Long Ghetto Poems

A special dedication to Beyoncé's "Drunk in Love" song in her album "Beyoncé", which came out in 2013.
 
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I took a cat nap...yah put on your classic, clever-mini cap 
drank that sorrow sap, my companion...

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 Translation of Eric Mottram’s Poem 33 in Interrogation Rooms by T. Wignesan

33.  on a vu un homme courir/ de la scène de crime un homme est maintenant en train d’aider/ la police avec...

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I smell like pencils in September.
After they’ve been brought to that…to the machine hanging on the closet wall where our coats, our boots, our bags, and nonsense lived.

You stared me in the eyes, since the...

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World War II Poems and Holocaust Poems V - Ber Horvitz, Yitzkhak Viner, Franta Bass

Der Himmel
"The Heavens"
by Ber Horvitz
loose translation by Michael R. Burch

These skies
are leaden, heavy, gray...
I long for a pair
of deep blue eyes....

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Good boy gone bad enters the stage with a spotlight overhead, despite being misunderstood in my ghetto neighborhood

The lonely applause celebrates in my cracked, corrupted, and crazed cranium
I exaggerate too much and so too much,...

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Hello? Are you there today?
Have I scared you away?
Spent my whole teenage life, 
Preparing for this day of strife 
To say my goodbye's
To your love-me-not lies
Oh well, oh well
I'm not saying farewell
Where do you dwell?
In...

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Downstairs I go
Elevate me, you know 
I'll get over the luv floo
Over the bad days too
Acting like a weirdo
A clown with an upside down frown... I'm a positive Poe 

I'm out of my mind
I can't...

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Officer Gwendolyn Becker - a “newbie” - at Newark P. D. down in 'Joizey', was combin’ the streets for a couple o’ thieves who’d been holdin’ up stations and stores...
When - back in an alley...

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Hey bruh, 
haven’t you heard,
ain’t you read the news?
The White House is gonna eradicate 
the fear infested inner city blues
That Trump fella says,
he’s got his poison pen ready to use
He says black folks got nothing...

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They say I write magic 
like I was granted a wish from the genie in Aladdin
An stole Kazaam boom box an secret patent Latin verses from canibus
While using cannibus as incense listening to BOB Marley...

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Your life is a sandwich with many layers
Your knife slaughtered me as you bewitch my mind with thought-slayers
Coming undone by this bleeding hate-love relationship 
You tease me with insults that make me wanna cry, but...

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Voices of creation speak Type A and Type B,
and polyglot dialects through Z, 
somehow under what lies in shadow
from B through Z,
anyway, Type A conscious I am alive
in this indoor moment
awake but not directly sun-absorbing...

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History's Sad Song (Revised)

throughout my life
I've heard many a sad song
relating to the lyrics
that seemed to play too long

way back during the Crusade
where religious debt was paid
by the bloodlust of so many
could not ye God...

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Kaotic kleverment gets me in double trouble 
You're juzz jealuss cuz I can make a sky full of precious slangs and beautiful rubble 
You wanna bet I'm the opposite of a crazy witch with a...

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As soon as I heard 
You were the First African American Male
To win the Pulitzer prize for Poetry
I wanted to run out and celebrate
I wanted to wake up Hughes and Dunbar
And Baraka and say we...

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Gateway town, Mississippi and Missouri river flooding confluence,
with its celebration of manifest destiny, its looming, iconic archway.
Stainless westward marker, its culture flowed southward for influence
within the lawn-jockey, pink flamingo neighborhoods of moral decay. 

T.S, Eliot,...

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I went from ghetto living
And the ghetto kind of days
To being up out of it
And to seeing better days.
Now the truth stays 
And my mind plays,
in a blessed way
defying the lie defining me 
in my...

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***Do me a favor, readers...also, read the second part of this lyric. If you don't, I'll be disappointed...I worked hard on this song. I wrote this all night...took me from 11 PM to 2:30 AM...

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I am the Mozart of my name
And I wait for you my Je’amour
To paint the parfai’d affair
And cross the fur elise of time
O vogue of vogues
Love is written in visions of glory
Even where the vogues...

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used lighters and used condoms
street life oh street life 
we are living in the ghetto
we are the victims 
of corruption
we are the rejected stones
street life oh street life
 we must survive

you will not want to...

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The sounds of shades
Degrading negativity 
Destined to be compatible with a clever bard-artist someday...downright anxious depression fades
Upgrading positivity 
Together, we will rise 
In harmony, in perfect weather, in unison in everyone's eyes
Guys and girls will...

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Who is Christopher Carson Burton? 
Who am I? 
Do I know? 
Do anybody know who I am? 
I'm just a regular guy a nobody.
A regular  guy   who grew   from ...

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Fifty stars
and
thirteen stripes
Wavy patriotic mathematician
do the math ... 
Subtraction or addition,
what will the numbers be,
37 or 63?
Slavery took away my parents’ human rights,
and their children’s dignity
I got 59 stripes to show 
	what was done to...

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Born in the Goshen ghetto,
bound by an Ashkenaz forged umbilical chain
Beloved mother was Jim Crow lynch poor,
adored father was the Uncle Sam same
Third-generation slaves,
pauper freed allegedly
But royal blood their ancestors  
sweaty tears did bleed
From...

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November 2, 2015 11:42 am
The eyes of Stanley Tookie Williams
What I visualized is a man
A man that committed crimes
Stanley Tookie Williams was the name
His tragic game in the fallen streets was being a gang banger...

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