The Poet’s Coroner
by Sehu Kessa Saa Tabansi
Where dope got bought
and lives cut short
when some got rich
and others turned snitch
who didn’t gamble but lost
who wasn’t a player but became mob boss
because the law of the street is survival
because if you’re not my enemy you’re my rival
since slaves were traded for sugar
since the oldest profession is hooker
early in life these cards were given
at the end, life wasn’t worth livin’
This is the poet’s coroner
where lives get examined and testify
This is the poet’s coroner
where falsehood flees and the truth won’t yield to a lie
The pain is the price to escape
the ones that bend and break
the ones that couldn’t wait
the 500 years and we still ain’t awake
this is the tale of struggle
this is about the quick hustle
the reality of the horror
the death and dishonor
told by the poet’s coroner
The poet, neo-colonial government name Alfonso Percy Pew, is a Black prisoner of the Pennsylvania Dept. of Corrections, #BT-7263, SCI Houtzdale, PO Box 1000, Houtzdale PA 16698-1000. You can set up an email account to communicate with him (for a small fee per email message, since the prison systems are constant profit center for a host of commercial interests) via http://www.gtl.net/PADOC (All such email correspondence is read and reviewed by prison authorities and may not reach the prisoner.) His poetry has appeared previously in Change Links Poetry Corner (which perhaps inspired the “poet’s coroner” and its post-mortem of the street corner and the prison).
