by J.C. Louis
“Nicky had a bleating lamb,
It’s soul was white as powdered snow,
But everywhere that Nicky went,
the Lamb was bled — it dare not go.”
– “Rules and Procedures”
Paragraph 6,
“The Dance Protection Program”
Nicky Barnes “danced” harder than his rivals,
Faster than the cops,
More sweetly than the smack itself.
More sharply than he smiled,
More wildly than he fucked.
Whiter than his teeth
Darker than his curly ’stache –
More shiny than his jewelry.
He supplied what the dance demanded –
the corporate shuffle,
the ghetto jab,
the Harlem Rope-a-Dope.
He witnessed all
and protected nothing –
You can’t kid a Kidder
and he was the biggest Kidder of all.
Deception, yes
Betrayal, yes –
No one saw them coming –
because they did not watch Nicky’s dance.
He witnesses no more
but dances still –
as he can do no other.
His empire gone, he dances.
His network, sundered — by his own hand –
he dances.
We see his like in darkened clubs,
They take the floor in fresh clean shirts,
Pants pressed so neatly.
Slow they start — the beat rises.
Upper bodies straight, the feet move
the body follows –
faster than the eye can manage in the shadows –
faster still than words travel
in the sound, in the loudness,
in the mix, in the turmoil.
Nothing is concealed in this Dance of Deception
The Dance is all that remains of Nicky’s
whirling wheel–
Energy is conserved here,
And Dark Energy conserved — absolutely.
Of gravity defiant,
the Dance seizes the Dancer.
Protected from on high,
Empowered by the Higher Ups,
he grins through sweat and reigns with a
vengeance
–
unrepentant, un-reconstructed, addicted.