A Toothless Crackhead Was the Mascot
[An Outline for a Film]
A woman leans against a man who leans
against a brick wall watching cars stop like dead men
on this one-way street. Some dude glares
like O-Dog from Menace, his face towards some street
we'll never remember where a man some man
we’ll never remember smokes white rocks from
an aluminum can that smells of death.
This begins the concept of tragedy:
infinity the image of smoke running
from a soda can split & crumpled into a makeshift pipe.
There will be music because there is always music
& in this film it will be modern: a man rapping ’bout bricks
& all his homies in the pen & pouring out a little liquor. . . .
Call it the story of a man pulled under by
a dollar’s gravity.
Flash to the film within a film: reality TV, the young mother
of our star starring in another sad reality show calls
the Underground Railroad real, as in a train
that black people hopped on with one-way tickets.
At some point a photo of Malcolm &
his peering eyes staring out that window will flash in
the background as the young boys use a Gemstar razor to cut
up product. You be a fool to think
this ain’t revolution.
We need a name: but we can’t call this Menace
to the Hood or Boys in Society or no shit like that,
names already taken & used to make black men
rich peddling the prophecy of the doomed Negro
& broken Negress: Timberlands & Glocks & don't shoot
my baby cause that football contract. . . .
& yes, there must be guns here, cause ain’t nothing more
Shakespearean than death in the summer.
You see, a black boy says sorbet
justifies one thing—a black boy says get the fuck
out the car justifies another.
Reginald Dwayne Betts, "A Toothless Crackhead was the Mascot" from Bastards of the Reagan Era. Copyright © 2015 by Reginald Dwayne Betts. Reprinted by permission of Four Way Books, www.fourwaybooks.com.
