american gothic

/yung thug

the brief tale of yung thug:

I met him as the yung thug.
walking like
Rihanna down the Victoria's Secret runway
in a sweatshirt crop top,
when he was more of a
brush fire than a sunset
(same colors,
different feeling,
different hearts are beating).
I met him when he was 16 and fashioned a genuine solar eclipse with his mother's lipstick and a black sun hat
and he wore it all year.
he hid his face all year.
I met him next to me in the dark
and in front of me in English
and I held my breath all day until
I could breathe the smell of
spilled cocoa butter
in his backpack
he played with his tight curls,
shaved up the sides
coconut oil hardened between rings
he wrought the soil in his scalp, his octopus hands spilled squid ink
through his coils.
he looked at me with a tuna sandwich  in his mouth, and fluffed my hair
and smiles
"natural hair poppin'."
I met him with his hand in a fist
punching at rain clouds,
when he lent me his black umbrella
and his Black Power afro pick.
I met him in the jeans around his ankles and the timbalands
and the flannels, a different one each day
and the Kanye voice
and the asking would you rather I be a God or a nigger?
exactly which would make you more
uncomfortable?
he tore open the white colored earth and I cried when I saw the raw insides
because there were mirrors inside
and I saw myself inside
covered in blood,
and my children's earth colored bodies impaled on
sharp white edges,
stuck through their stomachs on
pale tusks
elephant ivory
volcanically ashy knees
covered in blood.
he tore the gem stones from his face and they left red scars
and he wore beige band aids made for a white boy, not a night boy,
he wore them in in crosses on
his cheeks
and he prayed with the fluorite fountain holy water in the girls bathroom
the girls said "holy cause we clean?"
he said "holy cause y'all got mirrors, holy cause y'all got love to reflect and it shimmers like the light on the sea."
holy because it ran with dying iron in it,
holy because it tasted of human error,
of truth.
I met him with the waves painted on his lips
he was speaking a maritime language
that the jellies and the starfish fall
asleep to.
i said couldn't understand,
and he turned away to walk into the sea,
and no one saw him for what felt like years.
i met him when the blue tones were beneath the black skin
and they were bouncing in his soul,
off his soul.
we sat in the back of the gym with our backs on the floor,
our sweaty backs gone cold with the floor
(our brains trash cans full of crumpled up theories of knowledge scralled in chicken scratch)
he was laughing about Marcus Garvey, the architect,
when we learned of him in Gov and Econ.
he built a bridge from New York to Timbuktu,
he built a burning house,
that yung thug wants to live inside.
who wore calvary feathers on his head
and ate good with his stomach
bulging.
"Marcus Garvey," he laughed
there were lights between his teeth,
pouring like lofty ghost clothes
from search lights in his stomach
flashlights in his twinkling eyes
"yeah, yeah, there's a fuckin' house in Africa,"
he laughs like its ridiculous,
he smiles like it's possible.
"yeah, we'll all go someday, all us
nigga's get to go
someday."