More Bad Poetry from my Yout’

Posted on by Bill Jones, Jr. Posted in Uncategorized

The things we do as yoots.

Yoots!

But He Don’t Take American Express

Word.
Met this cat name Luce
other night
on The Corner
hunnet twenny-fif’ street an’ Lennox.
He was just hangin
with the fellas.
Dem neggas ain’t no good
but
Luce, he cool.
We was checkin out da honeys
and selling rock
by the tens.
Good night, you know?

He took a liking to me
right off.
Gone set me up
some heavy connections
you know, some serious weight
an’ not everybody
gets the good stuff.
Gotta make the most
when opportunity knock.
Dat’s what Mama
use to say.
Like I said,
bruh Luce an’ me
was down.

He even told me
I could pay him
his cut
later.

Said I was going
places.

6/12/1987

8 thoughts on “More Bad Poetry from my Yout’”

  1. Bess Jones says:

    I no longer have any of the poetry that I wrote in 1987. It was dark and pretentious probably. I remember reading this piece before, I liked it then. A poem written in real language, as much as that’s possible.

    1. Bill Jones, Jr. says:

      You and I were slightly different ages in 1987. 🙂

      I had a friend post this on FB and another person commented, “If he can write poetry, then I can.” She was talking about “metering.” 🙂 I guess I was metering badly.

      1. Bess Jones says:

        Why should our age difference at that time be relevant? Not sure what point you are making. 🙂 I was just reflecting on my own experiences of the time. I have been writing poetry since I was a very young kid.

        People don’t understand the true intent behind poetry. Not everybody can write it. You still have to know how to write well, to do it ‘apparently’ badly. If you get what I mean?

          2. Ishaiya says:

            Actually I was very prolific with my poetry writing when I was 13 onwards, and never really stopped. I was also well into the throws of song-writing at the time too. In fact when I think about it, lyrical writing is something I have done consistently, almost without fail, since I was about 6 years old. Even when I stopped song-writing for a while, or had taken a break from other pursuits, prose included, I still wrote poetry. Funny how that didn’t occur to me before now.

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