My name is Larry. I was born on October 9th. October is the tenth month. When I see the numbers one, zero, and nine, (in that order) I think of my birthday. Sometimes I see one, zero, zero, and nine. I still see my birthday. The second zero is just a place holder. Sometimes I even see one, zero, nine, and zero. My poem is entitled 1-0-9.
A day in the life of a legend named LARRY
Do you believe in coincidences? don’t be scary
Just because I’m talking about an omen, you might think I’m joking
but I don’t care, it’s just something that I noticed
Now this is how I do this, when checking a grip
All these instances I’ll speak of are spooky, please don’t trip
I took a leap of faith and traveled to an international place
Come to find out one, zero, nine is their national holiday
One, zero, nine on my mind I was fine, I thought
Until I started waking up at 1:09 on the dot
Multiple times then it hit me
These numbers keep coming to visit me
Even when I bought a train ticket my seat assignment would be
10 or 9, respectively
One, zero, zero, nine was even my group number which I thought was assigned randomly
Additionally, I would awaken sometimes at 10:09
And try this one on for size
A strange woman asked me the time
I looked at my cellphone and replied 10:09
Once I was at Addis Ababa University
Learning about Ethiopian history
I went to the bathroom located on the second floor,
I noticed one, zero, nine written on the door
Once in Peru, Cousin Anwar said meditate and listen, in the mountains Inca spirits will meet you
At 10:09 in the morning, I reached the summit of Machu Picchu, I guess what Cousin Anwar said is true
Once in Havana, Cuba I read about the time when Ernesto ‘Che‘ Guevara de la Serna lost his life, the date was one, zero, nine.
It’s bizarre were it not for my travels and this predilection of mine
Which entails encountering one, zero, and nine
in the most common places, but at the most unlikely times
See even when I tried to forget them
I was surprised to keep seeing them again
Once in Saudi Arabia,
I whistled for a cab and when it came near
The license plate started with one, zero, nine and it had me feeling weird
If anything I can say this cab was rare but I thought
Man, forget it, yo holmes, I’m not scared
I tried to explain these coincidences to my friend, Rochelle
She said forget about it, 10 and 9 are everywhere, oh well
I believed her especially when I went to the Apple Store where all the Apple devices are set to the same score
What’s more, for more than ten years I found one, zero, nine all over the world
And I wondered why, then something happened that made me see how all these instances were preparing me to understand a future event I was to see
Sunday, March 31st, I awoke and looked at IG only to realize
That a friend of mine
Who rarely posts photos had posted a photo of Nipsey to my surprise
I read the caption and began to cry
That was how I learned that Nipsey died
That morning I felt lost,
On my short drive to work, a car cut me off
I read the license plate, it was difficult for me to feel fine
The license plate started with one, zero, nine
It’s lost on me why I had seen those numbers at that specific moment in time
Until seven days after Nipsey perished
Several details stood out that forced me to relish
There was that goat that stepped on my blue laced Nike sneeks
I posted that goat’s photo to IG on Sunday, March 17th
Then the date was Sunday, March 24th when I was in a tent reading a book
That day I was nursing a foot fungus wearing one sock on my foot
Then Sunday, March 31st was the date on which Nipsey went away to our dismay,
that day his body still wore one sock on his left foot
I felt shook, when I realized that seven days earlier I wore a sock one my right foot while reading that book
This final detail’s occurrence is a complete mystery
It occurred because I believe it was the event that one, zero, nine was preparing me to see
This time I was in the former capital of the Sultanate of Oman — an ancient land where you’d be hard pressed to spot a plane overhead
So I can’t explain what happened on Sunday, April 7th when an omen appeared before my eyes
I lived there for six months and never saw anything like it before it or since
There were chem-trails up in the sky, I can’t explain why
Though it wasn’t the chem-trails that had me at a word loss
Rather t’was the sight of the chem-trails intersecting to form a CROSS