Dirty South

You buy a minimixer with a dual cassette made for a kid and a beat tape. You got a microphone about the size of your finger. But it’s all you need to make your own.

It’s all you do. Sleep on Grandmamma’s couch, run her business, run her drugs a bit, and make them tapes. You sell them. They cost you a dollar at Rob’s; you sell ’em for three. Pretty soon – we talkin’ weeks, man – you known. Calliope ain’t no galaxy; it’s a planet. It’s your planet. You grabbin’ your toy and hittin’ Friday-and Saturday-night block parties and you eatin’.

Then – don’t know how – Teddy Paris finds you at that Claiborne corner with your dogs. Kids swallow his Bentley and mirror rims. You don’t. You hang, till he call you over and offer you a ride. At first you don’t, everybody workin’ you. Everybody a freak.

The kids tell you it’s about your tapes.

You go.

You ride. Ninth Ward Records.

You keep ridin’.

Four months later, you livin’ Lakefront.

You got a half-built house with iron gates and three girls who clean your underwear and wash you in the shower. Henry and Midget wearin’ Gucci and eatin’ filets.

Ain’t nothin’ but rhymes and ambition.

Ambition feel somethin’ like that heat in the room when they took your mamma away.

It’s all what you believe. You can believe anything.

Least that’s what you tell yourself as you slip that gun in your mouth, listenin’ to the sounds of the Calliope around you. It’s old beats, old music that you never wanted to hear again. It’s shoes and cold gray skin and swollen bellies and a shakin’ uncle whose eyes disappear into his head.

But you back.

They say you $500,000 less a man.

It all look good, you told yourself that day back in December when that white man came to you. It all look good on paper when they tell you about this trust fund you had and all the money Teddy and Malcolm keepin’ from you.

You saw it all until they worked you. Then everythin’ disappeared. That office on the Circle sat empty. Them business cards that felt like platinum, all to disconnected phones.

Teddy didn’t talk to you.

Everythin’ was gone.

Tonight, you hear the bus make its stop outside and you pull the gun from your mouth, gag a little. You bend back that foil in the window. Just a bit.

You got to smile, huggin’ arms round your body, metallic taste of your gold teeth in your mouth. It’s your face out there. All thuggin’ and mean-lipped on the side of the bus. Platinum and diamonds. Do-rag cocked on your head.