my ghetto

my ghetto is not brand name
i am not from the bronx, south central, the southside,
or even roxbury like my mom
the gunmen behind the bullets in my baby brother's bedroom wall
or baby keila's two-year old back have never been played by
francis capra or fredro starr

the two burning cars outside my bedroom window
were not part of a protest or riot,
and the rash of arsons that claimed families all over
the neighborhood
only made the local section of the paper

the weapons that we found playing in the vacant lot
did not belong to bloods or crypts
though the latin kings had a strong hold on the block
we used to watch the local news,
to see if we saw our street on tonight, or anyone we knew
the fires were on sometimes, or hit and runs, or drive bys

we were invisible, however, when zero tolerance
swept young people off the street and into
DSS custody or juvie for wearing baggy clothing
or walking home late at night through their own street

invisible still when giant potholes killed the shocks
on the old beat up cars we tried to keep nice
and the sidewalks made rollerblading or even
walking under the dim broken streetlights dangerous
but that didnt really matter, cuz when the streetlights came on
you better have been inside anyway
or your mom would come drag you in

we were invisible when we held meetings in our
backyards
with lemonade and the couple of beat cops who cared
enough to listen
speaking in a communal voice that losing our kids
to guns or jails was not a good enough choice

there was no tape rolling when grandmothers yelled from their
porch to "SLOW DOWN, can't you see there are kids trying
to play?"
and the basketball game would halt momentarily as we
all scattered to grab a nearby piece of sidewalk as the
offending car bounced up and down on the rocky road

there was no photo op as we all worked together to clean
up the empty lot,
using earth day as an excuse to have the city come pick
up the broken couches, tvs, and car parts
and then planting a patch of vegetables so all of us kids
could see how things grow
still no copy when the police chased a robbery suspect
out of his bedroom window
and tackled him on top of a patch of carrots and lettuce
still too young to harvest

still we watched together as house after house on the
block was boarded up and burned into the night
and once, i remember, before school
and the firefighters rolled in,
but not as quickly as they did each fourth of july
when we'd block off the intersection and heap
mattreses, broken chairs, and tables onto the road
filling the sky with our own version of fireworks

secretly i was grateful for the firefighters on those nights
i could feel the heat from the fire in my bedroom, always
terrified that mine would be one of those houses
even kept the things i wanted to keep in a bag next
to my bed, in case the beeping woke me in the night
and i had to get out right quick
before the smoke filled my lungs like it had monique's and
her dad's.

this is just the way i remember it though
and the fuzzy lines of 15 year old memories can be unreliable
but there is not documentation to disprove it
the meetings, the cleanups, the lack of police consistency
the fact that they never found the man that put those
our bullets in baby keila's back while she slept

this is our history and there is no book
there is no movie, no tv show, no newspaper articles
and almost none of it can be found on the world wide web
it sounds trivial, but without being able to see our
history, how can we learn from it?

this is our history
it is a story with many chapters and mine is only one
it is not the first, and it will not be the last
but it is mine
the way i remember it
it may not be entirely accurate
but it's what i've got.