So this poem is new.
I've actually never read it aloud before,
which means this might be a disaster.
[LAUGHTER]
Mother, you confess by walking into a parking lot
with a pistol, something small enough to disappear,
another lie inside your palm.
The man, his tattered shirt, a car long past warranty.
It's three weeks before Jesus's birthday,
and the man's children knew Santa
was a father waiting on payday.
There is a secret in all of this.
If asked, I would have called this a mission.
Each step foretelling parole being
scrapped for Clinton's dreams because crime has always
been the handmaiden to politics, and General Motors
laid off Detroit.
Nothing can be denied, not the pistol nor the man's quivering.
Telling a story about innocence won't conjure an acquittal.
And after interrogation and handcuffs and the promises
of cops bless when an arrest before the first church service
ended, I become my father.
The tape recorder sparrow my song back to me.
But guilt lacks a melody.
Listen, who hasn't waited for something to happen?
I know people died waiting.
I know I opened his hurt.
I was lost in my fear.
Strange how violence does that, makes the gun hand vulnerable.
I could not wait and had no idea what I was becoming.
Later, in the letter, my victim says I was robbed there.
The food was great and drinks delicious,
but I was robbed there.
I might consider going back.
Why would he returned to a memory like that,
as if there is a kind of bliss that
can ride a shotgun with the awfulness
of a handgun and a dark night.
There is a Tupac song that begins with a life sentence.
Imagine, I scribble my name on the confession
as if I was autographing a book.
Tell your mother that.
Say the gun was a kiss against a sleeping man's full head.
Say that you might have been his lover
and that on a different night he might have mourned.