I Stand Amidst
To dwell among the ruins;
littered with broken bottles and flattened plastic cups,
stamped out cigarette butts
Cast off lottery binges,
crushed ghetto dreams and empty syringes
Poisoned by so many stings of inequality
Flickering opportunities ...
shed your skin, and perhaps poverty
will become a molted nightmare
I stand amidst
a people in a narcotic induced stupor,
their drug of deceit is a false sense of identity
They want to believe so bad
in their adopted society
Still slaves to orphaned naiveté
My feet of clay are bruised
on the shards of this shattered glass menagerie
A ghetto cage with rusted hinges,
creaky freedom that depends
on intensive mental lubrication
Trapped souls within tend to not have enough strength
to swing open the cage door
I stand amidst
a people with weeping desires
of soaked happiness wrung dry
Shuddering in cold urban projects
left ill-heated and unfinished
We who came here with nothing ...
stripped of everything --- our heritage, our dignity
Then subsequently told we are not entitled to anything
I fall to my knees
in the midst of my people's pain
As the dagger of disillusionment
is plunged into our collective heart
again and again
We are assimilation's spitted out bitter raisins
Copyright © Freddie Robinson Jr. | Year Posted 2017
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