Old Man

                I am an old man and my teeth are dull. I have lost my bite and in the hood that is not an exaggerated effect. It’s called 30. When the kids look at you like you’re an old man with lost wisdom and no gold chain to claim as your own. You are sown from a different fabric, not the disposable fabric of pleather suits, but the leather of real man boots. You stand firm and unmoving with an eye on longevity.

There is levity in my words because you really have to take it with a grain of salt, sprinkle it on what you call your life and watch the world make it shrivel and shutter. The one rule you learn early on is not to let the world judge you, at least not this one. And that is the one true feeling that the hood takes away from you. That feeling of being judged on a level that pushes your forward, that makes you want to be a part of this world. The hood always seems like it is driving you to death or something that feels close to it. And you are a lifer, it’s either out here or in prison and neither one of those options looks promising.

But this is a tale about hope, of what the world could be and what it should be. Where all of your dreams come true, it almost sounds like a myth but there is power in my words, if you move close enough to hear them, you will be forever changed. But you have to fight that feeling inside of you. It’s the one that tells you that the world cannot judged you and in reality, it should be able to. You should be able to pass any test. You are a guest in my home. That is the message from God to you. I put you here for a purpose, so don’t get nervous and move in with me. This is not a religious quote, it’s a rumbling from an old man with an old tongue, and thoughts of what he is having for dinner. And separate from the hood, it will not be you.

I have thoughts of fried chicken, macaroni and cheese, mashed potatoes and gravy. I’m traditional in a place where the tradition would gladly see you hooked on drugs, selling it, or the recipient of a death dealer doling out street justice for a street they never owned. But I am an old man, I sit on a throne and I look below me and understand that life is much more than anyone made it to be, at least anyone that I ever knew. I saw outside the world and came back, I let the hood go and I had my own back, I pushed myself forward. I looked at the trap and there was no trap, there was only an idea of what the world thought I should be and I lived long enough where I could shape it myself.

I chose a smooth shape, one wrapped in the silk and satin of kings and the only women that I saw before me where queens. They were imperial and even though they could not understand my sight and the eternity of the words in my voice, I spoke them anyway – at least the ones I understood. I tried to make a better way but I should have used it sooner. The kids see me as an old man speaking old words. I already lost a couple of generations because I had not started sooner and that is the true tragedy.

The real tragedy is the time that is lost, the time spent deciding on whether you should or should not spread the positive word, not wanting to stick your head outside of the hole for the fear it would get cut off literally. You can envision the force of the hood bearing down on you before you can see peace. So you move to what you see first. That is a thirst you can’t resist. Its vampires blood where you bite them before they bite you. The mental cleansing is ending and that is the benefit of being and old man. The curse of youth is that you never knew when it started, you were just in it. You were experiencing it and learning it engrained in your bones, your sight, your blood. You knew just how the world moved, or the world as you knew it.

The world could not judge you but you judged it every day, you just never passed judged. You were supposed to. You were supposed to ask the question of why the world was the way it was and why the world outside of you was the way it was, and why you were the way you were. You were supposed to ask many of these questions. But you were left numb to this, you felt love so late in life that it seemed like a foreign country and you required a passport and a book of customs so you could understand how people loved each other.

This is what the hood took away from you, your sensitivity. To touch, taste, and smell of something more previous than survival, and that is truly living. Truly realizing what the air really is, its life one moment lived after another. It is living, not as an old man, but as a man. A living breathing representation of your soul. And no matter how beaten that soul is, it perceives no pain, it perseveres because that is what it was designed for. When someone tries to put your soul in a dollar, remove it and put it back in you. When they try to put it in a gun, remove that bullet from the chamber and realize you are the greatest ever formed. A walking living thinking soulful being with the rights granted to all living soulful beings. Living.