weed brownies weed cookies weed Cheetos
lollipops and gummies what a great idea—a weed bar at the wedding
a better idea? a weed stand at the farmer’s market
the times are changing
Denver is a blunt-lit city on a hill of hash stuck in an unending cash harvest
and the entire country wants in from statesmen to soccer moms
who claim to be better moms after they’ve smoked who pose for periodicals
with their children un-snatched from their arms their urine, never cupped and sent to lab
there are some who want out many mouths of jail cells
tell of different moms caught with crumbs of their boyfriend’s ganja in their cars
lives seized around the time our nation got a head-start battling a war on drugs
it had not yet invented
the block got hot when the propaganda caught fire
and became a televised sermon—viral as the holy ghost shot up in every city
and suburb imagined an entire colony of plump-nosed and wooly haired monsters
living below the poverty line as if it were the underbelly of a bed they haunted
elected the cannabis to be the gateway to the guns and theft a prelude
to the dads with a pox of track marks climbing their arms the moms
with eyes empty as poppy fields swallowed by brushfire.
it was a horror campaigned and canonized in the cells until it could not be unseen
so even when you closed your eyes it was still there not in the nightmares
but in the prayers and what an awesome god fear proved to be
to have the masses offer their reason to its altar for the right to remain tucked away
in the safety of their skin,
for what is faith, if not the evidence of things not seen on a corner
kept far enough away for the alto of a police siren to be heard
so faint it lulls you to sleep the remote blare paired with an endless percussion
of baton to skull, of boots laying doors flat on their stomachs
of flat palms patting pockets in search of mere leaves the leaves sprouting into trees
at the whim of a judge’s gavel slamming against a sound block
it all makes for someone’s sweet dreams a brown citizen stripped of their rights
to the sun scolded for not choosing school and given a run-on sentence.
a hipster given a business loan a set of new rules that fit like spandex
and bend to their every move a corner of real estate held at ballpoint
where the cops rush through the doors and pat their own pockets
Added: Wednesday, February 27, 2019 / Used with permission. Photo by Naji Copeland. This Split This Rock poem is presented as part of "What Is It, Then, Between Us?: Poetry & Democracy," the third annual programming initiative of the Poetry Coalition. This national initiative is made possible in part by a grant from the Ford Foundation secured by the Academy of American Poets.
Photo by Naji Copeland
Rasheed Copeland is a native of Washington, DC. He is the author of The Book of Silence: Manhood As a Pseudoscience (Sergeant Press, 2015) and is a recipient of a 2016 and 2017 DC Commission of the Arts and Humanities Fellowship Award. He placed 2nd in the world at the 2015 Individual World Poetry Slam. He is currently studying English at the undergraduate level at Howard University. His work has been featured in online publications such as The Quarry and Public Pool. He has performed across the country and has been featured locally at renowned venues such as the Howard Theatre and the Lincoln Theatre.
