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Alex Dealaya Poem
I grew up on the streets
Where you fought for your life --
Welcome to the Jungle
Meant fighting to survive.
Shelter in a cardboard box,
Bloated and flimsy
Like that homeless teenager --
Pregnant with her father’s baby
And who escaped home because
Here
Anywhere
Would be better than
The Hell
She was in.
Welcome to the Jungle
Meant food was a delicacy --
Dirty, bleeding hands sifting through dumpsters --
**** you’d never eat unless you had to
But which to you meant one word:
Survival.
Welcome to the Jungle:
You can take whatever you want
As long as it’s not from me:
Truer words were never spoken.
Girls no younger than that little niece,
Or that little sister,
You loved with all your heart,
Forced to prostitute herself for dimes
That might get her a warm meal.
Girls that should be in school
And going to the mall with friends.
Welcome to the Jungle
Where those things are as foreign to them
As a warm house and a loving family.
Girls
Who are too young
To know of blowjobs
And back alley abortions
Of meth and pills --
Of alcohol and rape –
Of STDS and pregnancy --
Of madness and fear.
A skid mark on the road of humanity
A scar across the face of a nation
Who claims to be great
And whose power
Lies in her people.
But what do you do
With those people
Who are ignored, ridiculed –
Treated as sub-humans?
All we want
Is a little sympathy.
All we want
Is a voice.
All we want,
Is for life to stop shitting on us,
Long enough for us
To make that climb
Out of that hole
And back into the light.
But that’s easier said than done.
Because when you live in the Jungle
Where every day is a fight for survival,
How do you plan for a future
That ends at the end of the day
And starts all over again
The next?
Copyright © Alex Dealaya | Year Posted 2014
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