Too Short Narrates American Morning

Posted bySynnika Chizoba LoftonPosted inmailbox weekly, PoemsTags:, ,

Flip the switch. Press
the gas. Cruise Waterside
Drive until sunlight blurs
the traffic lights. Icarus
before the crash. Maybe.
Too Short talks that talk.
Runs down the science
of hustle. Rock the Bells
on SiriusXM is the corner
store: Cheetos, fruit punch,
and a peanut butter Twix.
Multi-colored signage.
Graffiti splashed on walls
represents urban language.
I acknowledge strange
DNA and accelerate
through noise and dead
voices, filtering out daily
news on timelines. D. Trump
celebrates Conservative
overreach. The Rapture
leaves behind the weary
who thought they properly
calculated God’s time.
Jasmine Crockett hurls
verbal smokestacks for
the television cameras,
like she crafts blues for fun.
This metallic beast is not
easy. Wide jaws and piggish
lips provoke us to embrace
savagery. Half-baked
rules don’t mean anything.
Walking in government
trenches is the new thing,
the new thing, the NEW
THING. Boom Bap resonates.
West Coast hip hop
impregnates the morning
rush with aggression, with
the familiar slang of paper
chasers. I enter the machine’s
funky belly, focusing on
motion. Ambition high steps
along my lips.

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Published by Synnika 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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