GHETTO CAVIAR

The street sounds like children playing and dice games. Crack rocks tightly tucked in pant legs hold no future for us all. The job application chokes at first, then the white man offers to much of a good thing to accept. The crack is faster. Cadillacs and coups rattle dilapidated window frames. The words are always the same, get money, get laid. What else is there to do in the world. The school books go unread, but then again what is there is to be read.

I am a black child. There is no solace for me. My peers run away from themselves, leaving their own families behind. My family cannot understand that I am changing into someone that I don't quite understand myself. Home is a roll-cage conditioned by many test runs. The street is my only refuge. The incessant migraines make the classroom bulge and split in disbelief and questions unanswered. My white friend have grand pianos and swimming pools. At my house the wallpaper scurries and multiplies a million fold. What do I do?

There is no solace for the black man child. He is not a king. He is not a scholar. He is not disciplined enough for either. He can only hustle and survive. His only prosperous endeavors involve the degradation of another, or many. Where does this hollow pit of despair and self-loathing stem from? How can so many men of color allow the continued disintegration of their own culture?

As the questions bottleneck the dams of reason one can only imagine what black life would be like if the cycle was broken. It is our men who say 'NO' to job applications. It is our men who say 'NO' to their mothers guidance and it is our place in this world as men to say 'NO' to the foot steps of our fathers. We are the next generation of kings.

We must begin to see the future as something larger than ourselves. Our children shall not suffer as we did. The only barrier we face as a nation of black minds is our own mental road blocks. We must uplift our brothers. The mistakes that were made must not be made again. How can you benefit from wronging a wrong-doer? Why is it that our shoulders are the ones that carry the most? Our load is the greatest because we are strongest...(to be continued)