A Shit Talking Pimp Asks Me For The Truth

“Truth is…if they killed you, shot your black ass tonight, in the places you love to hang, the shadows you love to lurk in, talking the shit you talk, pimping, set tripping, teeth shiny from grunting vile rap, lips dry from pursing the B in bitches and hollowing the body to call women hoes…

Truth is, motherfucker, if someone came and did the things you casually vomit into the world, killing niggas, pushing dope, getting high…truth is if another piece of shit such as yourself with the same underdeveloped, calcified mind heard you transmitting your own case to be killed, no one would care but your nasty people.

And you’d be found with your shoes gone, pockets turned out, peed on. And you’d end up on a can asking for donations for your funeral, and you’d get your funeral in some small dingy church. And if you’re lucky they’ll bury you, but most likely they’ll cremate you and flush you down the toilet in a gas station bathroom with some crackhead waiting and knocking, and the traffic roaring outside, gasoline vapors coming through the vent. And they’ll flush you with the turd that was already in the toilet, and you’ll coat the turd like a chocolate banana and disappear into the sewage with several cigarette butts. And your nasty people will conduct your homegoing while getting twenty dollars worth of gas, a carton of Marlboro lights, and two honey buns, and that will be the end of your acidic ass, vampire motherfucker, molester, woman hater, thief, dropout, roach grease finger licking…”

By Romus Simpson

Romus Simpson is a poet, cultural critic, and folklorist. Romus attended the Creative Writing Program and Black Studies Department at California State University at Long Beach and has many publishing credits including Callaloo, Voices from Leimert Park: A Poetry Anthology, and University Of Southern California Anthology. Romus is the winner of Sara Henderson Hay Literary Prize, Ann Stanford Poetry Prize (2nd Place), Palabra Poetry Prize, IBW-LA, and was a 2012 PEN Center USA Emerging Voices Finalist.