i wonder if everyone on the train moves back a row when a KING gets his ticket punched … or if it rained as hard in new york as it did in georgia the night gil died … some things can be researched … others are beyond our understanding … for a fact he was born on april 1, 1949 … that can be proven … but who knows if a poet is born … or … if a poet is discovered … if they are born … then … i imagine gil coming out of bobbie’s womb with his eyes wide and mouth shut … observing before he wrote … writing before he spoke … and before the doctor could spank him … whispering … “i’m new here, who are you?” … if indeed poets are born .. then … is it safe to assume he knew that words could heal the crazy … love the lonely … melt the ice … before he knew one plus one equaled two … if he was born a poet did he die a baby … like benjamin button … or … did he die a king … like el-hajj malik shabazz … both were brave … intelligent … complex … black and proud to be … thorns in the devil’s side … mythical masters of militant monologue … giants … i write … a mere apple seed in the palm of gil’s goliath hands … we all write … a mountain of seeds … testament to the power of words and the legacy of a dedicated scribe … name a poet that came after him that he didn’t influence and i’ll show you a poet that should be stripped of that title … quarantined … and boo’d off the apollo stage … i have no patience for teachers who were never students … those who teach our youth that america is where the love is because they themselves never learned … home is where the hatred is … the anger is … the pain is … the lie is … the fix is … the bottle is … the needle is … the virus is … the cage is … the KING is … finally free … – 4:55am
