Elegy for Amiri

This is the language of the oppressor but you wasn’t with all that.

Ungawa, beat, beat.

Habari Gani?

LeRoi has died.

that nigga /

this colloquialism (ew)

Picture a lion.

this dictionary /

that fiction

Don’t picture a lion.

We grew up in the Suburbs.

We lived on 116th.

From the corner store, grab a vermeer:

we are burning paper 

instead of children

Tell Flex to drop a bomb on this.

Come let me show you 

how to be Holy-

how every quiet corner of Harlem

can mourn with me this evening.