Ticking Time Bomb

Ticking Time Bomb

See I was predicted to go off by now…

… I was the ticking time bomb just waiting to explode, see
I was supposed to be dead before the story
was told, see

I was supposed to be slangin’, working and hustling on the block, yet
I’m educated Howard university graduated yet some people are still shocked, by

the fact that I'm here as opposed
to in jail
As opposed to being 6 feet assumed
deserving of hell, see

Oh Six of 78 is when this
poet was born
but December 1984
his heart was torn

…from his chest…

because his eyes were the first to see his mommy this way
heroin cut with morphine overdose and
gone away

the shit don’t play
I was left to
be raised by
my grandmamay

see I was dead that night
age 6 no feelings
no more than my life look
to me as appealing

counted out as a loss black face
With nappy hair
I was destined to be a misfit hustler
with kids everywhere

I was sure to be a menace
to society
A bomb waiting to go off
no one able to quiet me

but I looked the other way and I put my head up in the air
and I shook the haters off as if I did not see them there

because you'll be dead by 25 like
most Black men are
Or locked up in the Penn behind
somebody's bar

But by far…. I'm not

see they Mad I didn't blow and
backfire in my face
I always kept it cool and tried to
stay in my place

I stayed washing my hands and keeping
my nose clean
levitating below the radar trying
not to be seen

In that place where I was predicted
not to be
is exactly where God's got me still poet-ing
this poetry

this floetry that seems to keep my mind calm because
obviously when I’m without it
I'm a ticking time bomb