MEET THE REAL ME

by Jimmy Langford
(Arkansas)

How many people have to die in these streets.
Rest in peace my brother, I pray you finally found peace.
It would be a lie if I didn't say I never thought of death.
There's times I feel I'm all that's left.
You've been taken in all your good, I'm left after all I've done wrong.
Life has no remorse and carries on.

I bury another brother, but I can't let them see me cry.
I know what happened, just can't get my mind to understand why.
We sat laughing talking bout things we've done.
Young Cats don't understand what it means to live under the stress of the gun.
Lost my brother at the young of age of nine.
The image of his blood all over me still haunts my mind.

Look in the mirror bearing marks from beatings past.
Some seem they'll still be here after I pass.
Three in the morning I feel a pain in the back of my head.
My fifth birthday sprawled in the floor not sure if I'll soon be dead.
Eight years of this every day.
Developed my mind to this is loves way.

Took all I could and the catalyst takes affect.
Struck back leaving my demon like they had been placed in a wreck.
Fear of the repercussion I ran.
Thirteen years do the only thing I can.
Walking to schools in the morning a foul stench in the air.
Find a dead body laying in a ditch but for the most no one seemed to care.

So I ask again how many people have to die in these streets.
Rest in peace sister, I pray you finally found the peace.
Million things haunting me from the past after all these years.
Tu Pac said it best that's just the way it is.
She was much younger than me walking the line.
I was proud of my little sister, yet some drunk took her before her time.

Learned early on I could take the abuse and I wasn't too bad at the same with my own hands.
Gained a whole new crew of friends.
Making money for the first time it seems, afford to do what I need.
Little did I know each shot, snort, and smoke just planted an evil more seed.
Never knew this was going to so early send me to living hell.
Waking up everyday six by eight cell.

One year released, to the same streets that made this beast.
Knowing in my mind, no one cared in the least.
Life full of irony.
Old enemies decide to put a bullet in me.
Brought me asking the wrong question of why?
As hard as I was in life I was ready to die.

So I ask again how many people have to die in these streets.
Rest in peace my love, I pray you finally found your peace.
Your beauty no way I could think of anything that compared.
Wasn't til you had been buried, I knew your grave was shared.
Vengeance filled my heart, the one that took your life deserved to suffer.
I wished I had never introduced you to these drugs, now I pay with the knowledge, I killed my child in the womb and its mother.

I'm not asking anyone to show me pity, I created my Hell.
But help you understand the man I came to hate so well.
I grow so weary of the life lost in these streets.
I pray you all find your peace.
I pray none of you grow to become me.
Open your eyes to what you're doing, God gave them to you to see.

I pray hard that one day I finally find my peace.
Try my best to keep the ones I love now from living in these streets.