Love and a Gangsta (33 page)

Believe everything happens for a reason. If you get a chance, take it. If it changes your life, let it. Nobody said it would be easy They just promised it would it be worth it...

ERICK S GRAY

 

Tomorrow…
how will I see my tomorrow, without me getting abstracted from the past? Man, I wish it was a joke, but I ain’t in the mood to laugh. When I done see the death, seen the pain, seen the sorrow and mothers tremble from the grief that grabs them tight like a cold winter night. You can’t cover that shit with no coat, cuz is seeps within, runs thick through their veins as they watch their child to lay….deceased to the gunplay or some other wicked way, and I keep thinkin’ about my last days, keep thinkin’ about my brothers last days, keep thinkin’ about my man that was gunned down standing right next to me on that cold chillin’ day. I done watched my pops bury three, so my family embrace close to me, cuz I’m like one of the last of his seeds—think if I cut myself will I’ll bleed just as deep…yo I think about the love and I consider about the hate. I think about my life and I reflect on them unjust days. I say to myself,
what if?
When they killed my man and I pistol whipped one from inches from his life…I wanted to take it further and just squeeze, say fuck it—let him bleed. I had to watch his grandmother weep and cry out
“Oh Lord, why He
”….that hurt me, yo…watching a friend for fifteen years being buried so deep and his family looking so stricken with grief. Some nights I sit alone and think of murder one, slump back in a seat with my chest heaving with grieve, done dried my umpteenth tear, got the gun cocked and feeling such an anger presiding over me…feeling this cold freezing me in such a atrocious way, sayin’ fuck this book shit, I’m ready to just kill shit…cuz common sense and humanity done been left me.

 

Tomorrow…
how will I see my tomorrow with my mind enduring from thoughts of a bothered past? Yo I wish I could bring ‘em all back—from brother to brother, Vincent, Corey, Keith…I write this verse, because I hate when the agony overcomes me, tryin’ to separate me from a thing call sanity, there been plenty of nights when I done buckled down on my knees, eyes watery with both fear and care, cuz I admit, I was scared, and try to imagine being free from the adversity that swells through me, gotta reach for the heavens and grab back that sanity, man I remember I used to call out for Christ and cry for the heaven to make it better for me—I lost one in the prison Attica the day before his release, and the first brother perished in a fire and the next I found dead in his sleep. I called out for my moms and watched her go wild, clutching for her dead son, crying out, “
No, not my baby, no…”
It took three to hold her back, cuz it hurts to see a mother curved over her baby’s casket, screaming out “
Lord, please bring him back to me!
” I couldn’t understand it,
why this family
? I knew that death doesn’t discriminate…it even came for my younger cousin at the age of fifteen, shot down three times by gang violence on Christmas Eve…damn, I thought, why the devil want to see my family fall, tryin to see us gravel and crawl. But I stood tall, and watched them bury Pashad the day after I was born and then four months later, we put his mother to rest. She was just too heartbroken over her son’s violent death.

 

Tomorrow…
there were times when I never had any thoughts of tomorrow, lived for right now, cuz I walked around untouchable and ran with the best of them, wilding and fighting like the rest of ‘em…I remember that December night when we put four cops in distressed, cuz they rolled up on our block, disrespected and put my right hand in cuffs. I was only nineteen with a smirk, as we threatened four officers that we surrounded locked in their wagon and had screaming out that 10-13…tried to live life like a rush, ran through women and money faster than Carl Lewis. Yo I thought who could touch me, at age twenty-one I was sitting on fifty to eighty thousand cash, nobody couldn’t say shit to me. My walk said P.I.M.P, and my mouth ran slick. Yeah I thought about God, but had no time for Christ, I was the one running my life, I even brought a gun to school when I just only fifteen…I had to ask myself, why my dude snitched on me, and had me running from security, but it was cool, cuz I still did me.

 

Tomorrow…
shit, the way my timeline went, man I knew one day my mother was goin’ to bury me, went to my first strip club at thirteen, and got stabbed at fourteen, almost got caught with that
.45
at fifteen…at sixteen, I got caught up in a hold up on the green line where niggahs ran up on the bus and popped off shots, and takin’ that fast buck…and my fingers were quick, cuz I used to steal, just walk in the store, never hesitate…shoplifting should be subtle and quick, and if the manager try to flip, you just punch him in the mouth and dip. I had guns pushed in my face, been shot at and me and my dudes done jumped on niggahs faces, even went through a high speed chase on one chill Halloween night. I done seen thugs cry, shots fly, and cops lie…sat through court cases and got pushed through central bookings, even got a few cousins on the run…I remember back then, it was hard for me to pray, man faith, that shit seemed so far away cuz I felt that God was just so many miles away from me.

 

Tomorrow…
I used to be scared of tomorrow and wanted to live back on yesterday, cuz I know what happened yesterday, wanted to rewind time and kill that line… cuz I felt my family done been through enough .I would shake from the pains and cry when there were so many rainy days and wondered when that sun gonna come our way. Who could break down on shit like that... the shit we done been through, but kept my grief concealed and ask myself what kind of world we live in when my niece at sixteen finds her moms murdered, chain around her neck and swinging from a basement pipe, cops suspected drugs or conspiracy…no teen should witness any shit like that, no family should experience evil like that…and then see my aunt murdered by the man she gave birth too…caught him creeping through her purse on a late night craving for cash for that devil’s candy, the confrontation left my aunt dead with multiple blunt force trauma from a hammer to her head…and I ask God how can I forgive my cousin for that….an animal that committed such a heinous act. I say
Fuck him
and let that bastard rot where he at….

 

Tomorrow…
so much to say about tomorrow…where will I be tomorrow? I done love and lust…got drunk and fucked…I was wild like that, me and my niggahs got bugged like traps, ran through women like cash…had a bitch every different day of the week… even got caught with an STD, woke up that sunny morning to go pee and it felt like hell was burning between my knees, pain like that will make any man collapse down to his knees, make you cry out,
“Oh God please!”…
shit, lost count of how many times I got checked for HIV, doc would tell me you all clear, and then my dumb ass would go back out and do the same shit all over again it… .Yeah, I protected myself, slide that latex back…but in the end, I know only abstinence or marital it’s the only two best ways to protect your health.

 

Tomorrow…
sometimes I frown on tomorrow…my story is far from fiction, me and my family we done been through it all…and I’m learning day by day, when I get stressed or really fuckin’ upset, I’m able to suppress my rage by pressing my thoughts, emotions and attitudes down on sheet with the pen…for me, literature and writing is healing within. I say to myself, what made me write this letter and express my pain, hurt, deaths and struggles to all y’all…I could never really talk about it, so say, let me just write about it…had to let y’all know what was going on with me….and why this is me. I’m changing and growing, becoming more educated and more knowing and I try to read a verse before I spit a curse. I love all y’all and say keep God close. I learned to be quick to forgive and use hard times to develop a better stepping stone in you—hard times should produce better results in you. a better stepping stone in you—hard times should produce better results in you.

 

Tomorrow…
I look forward to tomorrow…cuz thinkin of yesterday keeps me humble, and lookin’ forward to a bright, better and more productive future keeps me going, along with my daughter being born. I now look forward for tomorrow…day by day, I watch her grow, watch us grow…tomorrow y’all….let’s look toward tomorrow… OBAMA 2008….