Day 11: Ghetto Chronicles

Photo: thwordinc.blogspot.com

I am a ghetto kid strung-out on a cache of shattering experiences. 

I spit details of my life on the breath of deathless utterances.

Sired into one of the basest classes in the gutter

It was extremely tough imagining life as a picnic.

I lived each day of my life in extremis to the letter

And believe me when I say I wasn’t your everyday skeptic.

It was the same old song

If you’ve been around these parts you know what I’m talking about.

Situation got me gone

And my business gave me a runaround.

Barely pulled through the different levels of school.

It felt like battling hell’s industrious crew.

The rut in the system sort of caught up

Now I’m kind o’ dreaming on testing the waters of illiteracy

Seems the ivory towers are all washed up.

What the hell so, I flipped it

And got my butt admitted into street college.

Look at the results and embrace novel proof of ingenuity.

Couldn’t exactly speak for my former colleagues.

But misery is a staple of everyday ghetto living

Keep taking blows, act tough but I can’t see myself leaving.

Not even when circumstance bears fangs like the African Boomslang.

I was brought forth in the ghetto,

Came of age in the ghetto,

Nurtured by the ghetto,

And now repping the ghetto.

Point is you can’t put the blame on me

I am what the ghetto made me;

A victor of circumstance,

My personal veritable comeuppance.

For I am not ashamed of the ghetto gospel

For it leads me on through this entire ghetto bustle.

I am the future and a youth

But the plans they got for me is the substance of a fluke.

They label me hoods.

Please, don’t be cruel.

I am what society made me too.

I have plodded through tough times.

And I have navigated the roughest miles.

Been an inch from mortalizing

But I kept right on laughing to keep from crying.

Cause I did come to recognize the purpose of life:

It’s not the days of our life but the life in those days

Which produce the bursting out of individuality revolutionized.

As I unbottle suppressed memories you’ll be amazed.

Easy to say, I guess

But reality abides in the mind’s meditation.

Tomorrow may not pass the test

As a figment of delusion.

I have borne such losses that could only be imagined.

And there’s the chronic pain that’s still hurting.

All for want of a silver spoon,

Tribulations of the experienced fool.

But through it all I sure did find

A worthy cause for which I’d put up a fight.

I know where my happiness is

I have received the revelation of my genesis.

You live in the ghetto,

You survive or die in the ghetto.

That’s the way it is

That’s the way it’s always gatto be.

Looks like I’m stuck in the game

And things will ever be the same.

Life is either a daring adventure or nothin’

Chronicles of a ghetto kid.

Akpan