He’s got a gun in his right pocket
or is he just glad to see his mom & pop he’s six years old & he already knows that it’s all just cops & robbers cowboys & Indians crips & bloods rivalries where red is just a color on grey sidewalks & body outlines are the graffiti of the day
Image by Victoria_Watercolor from Pixabay
He’s got a gun in his right pocket
older than his age heavier than his soul longer than he’s been alive trained since he could see you tube & that time his mom & pop took him down to the corner bodega to sit in the street bleachers to watch the shootout between the latin kings & the black guerrillas as they battled over the rights to rob the bodega owned by refugees from north korea on the first of the month before welfare cashing time when the benjamins are lined up single file ready for their cue
He's got a gun in his right pocket
& he knows how to use it since all those instructions were injected into his soul through his eyes & ears by cereal boxes & fighting videos & music videos & episodes of star wars & dungeons & dragons flooding the unsocial social media where the tick-tock-time is running out before you’re dead
Image by Michal Jarmoluk from Pixabay
He’s only six years old with a gun in his right pocket
ready for his close-up the one where he holds that big ass cannon with both hands legs spread wide for balance his right eye focused down the barrel aiming for the heart of a people who are too busy working five jobs for rent money for the golden home in the sky that will never come while they drown in their own misery
Image by YasDO from Pixabay
He's a six year old boy with a gun in both his hands
laughs as he pulls the trigger pressing harder than the wishes he wished at his sixth birthday party when he blew away those candles & this time he blows away his teacher back again the wall motherfucker because well he saw it on that new damn streaming service that his big brother siphoned off their next door neighbor who siphoned it off from the neighbor across the street ain’t technology grand
and now the blood smears the blackboard wall & the cries of despair are not heard because no one believes this is real.
Antonio Ruiz is an ex-junkie-alcoholic, former seminarian, one-time radio host-producer, past community organizer, continuing to be a media advocate, retired television reporter, ex-commission executive director, once a street vendor of jewelry and gloves, waitron (waiter to you), a former bartender who drank too much on the job, an ex-motorcycle courier who learned to ride a bike just for the job, ex-airport shuttle driver, former Entertainment news director-producer, the best time of my life, one-time live TV events red carpet producer-executive producer, ex-small business consultant, ex-youth media and journalism mentor, and now a college student who also has been married three times (thirds the charm), and just couldn't help living with two other women because well, that's part of my story.
View all posts by Antonio Pedro Ruiz
On Second Thought 