for the hell of it, something I've been thinking about:

the “drive-by shooting”
was invented in our lifetime
along with the “strategic strike”
and, oh yes, the “Terrorist Threat”

the street the kids
in my neighborhood live
on, stops at my block

there is no parking at night
as the street sweep
makes its lazy way,
each 12-3

I park behind the church,
where it is “safe”
beyond where
the street ends

through the street
I drive by I wonder
which of these faces
will show up on television
news at 11

but I like the kids on my block
their lack of agenda
their honest, muggin’ eyes

and I’d rather not think
of them, when I think of

the news, came in
with the kids to school
that day, tapering out
of the doors of minivans
Greshanda Williams
was killed at 11

two blocks from
where the street
the kids in my neighborhood
live ends

there are candles and cameras,
where the news
arrived, I don’t know
which first, and there are
two more cop cars
than usual

funny how
more cops on
the street
the kids in my
neighborhood live
on don’t mean
less crime

funny how I
don’t feel
more safe
nor anymore
scared
than this time
yesterday

perhaps I ought to
be in solidarity
afraid of any drive-by
afraid of any slow-down,
long look from
cruisers: cop cars or
cadillacs

but in my neighborhood
I am more invisible
than Ralph Ellison
and moments before
I get home
the street ends

its dangers cloaked
in curtains and
night silence

if I owned a television
I’d be able to tell you
more about the tragedy
of this little girl
but I only know her cousin
showed up to class the next day
without a cousin

if I owned a television
I’d be able to make
sense of a ‘drive-by’
by calling it “senseless”
and calling her
a “good student”
and using the word “murder”
as a single causal notion
that visited discreetly
one night at MLK and 25th

or else I’d talk about “murderers”,
and by that mean
the kids on my block
but these kids didn’t
invent the drive-by
anymore than they
invented industrialization
or share-cropping or
off-shoring

I’d talk about murder
rest comfortably in murder
if I only I believed
that the street these
kids live on
ends quietly and
comfortably at mine
by their own
design