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