A few years ago, we did everything in our power as parents to get our son out of the South Bronx. It is too rough here for any woman or man, never mind child.

Last night, he came back home for the holiday after sixteen months away upstate. It was good to build with him & just walk through the hood saying what’s up to the old-school characters and hustlers on the corner who remember me from the boxing and street days.

I love the hood. I try to give everything for the hood. But the hood is a double-edged sword. It will take you under; it will elevate you. It will suffocate you; it will breathe life into you.

The block is schizophrenic and it makes you schizophrenic. It steels you as it dismantles you. It erects you as it drowns you. You’re so caught up, you can’t see there is something else out there. Narcissism dressed with a Bronx fitted and timbs.

Of course, the backdrop is grim. A shoot-em up man in search of ghetto glory took out five people on 153rdand Courtland. There were six helicopters in pursuit and dozens of police cruisers crisscrossing every block. This is what my son comes home to? A war zone built to destroy us. A ghetto obstacle course. They release you out the gates like:

Welcome home kid. Here’s five bucks s&^). See what you can do n&*^%

Block to block, you zigzag in and out of the horror. The herds of the homeless and fallen…the Fentanyl, the street mechanics, the unwashed, the unseeable, the unheard, the paper bags, the shopping carts, the surviviors…

Surviving, always surviving but when do we get to live?

Mental illness? What’s that? These streets and their overseers are the ill ones. What are we? Spiritual burglars and survivors.

On 1 4 9, mental illness is nothing more than brokenness with twenty fancy white euphemisms. Pharmaceutical companies and rich people cash in on the very destruction they cultivated. A savage merry-go-round. Hop on board. Where else you going?

Forget about visiting another state or country, I am trying to get off this block…

In the words of Bertolt Brecht, “our very survival is a miracle.”

Understand: all this is designed to break us…Black people, Brown children, little girls, poor whites… the chicken spot, the liquor store, the churches, the broken glass, the talk shows, the laundromats, the leering glares and smirks from the police invaders…

What escape do we have?

The lure of hustling…the ghetto trap. To lay it all on the line like there is no tomorrow. A hustler is the ultimate Buddhist…all he has is the present. Tomorrow could be sirens, handcuffs and ten years long gone, locked up in a box. You think I’m a be worried about what girl I’m talking to? Or whose wife she might be? Got more pressing concerns homie.

There is something deep within me

Unsettled

Unsettling

the weight

of the historical drama

vent-up

trauma

unfinished

unblemished

tough to shake

so watch me move this weight

Beyond the bookshelves, the analysis, the penmanship, the comrades & the grand vision, there is a young boy who if left to his own devices, would stay in the streets. He’d rob every tycoon and privileged mansion. He’d dish out every pill, poison, expensive brand-name shoes, purses, Nikes, Victoria’s Secret…ghetto fabulous.

It is not about hurting no one else, it is about getting your own. The american way… But of course, you are dishing out damage and pain.

Hustling is capitalism’s bastard offspring. 

You left us nothing 

but parade the world in front of us.

Watch us make our own bread

outta the crumbs you left behind

Catapulted to new heights

Elevated before my children & peers

Once you get a taste of that…that high. Irreplaceable. Just to stack up money in my pocket. Can’t nobody touch this. Tax free. Instant gratification. From nobodydom to somebodydom in the wink of a transaction. Finally, I don’t have to listen to no one’s stories about their new job or financial success. I can do for me and mine. But it could all be gone in the blink of a rat’s eye…

The ephemeral eraser of envy…

Resentment is not the number one offender; poverty is.

To catch something…a midnight fisherman…a feeling of invincibility. The night will never end. Fleeting. So, you have to keep making moves. There is no such thing as enough texts, enough bread, enough women, enough drama, enough tragos.

Enough is a word you’ll never hear in the streets.

You are on your way to this block, already knowing about the next move. This girl’s texts coming through but what about Julissa. Where’s she at? What about Veronika? Tiffany?

It’s endless

Unending

internalized

psychological

warfare

perpetually

perpetuated

on to those I love the most
.....
my mirror image

1 COMMENT

  1. I live in the south bronx so I felt every word ! It is an everyday war zone here. I see people in the freezing cold even in the rain posted on the block trying to make their cut just so they can afford Yeezy sneakers, off white belts and 4 day trips to California to get more “work”. (if they can make it that far) Of course this touches base on a much deeper issue that is very impactful. Nicely expressed!

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