Street Love

Autumn in Harlem.

Fume-choked leaves, already

Yellowed, crack in the late September

Breeze. Weeds, city tough, city brittle,

Push defiantly along the concrete edges

Of Malcolm X Boulevard. On 137th Street

A toothless sidewalk vendor neatly stacks

His dark knit caps beside the plastic cell

Phone covers. Shadows indistinct in August heat

Now deepen and grow long across

The wide streets. Homeless men sniff the air and

Know that somewhere the Hawk stirs.

Harlem is not an easy place

To grow old, and so the young

Are everywhere,

Pouring from the buses, city dancing

To the rhythms of the street,

City dancing to the frantic spin of life

In the fast lane.

Here we see a busy school yard

Black, brown, and tan forms

Painting the illusion of music

With their bodies, ball-dancing between the

White lines of the court.

Young Damien Battle, comfortable in stride and gesture

Wearing his seventeen years easily around broad

Shoulders, saunters at the unhurried pace of

Hero knowing that the space that

Opens before him is his due.

Beside him, perhaps a half step

Behind, his friend Kevin chatters easily.

They are young and proud and Black

For them life is a ripe orange

Succulent and sweet, ready to be devoured

And here are Sledge and Chico

Rivals from the other side of the Avenue

Their tribe is the more familiar

We have seen them on every corner

Of every city in America. They make us walk

Faster. They make us think of locked doors.

Of differences we would like to deny.

Do Sledge’s eyes meet Damien’s?

Does he sneer as he spins his basketball

On one brown finger as if it was the World?

Does he speak?

Does he speak?

We listen as Sledge’s mocking voice

Lifts itself above the background clatter

“Yo, Chico, check it out.

Yo, Chico,

There goes Damien, sliding and gliding

Past the court. Just strolling

And rolling his eyes

Away from the action

So we can’t get the satisfaction

Of him peeping our dazzle.”

“Peeping your dazzle?” Damien replies,

White toothing all over Sledge.

“I thought I was scoping the

Frazzled chumdom of a downtown clown.”

“My game is my name,” Sledge replies.

“Call it if you want some.”

Damien shakes his head

“Yo, Sledge, if talk was walk my man you would be

Halfway round the world. You’re confusing game with

Lame and Ball with stall. But at the end of the

Day your rap is weaker than your play.”

Sledge comes chest to chest with Damien.

His eyes are slits that carve into the flesh.

“Yo, Damien, Listen up, man

Your mouth is shouting and your lips are pouting

Like you’re somebody’s girlfriend

Running off to double latteville

’Cause you know you ain’t got the heart

To start no get down with me.”

Damien scoped the scene and weighed it

Sledge’s crew was throwing signs

And gritting teeth

They wore their colors but Damien didn’t

Know what was beneath those jackets

“Yo, Sledge, we’ll get it straight one day,”

Damien said. “Just the two of us.

Not now, not here, but we’ll know when

We got to do what it looks like we got to do.”

A brief conversation, hard looks in the air

Damien walks away and Sledge stares.

No big thing.

No big thing.

Just two seventeen-year-olds

Checking out a manhood jam.

Damien and Kevin make their way out

Breathing easier as they start up to Sugar Hill

The late summer shadows accentuate the edges

Of the hood, define it in shape and size

Yes, and darkness

The shadows on the corner shift as they walk by

Sharp eyes weigh their pockets from the distance

Heavy sisters weighing down the white brick

Stoops watch the passing scene

As they have for a hundred years

“Yo, Damien, how you read Sledge?

Is he just about being a fool

Or do you think that his brain

Is twisted enough to find something

Cool in that lip and drip world he’s sliming In?”

“Sniff the hood, my man,” Damien said. “The bad with the

Good. Some guys are banking on their reach

Going for the stars, scoping on the great,

Some see they can’t reach and all they got is hate

To lift them from misery of the day and there’s

Nothing you can say if their eyes don’t see

The prize the way you do. That’s the hood, bro,

That’s the way it flows and it don’t make

No never mind if you find yourself

Off the glory ride and slipping with the tide

Like Sledge. Hate is what the man

Got and if it’s not boss he’s got to toss it

Anyway. This is a concrete Apple.”

“Damien, so are you saying

You’re ready to fly?

Cop some getaway like all the other sleek

Birds winging through distant trees with just

An occasional peek

Now and then and a slanted rap about

Old school memories?”

“Who knows, man?” Damien said, checking out a tall

Brother working on his gangster lean.

“You’re talking about

What tomorrow will bring, and what tune the hood will

Sing. You’re talking and I’m listening, but

There’s no clear message glistening on my Horizon.”

“Yo, you’re sliding deep but my brain is still

Creeping on the surface,” Kevin said. “Break it on

Down or push it on. It don’t make no never mind.”

“My moms was asking me to do the same layout

But that’s all played out when you don’t

Know which way the wind is blowing

Or which way you’re supposed to be going

My folks are laying lines on me like

They’ve written out the part and all

I got to do is get to a place called Start

And follow the road to fame and glory—

A PhD in mucho buckology

Two point five kids and a quick apology

To the starving folks in East Ain’tGotNothingVille

While I look down from Sugar Hill and tell

Myself how phat my program is.”

“Sounds righteous, my brother,

Best listen to your mother

Now what I need is for you to feed

Me the name of the female lead

Is the right chick a light chick?

Some straight-haired honey

With a little money and a skinny little nose

Pointing away from her toes?

Or could it really be a girl with some kink to her curl?

A midnight mama with some snap and some sway

Like that treetop sister ’cross the way

Walking like the Queen of the Avenue

Could she interest a lord like you?”

Damien looked, he had seen her before

He knew her name, but not much more

“Yeah, I see her,” he said. “She’s the quiet kind

I don’t know her game, or what’s in her mind.”

“And if you found her in your net,” Kevin asked,

“What then? Would you throw her back?

Or could she be a midday snack?”

“Yo, Kevin, you know I have a plan

And you know I have Roxanne. I’m not into

Fast foods or the easy line

Although I have to admit the lady’s

Fine as she needs to be but can

She satisfy the brain or the heart

I don’t know.”

“Damien, Main Man, that girl might not satisfy

Your brain or your heart,” Kevin said. “But, Lord knows,

There are parts of me that find her

Delightful. We should catch

Her and offer her our sweet company.”

“No,” Damien said. “She might be light, I haven’t

Spoken more than a word or two with her. But

She walks darkly, as if her mind weighs down

Her steps.

When we’ve spoken it was just puffs of air

Syllables that weren’t there

When we said them and left nothing

On the memory.

I don’t know what she thinks

Of if she thinks of anything so profound

That it would interest me, and I’m not a snob

But she’s a depth I have not sounded.

I wonder what a movie of her life would be

What images come to fill the screens

Of her mind?”