Black Skies, White Luck

Free Verse

I write in chalk down alleyways over quiet streets where the-grace-of-gods rises like steam from winter’s yawn, where the stench of dying dreams

trickles and the night recedes

inch by inch.

In America, they rob you with a fountain pen as the saying goes: with a single diagnosis all your gold turns to lead with no regard to color, race, or creed

or intelligence.

You’ll turn the other cheek and face another side of uneven paradise.

We keep money talk under wraps, pack possessions into cars except —

I’m counting on white luck. Never caught shoplifting at fourteen, never sent to jail for the crime of being black —

and if they tried, I’d tell the fair-headed judge:

Yes, your Honor, I concede I’m guilty as a rich man with a silver spoon, ashamed of my free rides and sir, today I need your sympathy.

I had my freedom in those years, in this white skin but I grew up and can’t deny black skies because luck runs out

in rivulets down avenues in turnpike floods

like chalk smiles in the rain.