He walked eleven miles each day to the train station drowned in oil stains –
Even though God never smiled his way, he trooped faithfully and remained,
A stoic soldier, without one complaint –
If you see him at first glance, his curt demeanor would make you hate him –
You’d make him do all your work and he’d be lucky if you paid him –
But he waited, until you chose to deny or embrace him –
Either he had the persona of Satan or the saint in him caused outsiders to forsake him –
You see, he got jumped like a rusty car battery in a 93’ mint green Dayton –
He did bids like rich alcoholics made em’ –
And kept to himself like a monk on a deserted island off the southeast coast of Asia –
So you’d be inclined to do all you could to save him –

His preteen, post-adolescent frame and age could not fade the heart he carried in his
ribcage –
He stayed awake for days –
In and out, like the flow of passengers in the subway –
Back broken, no home owning, sleeping outside in the pouring rain –
Anything for some change in his pocket to lock it down for the next few days –
You’d be crazed, dazed, and confused if you had to live one day in his shoes –

His feet were crusty, callused, skin split –
Walking down the rocky, dusty road, ‘I quit’
Was not in his vocabulary –
Always very hard at work –
Sharp stones made his open sores shed red tears just before they mingled with the ground and sucked in dirt –
It hurt to watch him troop along the everlasting broken down platform –
Where you were rewarded for you wrongs –
Where the locomotives sang songs –
About how you end up where you did and for how long –
And where you choose to be and where you belong –

And he trooped –
Barefoot, flatfoot,
While the crooks in the alley peeped the scene with their gangsta lean –
Looking to see how much cash they could lift quick –
All depending on my Jordache kicks –
His throat was slit even before he cashed in –
He was robbed, way before he did his job –

But he trooped –
With two metal suitcases on his head –
The old school ones you’d stuff with all your lifetime paraphernalia just before you fled –
Two more embedded, just above each tricep –
And two more in each hand, gripped so tight, the outside of his fists were white, no longer red –
Back-hunched, grit and grime under his toenails, all while he bled –

Think about that, next time your man don’t talk to you in bed –
Or don’t pay you no attention, be so quick to get upset –
Keep in mind all the baggage this kid dealt with instead ~