Selected Work

          by Idris Goodwin










          Old Ladies and Dope Boys

          1.

          Thelma and Ruth are almost 90
          they sit behind multiple locked doors
          in GI bill homes they keep from fading
          with gardens and fresh paint

          They are surrounded by artifacts
          of a time when their homes swelled
          of skinned knees and stuffed bellies,
          rock headed kids, wise cracking uncles,
          stern aunts and sweaters

          They are guards of the great gallery
          of framed Martin Luther King Jr. photos
          school pictures from three generations
          collages of kool-aid smiles and military uniforms
          afros and sideburns, dashikis and business suits,
          Karl Kani, Cross Colours and Gumby cuts

          An archive of ebony essence black enterprise and jet
          stacked near the King James Bible,
          the 10 edition new world revised, a pocket-sized bible,
          and some spare bibles just in case

          Thelma and Ruth alone cook family sized meals
          as if the aroma would lure enough back
          to require the leaf to be slid through the dining room
          table crammed in the small kitchen

          They love when you come home from the speed
          and global visions so they can get a ride to the grocery store
          the good one, since the bus stopped running in 83

          2.

          across the street
          the whole family
          razor blades
          triple fades
          tilted baseball caps
          sit around
          triple beams
          mayonnaise jars
          and baking soda

          the whole family
          been in on it
          since it arrived
          in 84 in 85

          stacking
          breaking
          into tiny vials
          serving and
          turning their neighbors

          into ghosts
          into shreads
          of their previous bodies

          while the talented
          tenth looked ahead
          like lot

          3.

          Detroit neighborhood blocks
          are Old ladies and Dope boys
          on porches in a standoff
          unafraid
          neither buying what the other is selling

          City on the Scrape

          1.

          Underneath the condo skeletons
          before they get muscle mass
          surrounded by children

          that sob in private and smile on stages
          Weds night drink special rock stars
          in it for the stench of barroom floors
          and applause

          that hate whimsy
          loath the sentimental
          live squalor and squat in viaducts
          calling for Sunday rations
          ride bicycles in hail storms
          to wait on wise men

          moving money around
          like a tether ball
          until they bleed ice water
          keeping cash between mattresses
          and cocaine between nail and fingertip

          Under the freezing weight
          of impending hysteria
          watching their innocence fly away like a
          helium balloon.

          2.

          you won't hear this
          don't go to poetry readings
          stage plays or youth slams
          don't ride public transportation
          wake before 3pm

          only move when the beat drops
          dressed in album cover art
          when the curtain rolls up
          when the pipe is passed

          slammin calloused fingertips
          on MPC and strings
          fondling the fader, imagining Prometheus
          a six-corner legend
          with a marquee name

          giant

          in cave
          thirsty desperate
          shrouded figures
          keep mic cords tangled
          burnin til sunrise

          only know how to listen
          to dusty brothers on rotation
          the way they plead for their soul

          resent the waking world
          think them not strong enough
          for the stress worn thick like triple fat goose


          Idris Goodwin is an award winning hip hop playwright, break beat poet, recording artist and teacher committed to making work that incites, inspires, and engages. The National Endowment for the Arts awarded Idris a Playwright-in-Residence grant to explore hip-hop aesthetics in theater. Idris' break beat poetry was featured on season six of Russell Simmons' HBO Def Poetry as well as the Spoken Word Revolution Redux Anthology. Idris frequently teaches and lectures at institutions across the country on themes of art and activism.(August 2008)