Street Kings

I used to stroll the streets with a jaunty flair, slide stepping past storefronts and barber shops, hands in pockets, denim lined with a smoother texture. Feet encased in ratty sneakers, scuffed and worn thin. Passing public buses full of people going to and from school, work and the street corners. Yes, the street corner was a destination, to and from, back and forth, day after day. This endless cycle of mundane existence, but I was its king.

You see, I had a posse. You know, several guys to cement us as a gang, but a modern day one, full of swagger and purpose. We weren’t really going anywhere, five blocks il and seven blocks over, the endless parade without boots or batons. Well, sometimes we carried batons, but not for violent means, just to look like we would bust you up, to maintain our rep, you see.

Streets is where we was from, birthed from the gutters attached to the avenues and alleyways that always defined us. As a people. As a nation of naysayers who always seemed to need a leg up or over on someone else. Streets that took as well as gave. But we knew what was what when we first learned the ways of the world. And what a world it was.

We tracked mud down new cement, scared old ladies who coulda been our grammas, and snuck into the movie theater for free. No, we didn’t sell rock. We didn’t need to, because we let others do it for us. Slanging was beneath the kings of “around the way,’ because that was what we were, make no bones about it.

Then Skinny died, and it weren’t never the same. Same streets we used to dominate seemed to wash away with the spring rains. Same alleys we used to haunt began to haunt us. With their silent judgment, and their doubtful gazes, trained on us instead of on them. And we realized it was a thin existence we had been living. Streets was talking, and we was paying attention, but who noticed us really?

Time was, I used to be a king, but the kingdom’s dead, gone down into that same gutter that gave me birth. And we ain’t never gonna see that kind of time in the sun again. No, never again.

Sam