At sixteen the boy in front of me, was yanked back and stabbed repeatedly.
Chest, stomach, lungs
– Diagnosed PTSD
The justifications, my convictions
Not that I was left to die in the children’s hospital.
But you see philosophy has never been my expertise,
What I see, I believe.
Living in survival mode since the day we were born
I want nothing more than to see, the mandem safe in their homes,
Finding their body parts in gutter holes,
How Boris has majority of the nation, fighting against us
Stuck in our own, self-made, oppression.
Did that leave an impression?
Did it resemble, Mohammad Abdulla Al-Maahir’s reaction?
You’ve never come from a place, where you either starve or die
The only thing you’ve seen is my sister with a letterbox for eyes
Your white hands beating us with words, your ancestors devised.
But a girl can dream of freedom – can’t she?
I can’t pretend I’ve never picked up the knife
Ignorant to what death can cause,
Sitting in the aftermath wondering,
What have I done to deserve this life?
Waking up strangling my bedsheets, don’t tell me it’s easy to make it off the streets.
I want to use this to redirect the younger generation,
Their attitude screaming,
Fuck the consequences and the sentence!
I try and save ‘em,
Kid you do this and there’s no going back – your ears will be burdened by the white man’s laugh.
It hurts me to even mention that my people lack ambition
I don’t blame ‘em
It’s how they make ‘em
They lack the ambition to be more than the inside of a kitchen,
More than their father’s weapon,
Grew up with a pencil and silent words,
Unlike my mate whose deadbeat father, triggered a police raid in the early hours.
But a woman can be honest – can’t she?
I wanna show ‘em that they have a choice
They will always have a choice,
To become the people, they glue onto their mouldy walls,
To become the name, people chant just before you receive your award.
I want to tell them that my sister, you don’t have to go behind the dumpster with him.
Nine months later
Push out baby Abdul.
You’re stressed about money, food and rent
The father cradling his bullet wound, nesting in his chest.
My brothers, you don’t have to bear the walls of your fathers,
carrying ammunition,
It’s not always about redemption,
Running through the back streets firing and stabbing,
Two days later you’re in hand cuffs,
trying hard not to remember – this is the life of a gang member.
However, on the inside you surrender.
Your ears perk up when the jury delivers your cell number.
How we rest in pride, it kills us.
But I will always be on your side of life
Reminding you that your teachers, never tried hard enough to believe in you,
The education system is not in our favour
If only you knew
For this I apologise – you deserved better.
The system will never be in our favour.
For this is the reason why I had to leave – exhausted by the streets
Encouraging myself to believe, in a dark future with no gratification,
Jumping from profession to profession,
Job titles I never wanted from the beginning.
Moving out to white boy area, I still attract the feds on my way back from work
No such thing as the day of rest
Chased and beaten, as though we were, role-playing Malorie Blackman’s Noughts and Crosses.
This prison was never non-existent,
Just waiting for the owner to return, from her imagination.
The sound of young Abdul, getting rushed on his way home from school
They call him lil orphan fool,
Left him in his bloody pool.
A brown girl could never make any of this up.
“This poem is a depiction of the streets and fighting for a better lifestyle, but also feeding into the racial stereotypes of black (but also brown) people. I’ve written this from my own experiences, as a brown woman, living in a dangerous city that does not support its people. I feel as though, this poem has a relationship with the movement #BLM because it deals with the brutality of racism and police, the endless harassment we have received, as a result of politics, racist police officers and people.”
This poem has previous been featured on ‘GLVT SCHOOL OF MARTIAL ARTS.’