When Thugs Cry

They call it 'Tin Pan Alley' where the steel-bands practiced on Clarkson Avenue before the Labor Day carnival started. I walked pass the drummers with my rifle broken-down inside a 36 inch army duffle bag. It was calypso time in Brooklyn, New York. The smell of curried goat and the flash of glittery gold and yellow costumes ran up and down Eastern Parkway. I had scoped the area out a week in advance and I had found an abandoned building around the corner just two tenements inside the block. It was a small view with just enough of a window to the avenue that I needed to hit my mark. After re-assembling the rifle I stood in the dirty window with its broken glass and its dusty sill waiting for Mayor Mussolini's float to pass. I was weak and my nerves kept jumping as I peeked through the scope of my Bushmaster .223 rifle every time a new float came into view. I was in the final chapter of my life and this would be the exclamation point. Like Amadou Diallo before me, when I leave here, the world will know my name. It was hot and the sweat dripping from my brow along with the flash of sun reflecting off the glossy costumes the parader's sported on Brooklyn's, Eastern Parkway, disrupted my vision ocasionally. But I remained steadfast like, Fannie Lou Hamer, I was sick and tired of being sick and tired. With my finger on the trigger waiting for the mayor's bulbous comb-over to come into my sight I kept repeating the words of Bronx Assemblyman Ruben Diaz Jr., "Amadou, Amadou, I'm ma do somethin'."