Remand – A Court Story
By Ronald Cundiff.
At court, in walks the district attorney ready to say everything that they claim I did, like an actor rehearsing his script he reads with the eloquent tongue of a perfect pronouncement and emphasizes at the right moments, words holding your attention with a climactic ending that deserves an applause. Bravo. Bravo encore, maybe I should hear that one more time since I’m the one who’s supposed to have done this stuff, but he speaks with the confidence of an eyewitness, just to get this judge to believe that the man before their very eyes did those things described. Then out of what appears to be nowhere, my attorney clears his throat prepared to do the battle now that the stage has been set. Maybe Othello or Hamlet demanding my release this instant. O Henry the fourteenth he speaks of my innocence with an indifferent yet descriptive manner that captures the attention. I’ll hand the Oscar award to him, only this is no act, it’s really taking place and aint none of it pretend, it’s my arraignment, and when the gavel falls, I’ve been remanded and directed to exit the courtroom stage left, as I’m returned to the holding pens.
Culturally Bias
By Ronald Cundiff
Body found on front street same block where DOC just shot that new video. I don’t know if it’s a coincidence, common sense, or I’m just bugging out, but it seems like ever since the death of hip hop and the rebirth of the skate boarder generation, the musical influence has just been directing us to slaughter like an order to commit mass genocide. No lie, one new rap song was about a guy who had murder on his mind and then there was this video like a tribute to Columbine cause that’s the thought that crossed my mind when I saw that guy reach in his school locker and pull out a Glock Nine. It used to be rock and rap music, now it’s more like rock and buss a cap music and I gotta ask myself where’s the amusement in that. I prefer the pen to the sword. I remember back when hip hop had the Black communities back, but now I look around thinking where’s my B-Boys at and graffiti kings, just give me some Stan smiths and a kango hat, won’t catch me in those skinny jeans with an extra small t-shirt to match. Sorry. I’m as old school as Kalico Vision and Atari. How are we going to get up out of this slump when Facebook’s got us playing picture pinup like paparazzi to the stage to the cage to the grave to the page with this. I hit play and let vocals glide upon bass and kicks, tilt my hat high in amazement bathed in the portrait of death painting the reality of the life we lead until we finally reach the crossroads where all lost souls meet when that last song played in memory lane on 125th street to an ill beat where it remains hip hop but I still didy bop my way down a local block for a fresh cut at the local barber shop. Hearing cop sirens non-stop and the next song to drop might be politically incorrect but correct in its description. I live amongst them, the victims that embalm these lyrics. In fact, I’m the influenced listener misinterpreting what I’m hearing another Black boy lost drifting to the melody just tryin’ to stay a note above alto in this society of Nasdaq and Dow Jones where too many are prone to die from lead poisoning during a feud, the glorific stanza of horrific views, all due to hip hop…
Prison
By Ronald Cundiff
A cage inside a cage inside a cage
A face above a skull that hides a brain
Thoughts, Sights, Fantasies of what I hope to change
Equality was King’s dream for America’s society to imprison me
Precipitation of reality drenching my parade
So I stand in misery
Counted another Black Sheep tossed in a den of wolves
Forgotten by one and all
But on mail call I still await in vain to hear my name
Though the sound never resonates
An accepted fate of the non-recipient
A world draped in the circular face of Big Ben
Ticking away chipping away ‘til it reaches my time’s end…
Confinement
By Ronald Cundiff
Chained and shackled in the cargo hold of vehicles
Shipping me slowly upriver downstream in different directions these aquatic bodies finally reach a destination barcoded processed pushed to comply the conivator bell functions like an assembly line shower, shave, dress, stand back in line fashioned in Corcraft’s best fresh set of greens classified convict, inmate, prisoner, criminal words that symbolize what people hate and despise zooed inside these institutions confined as time ticks away chipping away at youthfulness age seeps in and you’re but a forgotten midst of what you used to be gone are the days and unseen is the change taking place outside in society prisons a frozen eternity that remains the same an industrial complex finally seen from an abolitionist aspect of how these profiteering politicians politicing reformism with a mythological theory on rehabilitation while law officials propagate recidivism in this half baked hypocrisy of a United States…
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