The Blood of My Poetry: Legend's Tale

By Eric Christopher Bonner

This is a journey of one man born in Brooklyn, New York. This is his tale of heartache, joy, pain and love in an urban jungle. This is the story of the greatest street poet and how he came to be recognized as such.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Sep 1, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543912630

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Copyright ©2017 by Eric Christopher Bonner

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Printed in the United States of America

First Printing

All Poetry original works by Eric Christopher Bonner

Send all inquiries to:

[e-mail]

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ISBN: 978-1-54391-262-3 (print)

ISBN: 978-1-54391-263-0 (ebook)

Table of Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1 – My Life

Chapter 2 - No Pain No Gain

Chapter 3 - What’s going on?

Chapter 4 – For the Good Times

Chapter 5 – Shining Star

Chapter 6 – The Big Payback

Chapter 7 – Wishing On a Star

Chapter 8 – I Heard It through the Grapevine

Chapter 9 – It’s The Same Old Song

Chapter 10 – It’s So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday

Chapter 11 – If You Don’t Know Me by Now

Chapter 12 – Brand New Day

Chapter 13 - Tonight Is the Night

Chapter 14 - Someday at Christmas

Chapter 15 – Standing in the Shadow Of Love

Chapter 16 – We Are Family

Chapter 17 – Georgia

Chapter 18 – Human Nature

Chapter 19 – I Miss You

Chapter 20 – Love and Happiness/You Send Me

Chapter 21 – Get Ready

Prologue

Walk with me through the tattered rags of my clothes/

The battered remnants of my soul/

A place where tears fall freely/

I wonder in this darkness can you see me/

I wonder if you had a chance to walk in my shoes would you be me/

If you saw me trapped by my enemies, would you free me?

Fire all around me/

I’m a Aries it would be easier to drown me/

I rejoice in the fact that God found me/

And I was able rebound me/

All at a point where all can see me/

Now I walk freely amongst the dead and the living/

Flying high so I can be a ribbon in the sky for the next king of – BED-STY!

1 – My Life

My name is Legend and this is my testimony. Now in order for you have one of these you have to have been through a test. Some call it a storm or others say living is a test in itself. I didn’t know that my life would be this hard or this difficult but somehow I made it through. To the person reading this I hope you can gain something from reading my story. I think that what we all want when we are kids dreaming about our future, is that we want to be somebody important in society. I don’t think that the homeless person you see sleeping on the sidewalk dreamed of sleeping on the sidewalk. I think that what happens is life steps in and beats down on us. For some, one mistake can ruin your life. For others you can mess up a bunch as a kid and turn into a success. There is no formula to it, I know that I have been lucky. I want to take you where I have been, the highs and lows. Maybe you will hopefully at the end of this understand me.

This is the part where I draw in your mind the setting that this story takes place. Well in order to tell it correctly and accurately, we have to time warp to period of my life that we will call coming of age. Welcome to Brooklyn New York somewhere in the late nineties. I am a struggling poet. Yet everyone tells me that I should do something with it because it is something that God blessed me with. It’s strange but I can see the words before I write them. Almost like –

Alpha

Out of the abyss of nothingness I was birthed/

In the rubble of my black skin I was unearthed/

On a drenched pillow I lay/

Under the stars dreaming what I wish to happen today/

I did not know the trek would be this hectic/

I’m a relic of a time past with a soul that’s wounded/

I’m hiding my cast/

Running from a past that destined me to finish last/

Like the big bang it’s been a blast/

Living, growing not knowing where these tracks will take me/

Hoping and praying that at the end of this story my friends and family don’t hate me/

I’ve been greatly thrown in the abyss by those close enough to kiss/

Looking at heaven’s door on a teenage Christmas/

See me world, on my hands and knees, praying with only one possession-

WISHES!

In order to tell this story I have to start at the beginning and that is Crown Heights, Brooklyn NY. My house was a halfway house of sorts. Family members interchanging. Rent parties on the weekends and spades battles during the week. Gambling and liquor was the vices of choice for everyone around me. There was one thing that helped me tune out an environment that can be detrimental to a young black boy. That one thing was music and since I can remember it played a vital role in my development. Whether it was playing music in school or listening to the radio which was always on in my house. I loved music. But something would come along that would change my world forever. My brother Evan was a rapper and he would show me a show called video music box. The first video I saw was microphone fiend by Eric B. and Rakim. After this, I would become hooked on hip hop as it was called back then.

I started writing young with the hopes of one day becoming a MC. My house was a hangout spot for all the kids in the neighborhood because I kept the newest video game system. Nintendo was king back then and we had a blast playing Contra, Double Dragon and of course Super Mario Brothers. Every holiday was a feast to behold as my mother and my Godmother Corine would cook dinner for both families together.

And the scene looked like this –

Ground Shaking

That is the one thing that stood out/

The dancing and the floor shaking/

Then the drunken laughter and toasts/

The poker table full of money/

The arguments over who won a hand/

The helping of someone to a cab who could barely stand/

Only a spectator to this or witness/

I knew in my heart that life would come around/

I knew that the sound of happiness was not a secure one/

I guess at a young age I was to foresee what was to be/

That this image would be like Casper to me/

A friendly ghost/

A story to boast about family/

Before the vanity and selfishness murdered our conscious/

And deaths hand touched an important few/

Without them nobody knew what to do/

I just remember the ground stopped shaking like it used to!

2 - No Pain No Gain

My mother was the type of woman who surprised the whole class on your birthday with cake. Making me a popular kid by stopping classwork for one afternoon. She was the type of person who was tough but fair. She was a housewife though she worked before I was born. She stayed home to teach me before I began school. So when school did start for me I was already ahead of the class. Her teaching method would be frowned upon nowadays. When she was teaching me to write, if wrote a letter incorrectly I got my ass beat. Though looking back everyone says my penmanship is very neat. I usually say to them that I earned this hand writing in the school of hard knocks.

My mother was on welfare and the state did not know that my father was living in the house. This was before computers so it was harder to find out these things. They would do home visits but