A Hustle Beyond the Stars and Stripes

Posted bySynnika Alek-Chizoba LoftonPosted incommunity, mailbox weekly, PoemsTags:, , , ,

Beyond traffic.
Beyond cracked

lives. Beyond
bluesy attitudes,

polluted countries,
and silly white

genocides. Bones
don’t move for

plastic ideals,
shifty rhetoric,

and piggish
ways to prove

American vomit
is a gold-plated

crutch. Sunlight

breathes new
days. Moonlight

counts dollar bills
while the masses

stumble for food,
shelter, living

wages. Tap-dance
for a machine?

Why? Stick out
the chest. Support

the margins. Let
them people

see you standing                                
with ten toes

down in the paint                                 
or in the pocket,

willing to lean
into this worth

less machine to
hustle a dream. 

No country owns
a vision or a blue

print for flight.
I live for different

music, a dreadful
beat and a raspy

voice, spilling
them good rhymes

across the breath
of landscape that

stretches for three
and a half minutes.

Filtering ideas
strengthens the

resolve. I shovel
rage while stirring

natural sugar
into a strong

brew.  Hussle 
runs down a little 

motivation for
the road ahead.

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Published by Synnika Alek-Chizoba Lofton

"Synnika Alek-Chizoba Lofton is an award winning poet, the president and CEO of Guerrilla Ignition LLC, host of a Nationally Syndicated radio show, and an educator, teaching literature at Chesapeake Bay Academy and English courses at Norfolk State University. Lofton has recorded more than one hundred and fifty CDs, albums, CD-singles, and mixtapes of poetry, including his highly praised debut, The New Breed. He is the author of twelve books and the founder of Riot Speech, a musical genre combining performance poetry with traditional musical forms, such as Rock, Jazz, and Hip Hop. His poems have been published in Experience Reality Magazine, Quay: A Journal of the Arts, UpStreet: A Literary Magazine, and, in 2014, Lofton has been featured in Blind Sided Magazine. He is a regular on Virginian television programs such as The Hampton Roads Show and Chesapeake’s Thinking Out Loud on WCTV. He teaches World Literature, British Literature, and Composition, while touring the country, performing at literary festivals, musical festivals, poetry readings, open mics, concerts, high schools, and colleges."

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