Gun Smoke
By Britteney Black Rose Kapri
“We wasn't supposed to make it past 25. Joke's on you, we still alive”
– Kanye West
Mommas pray to stop the violence second, save their babies first. Is selfishness not a synonym for another day in the arms of someone who isn’t scared of what we could do to them? I’ve wept tears of joy and guilt when one of mine walks back through the door, when it’s a different block under fire, when another family needs one less table setting And I don’t care. Cause that black boy wears my face. And I’m not ready to bury me yet.
This is not the justification of murder. Or a plea for sympathy. Just a reminder that these thugs you’re so quick to unname, so readily monster into fake outrage have roots and a bloodline in a city that has long since given up on them. Have families that still know how they like their grits or which tooth came out when. Mother’s not ready to bury her children into protest song and marches. Fathers who just wants a better future for daughters than the one he killed for her. And I see the irony in that too.
One day Karma or retribution or another boy looking to prove his skin man might come for my baby brother. And there’s nothing I can do besides pray he doesn’t die an intentional bullet. Or worse a stray one.
Often I wake in a cold sweat fear of being gunsmoked into an obituary or vengeance.
My brother who has probably gun smoked a woman into a widow, a mother into headline, a sister into vengeance wakes up in a cold sweat and fears the cops will shoot me hands up and mouth defiant. Tells me be careful, they don’t care about us out here. We could be hashtagged any moment. Fears my name will be a forgotten battle cry like Sandra Bland, Rekeia Boyd, Renisha McBride. Sees my face in wild fire and tear gas. And I see the irony.
In Chicago we love the shooters. Pray for the shooters. Raise the shooters. He
This is not a drill song, no statistics. Just D. Boy and Bam from the low ends. Englewood. Austin. Wild hunnids. Chatham, Lawndale. Neighborhoods white people yelp not to visit like niggas don’t live here. Like Chicago ain’t left us for dead and wonder why we still breathing.
My brother has survived two major landmarks in Chicago, 18 and 25. and I don’t know how many native sons were gunned smoked into ghost to keep him here cause every time a black boy is murdered it could be him on either end of the gun. Living the only truth he knows. Survive. Shoot or push daisies. Live or be another lit candle and poured out Hennessy. A ritual, a fallen homie. Teddy bears and faded pictures against a tree or school locker. An absent father and a reason for his boys to take someone’s son.