Crank (Crank 1)

about it, I am grateful to my grandparents

for their vision.

Grateful to my mom for her smarts,

to my father for his bald ambition,

and, yes, greed.

Not to mention unreal intuition.

My Grandfather

Andre Marcus Kane Sr. embraced

the color of his skin,

refused to let it straitjacket

him. He grew up in the urban

California nightmare

called Oakland, with its rutted

asphalt and crumbling cement

and frozen dreams,

all within sight of hillside mansions.

I’d look up at those houses, he told

me more than once,

and think to myself, no reason why

that can’t be me, living up there.

No reason at all,

except getting sucked down into

the swamp. Meaning welfare or the drug

trade or even the cliché

idea that sports were the only way out.