this morning, early a.m.
(3 a.m., the paper says)
3 kids were gunned down
& killed, in a verbal dispute
with riders in a car,

i could hear the sirens, as
i always do, i thought that
they were further than they
were, i could vaguely recall
a woman's screams,
but in my neighborhood,
screams come and go

i went to work as usual
the busdriver told me what had happened
i thought of street battles in the
modern age, i thought of blacks
killing blacks, or ethnics killing
ethnics, i thought of youth
extinguished, i thought of crime
and does it pay...

then i realized, coming off a cold,
with my head spinning - yes, if
you are in the margins of the margin,
crime will pay, put bread on the table,
allow for closeness, associations -

maybe the streets are home & comfortable
maybe the gangs are family, in the real
definitional sense, maybe you have
to live & let live, if you are an outsider,
maybe you have to boldly hold weapons
to feel transcendence,

the warrior class has always been
venerated: in football, the military, as corporate
titans, & in HBO series - and the drugs,
for all of society, must get through, in trade

& so last night was another business night
in some neighborhood in some city:
lives were transacted, power was distributed
cops were summoned, e.r. rooms were
mobilized, and denizens slept -
right through the sirens.