The Perils of the Ghetto

Soft silhouettes sashay by my window Grievingly gazing out unto a world of which you may never know Linen curtains briefly ruffled in the breeze Old drunken Julius finds shade under the huge oak trees The echoes of poverty ring outside my building The pleas of panhandlers, the chattering of children Dope feign Delilah, struts up and down the streets, waiting to turn her next trick Evaporating into the air, the sulfuric stench Jared, the jock in high school, deemed all American athlete Shooting craps in the alley just to make ends meet Every night like clockwork, the street walkers stand by Ms. Martina’s door When the sun rises and they scatter like roaches, she anoints the ground with oils Hakeem stands on one corner, screaming out” Would you enter the Kingdom of heaven if you should die today? While his brother ShaQuan stands across the street, on the corner peddling cocaine When we were growing up Ebony and I vowed to always be best friends I sit on my stoop and she doesn’t even look my way as she’s followed by her six kids In the evening gun shots light up the night, like the fourth of July Another wife a widow, another mother loses her child With not so much as a reason why. Shrines built in rememberance of lost souls, adorn the sidewalks Where once laid the body of an innocent child outlined by blood stained chalk I am here in the midst of a world that I may never really know I sit here day after day, with my pad and my pen, Trying to escape the perils of the Ghetto