we
get lost in women or shuttled by esoteria or hampered and battled or uncanny
irritants—those blown whistles those surreal whispers where in deeper
concentration we feel a neighbor; our souls so minced and challenged our minds
wheezing or so aloft a second on ecstasy that everything is feelings; our
mothers lose femininity where others rebuild or both mother and father are
chased by multiple habits; we know violence by age seven we know passions are
forbidden or we dance lost in some man’s screams. we play surrender we plead
for forgiveness nor are we totally rational; such ghetto zeitgeist such ghetto
survival where little Jimmy is nine suffering from an overdose—of pure
existence his stomach pumped plus Big Jimmy is in cuffs; a man slammed his face
attempting to get his brains out while looped and starving for management; kids
are playing grownup where parents are turning heads because it’s too much and
Angie was pregnant at fourteen. But Mark was diligent plus a bit angry
nevertheless he became a professional football player; and little Jordan leaps
across the court slams it into the basket and talks more garbage than the best
of them. Most kids are reading for mother is reading and many kids are charismatic;
such fire in ghetto graves such obstinance for survival and such striking
presence; we give a child hell and the child gets through it and then we ask
concerning cockiness; those ghetto alps those ghetto trophies our ghettoes
filled with triumphs: those Alcatraz countenances or that due for death
callousness while so real it often feels good to converse; our hated worlds or
our loved lives where some experienced too much and way too early; our Notre-Dame
screams our eldest accepted into Stanford or our daughters up at Berkeley. this
land of invitations this ghetto mirage while Jessica just graduated from CSULB;
such radical dreams such given opportunities or a younger me depleting
ink-pens; but some are given to silence this funding absent and intentional
where Big Frank is a genius but can’t win the grant; our years running our
souls our educated wires or thrown for abandoned and feeling disappointed. many
made it into Junior Colleges as mother struggled to pay and father was proud to
pitch in; some joined the army and danced with pleasure in order to attain college
tuition; this land of dreariness this dam raging or those beavers becoming more
resilient. we speak of leaning towers and leaning souls while we are too
determined to quit; our unbuilt legacies our deconstructed ghettoes or our
ghetto songbirds—as incredible leaders and such tenacious pride where one goes
to battle implementing pure logic; our realities so disparate our minds so
intangible our sunbathed and sun-raked souls filled with privacies.
ghetto
gumdrop geniuses or debated dead-centered determinants while little Lisa was
reading at college level by the age of eleven. it becomes amazing our interior
understanding where we wish we would have been those nerdy types; our glasses
turned into mental perfume our souls flying but held tighter or our minds
needing something tremendous; our days watching the opposite sex our nights
daydreaming while feeling good to approach our presentations; those few professors
at something unique or dynamic and influential. those earlier years looking
intently and experiencing something too dark to discuss; such scholarly
ghettoes such fugitives held for ransom at something while rereading our
inheritance. but a nine-year-old reads Beloved and a twelve-year-old
reads Beowulf while a thirteen-year-old is decoding Frankenstein; our
higher elevation our midday terrors at Hamlet and Macbeth soaring
through imagination or writing short stories; such deeper successes in a land of
ghetto dramas where existence is its own stage.
