Fire Through Dry Grass

Written By Vincent Pierce

Fire through dry grass is what I experienced
but this grass was never green 
Or did it ever smell like that fresh cut grass on a summer morning
the fire was never visible 
but O did it spread like a wildfire 

You see the grass was never your actual grass
and the fire was never your actual fire 
the grass was human being 
and the fire was what we know today as covid-19

It all started mid February
with rumors of a virus so contagious that you can contract it
from the closest stranger 
I didn’t believe it 
but at the same time I can hear the late Rev Minnie Bell Powell 
my grandma saying
god is coming boy you better get right with him

By late February it hit my home harder than Mike Tyson in his prime in the first round  

Body after body ambulance after ambulance
Is what I witnessed 

Scared to close my eyes at night to wake up gasping for air 

Till one morning the fever and the shakes hit me 
Nurse give me a Tylenol I have a tooth ache
Knowing that wasn’t what it was 
But knowing I had to tell my mind that’s what it is
Just so I could shake it off
Mind over matter 

My favorite OG Roy Watson wouldn’t have ever thought he would wake up gasping for air 
Not even being able to grab his phone and dial 911 
But through this poem I honor you Roy 
And the other 500,000 Covid has taken away

A moment of silence 

A year later the grass is still burning without a firefighter in sight 
And the man who made such an invisible weapon of mass destruction is
sitting back saying mission accomplished 

Fire through dry grass…..

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Vincent Pierce

Vince grew up in Newburgh, New York. As a teen, V moved down south to North Carolina where he studied music and played on multiple basketball teams, moving back to New York In his early twenties. V was robbed at gunpoint; a bullet put him in a wheelchair and wound up at Coler. Today, V’s focus lies in his 10-year-old daughter, Nuatej, and in music, producing his first album, OPEN DOORS Reality Poets Vol.1, in 2019. His poetry and writings have been published in Wheeling & Healing: A Poetry Anthology Edited by OPEN DOORS Reality Poets. he’s a recipient of the Center For Cultural Innovation Grant with which he started a music program aimed to keep youth off the streets and in the studio.

https://www.opendoorsnyc.org/blogs/realitypoets-vince
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