, waiting to stomp a yard or drum line these family Feuds, praying your fifth grader is smarter than the parents, as technology teaches techniques never learned by our ancestors, we rain dance in the storms, waiting on magnetic waves from Magnetos, we Wolverine our emotions, praying we never go rogue, we mistfy our mystic, hoping we don't become so predictable, that we ground hog our days, over and over, never high, just sober, as we remove and fast, we relinquish our powers, elevating our foreign senses, as learn to become our own Sensei, mastering our own masters, teaching our birthed pupils, popping our own bottles, breeding our own models, switch switch switch, now turnaround, walk back same direction, praying they don't need to remember how not to switch to hard, or trip over their own two feet, or stumble over a rock bottom.These Rock Bottoms

only meant for Red Carpets with Red Bottoms, we are too classy for average, we are too savage for cabbage, we want all the carets silly rabbi, no carrots for rabbits, we need all the fool's gold, blood diamonds, and everything else that Moses forbidden, we become our own pagan gods, now bow down and worship televisions selling visions, so when time to rest, we can daydream in each other nightmares.

Nightmares become our daily morning wake ups, as we're constantly startled abruptly from our ancestors, yelling and screaming from graves with multiple bodies, laid on top of each other like dishes dug in foreign lands, from soldiers who never made it back home for proper burials, we forget all the gunshots we never heard, from the purple hearts never received, we swallow broken hearts entirely as many never rewarded opportunities to retire early. Retired from life severely, or with missing limbs, we pretend we never knew war was so costly, not just with money, but with the families broken from a government who become foreign on homelands, where are the home men, why have our mothers become motherless, and our sons fatherless, where are the benefits and dead presidents, Benjamin Franklins, George Washingtons, we need Bitcoin or crypto for these lives no longer living.

We spend so much time complaining and belittling, swinging for homeruns with wooden backs on tees that barely stand up, we play hard ball with softballs, with soccer players, who only know how to run, we play catch with volleyball players, as we bet on horses who are retired poker players, playing spades daily with solitaire players, who first learned cards with blackjacks and backgammon players, who learned from Chinese Checkers, what games will we not enjoy, or ever attempt to get over on the next, as we try to monopolize black neighborhoods with foreign owned convenient stores, with local Police stations,five minutes from every major highway, these byways don't always go both ways, and these training days only have one ways with all dead ends.Your turn but no returns, no you turns, just keep straight,no time for wrong turns or non rights one or the other. But on the first days of jobs, the last day as Job, as we never concurred with this secret meeting between hierarchies, between less better and worse.

Unbreakable we imagine ourselves, projecting selfies in photos we never paid to be developed, we hold on to every negative we never noticed in daylight, nightly owls we become, with night vision we mastered after hiding underground so long, we prolong miserable thoughts as we numb our not yet pain, we now Pop pills, bottles at a time, just to live a day longer, but how many bottles do a doctor need to prescribe. Nurse I think you mixed the wrong prescriptions, these drugs may not be prescribed for me, can you recheck my vitals, these are not my normal vitamins.

Hear Ye Hear Ye, we stand after awakening from our spiritual journey, we see with new eyes, we walk with new feet, as we gallop with deer hooves, as we become aloof, we spook ghosts not yet passed over, we ghostwrite their failures, we manuscript our own manuals, manually as we annually renew our faith in the only spirit we reference which is the Holy Spirit, as we bind and rebuke, anything not sent or ordained by God. As we only put our best foot forward, vowing not to stray away, on roads never traveled but less traveled by the many, who have dared not trod on unpaven grounds.

Sleeping beauty will finally awake, as the fake, will bow down, humbled after years of traveling free, the beast will finally rest, after successfully conquering every test, let the blessed be blessed, as they share their blessings through stories that will past down from generations to generations, breaking generational curses handed down from elders to youngest, let us learn from history, that we can and will overcome it all.