Too many sad ghetto poems

There are too many poems that start with sirens Too many poems that start with gunshots Screams and mother’s crying over babies There are too many movies and songs and books Telling the tales of inner city violence Pain flowing out over hard baselines and Gut wrenching scores There are too many drug dealers and drug addicts Getting press time and play time and air time And none of them have anything different to say Gunshots ring out A cloud of smoke Innocents and innocence fall to the dirty floor Stray bullets always seem to find their way The wrong way The hard way Shooters veiled by gun smoke and emptiness Hollow inside like drums beaten long into the night Sirens are the chorus Watch for the hook It’ll catch you every time and it won’t matter As long as it doesn’t reach the suberbs As long as congressmen and politicians aren’t touched by it It’s not their loved ones bleeding to death They’ve never had to sit on the floor To avoid stray bullets It’s not their 12 year old son who’s been a pall-bearer 6 times Children struggling to bear the weight of the dead The wait of death As long as the problem is over there Nobody over here cares It’s always they, them, over there It’s only a tragedy when 12 kids in Colorado die Who cares about 1200 in the Bronx South Central The projects country wide World wide They do it to themselves They deserve it It always comes down to the haves and the have-nots The have-nots aren’t just needing money They need role models They need love They need self-respect They need to stop living life staring down the barrel of a gun They need to stop watching life go on through bars of steel They need to find their way They need The stories been told a thousand times With a thousand characters There are too many stories that don’t end with happily ever after There are too many dead children There are too many lost souls There are too many poets writing about our youth For there not to be anybody listening Stop the blame Stop looking away Stop the violence Stop There is no they There is only us The story plays on too long The poem never ends The time has come to stop the music Listen Written March 25th, 2002 © on Mar 24 2002 05:11 PM PST   0 • 10 • 9