from a collection in progress: Brooklyn / Ghost: gone poems on gentrification, leaving and loss

Citation, or safe in Bed-Stuy

Maybe it was the absurd sight of a helmeted man

pissing on a fence.  Maybe, that it was a fence

separating the sidewalk from a playground. Maybe

it was because it was 4AM and everything wrong

happens at 4 in the morning – every dumb story

every fight that ended the night at the club

when I was young and these streets not yet

worth policing.  But the bright eyed fresh cop

boy sliding up to say Hey buddy, must not recognize

I’m twice his age, or that I have my dick

in my hand.  Maybe he and his partner haven’t yet

processed the sleek, white-weeled, bullhorn-handled

bicycle leaned up next to me, before he asks

the next dumb-ass question – didn’t you see us there?

And for two seconds my drunk brain is aflight with

all the unsmart things I want to say

-Yeah I saw you, I wanted to show you my dick. 

-Nah, I didn’t, but I sure am glad you’re here now.

- Yeah I actually was trying to piss on your shoes but I’m too drunk

to aim right,

but only the self-preservation me speaks

- Uhm, no. Of course not.

But the pig won’t relent.  He’s got a treasure trove

of questions like these he saves for 4AM, for

grown black men on Quincy Street,

Bedford-Stuyvesant on the come up

hood type joint while he hoofs

his beat.  You couldn’t hold it, huh?

And I’m worried that there might

be a little smile on my face now – 19

year old wise-ass me showing up late

with cocaine and tequila to fuck the party

up. No, I say. I just couldn’t.

And he and his partner are so not yet

old enough to legally get the kind of drunk

I am right now, but they’re one thumb

nonchalant in a belt, one hand casual

on a service revolver type sure of themselves –

and the one barks something into his radio

and is oinking something about how he could

give me a much worse citation but he’ll let me get off

easy, but you shouldn’t pee in public blah blah blah

like I ain’t been potty trained several years before

his parents even thought to fuck each other.

And the couple that passes by just then, not even

noticing the commotion shouldn’t need to enter

the poem except just ten years ago, the police

wouldn’t be walking the beat here – just cruising

by in squad cars and asking my purple haired

combat boot girlfriend if she was sure she was

in the right place.  But tonight that cop is just

as sure the tittering blondes passing just behind him

are safe because he’s got this under control.

And then, almost silently, a murmuring among them

like a group of Jesuits on the way to mass, ten more

police show up, their shoes not making a sound

and they stand around while babyface runs my ID

and I’m thinking that isn’t it something, this is really

how it’s gonna go down, beat to death by cops

in Bed-Stuy or maybe my life saved by my bicycle

helmet like everyone always says it would, and my

little girl in her mother’s belly still, will never meet

me.  So I try to hold the gaze of the one black cop,

a woman, young, and hope she sees her brother

standing here, or her man, or her father.  But she

looks everywhere except my face, and her thumb

is tucked in her belt too, and her hand, resting on

the 9mm like an afterthought, all of them doing

their jobs, polite and casual – in Bed-Stuy, finally

to protect, to serve.

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