Compton, An Energy-Fueled Dark Star

Ron L. Dowell

Compton, an energy-fueled dark star

shines universal brilliance, ascendant, 

dope-fiends rise from the abyss,

renewed, echo cosmic collisions,

a black diamond, precious and rare,

security like a power line, hot, and electric.

potholes so bad drive-by gangstas ceasefire

and discover dogs don't shit where they eat, 

Fuck Tha Police birthplace,

safe streets, defunded cops reassigned, 

to homeless foot massage duty and food bank lines,  

Reagan Crack once flooded Rosecrans Avenue,

battering rams, and crackling AK47s,

stiffness always sliding along my lower back

Compton emits 99,000 gravitational waves,

skateboarding against opposing forces,

police who shoot first, ask later.

We shoot down dividing lines, hushed— 

students hear themselves think,  

master academic decathlons, a tangoed tenacity, 

dark energy expands the universe

Compton Library is a galaxy, vast and infinite 

when students smell jasmine, eucalyptus 

instead of weed's repugnant skunky stench, 

taste Porcini Crusted Tofu with Shallot Gravy, 

not greasy chicken, Compton's light pulsates,

 a whiplash sting where COVID-19 masks say 

"I LOVE YOU," where gangstas choose Brotha

over nigga, knowing, as Richard Pryor 

uncovered, we were never that,  

understanding to own a word means 

first to buy from Confederate traitors, 

what's not for sale. 

Compton's rewritten narrative

Malcolm X said its Ballot or Bullet time, 

Black Lives Matter and Brown count, 

the heart-shaped city more significant than one street, 

a reimaged new world explodes, a big bang,

pens an unwritten verse. Compton, dark matter

bends light for its purpose, glass half full,

an uncut jewel where the people lead

and leaders follow, for free, as spokes

in Hub City wheels, hawks woke like owls, 

Compton love, like dense dark matter, 

tentacled and sticky. A cool 10,000 kelvins  

the new star breed forges hydrogen to helium, 

a puffy giant births, 100 times the sun 

burning bright past Jupiter's orbit.

One hood, one heartbeat, one light.  

Ron L. Dowell holds two master's degrees from California State University Long Beach. In June 2017, he received the UCLA Certificate in Fiction Writing. His poetry resides in Penumbra, Writers Resist, Oyster Rivers Pages, and The Poeming Pigeon. He's a 2018 PEN America Emerging Voices Fellow.                 Visit him at crookedoutofcompton.com