Lost ones (revised)
Dedicated to my former students and young brothers labeled as throwaways
By: Yorri Berry
On his eighth birthday
He doesn't get a bike
Just a prison cell with his name engraved on the exterior
Because he can't read as well as his counterparts a little less tan than he is
And his intellectual inability has less to do with his tanness
Rather his lack of in-demandness
Because his blackness means that he doesn't make the priority cut on their checklist
So instead of buying more books and hiring more qualified and credentialed educators for the underperforming school that never taught him how to read
They add a pair of handcuffs to the inventory list because he'll never graduate anyway
Check the rates
For little colored boys like him finishing high school makes him the exception
So no need for a college fund
No need for updated books and a college preparatory curriculum
No need to build state of the art computer labs when we can just install more metal detectors
Because his name is no longer little colored boy failed by the system, the schools, the inactive daddies held hostage in the prison cell a few blocks down from the one they're building for him, and the high and mighty middle class of educated black folk who dare not care long enough to matter
His name is just criminal
Or criminal junior who looks just like his criminal senior pops he never met
So we treat him like one
And when we walk down the street next to him clutching our purse noses in the air we greet him like one
And when we fail to feed him truth that says you better read until you can't read anymore because by age 18 they expect you to be in prison not college we deceive him like one
Little black boy when I see you I don't clutch my purse
Nor do I perceive you as violent as if you are out to get me
Allow me to inject two pints of reality into your mind
Because young brother the hit is out on you
The racism is no longer blatant
Instead it is covered in whipped cream I call institutionalized
While the media sells wholesale societal lies
That you will amount to nothing more than a dangerous, illiterate, unemployed, HIV infected throwaway
That your life isn't worth the same as the Laura Bush's and Cindy McCain's
And if you don't believe me do a comparative analysis of black men who kill white women versus black men who kill other brothers and tell me if the penalties are anywhere near the same
Lame
Is the fact that when we see your underwear and little tighty whiteys because you're too cool to wear a belt we simply shake our heads
When we hear you use the words woman and bitch interchangeably we simply shake our heads
When we see you chillin on street corners during school hours we simply shake our heads
We shake our heads and keep moving because we didn't birth you so that means you are not our problem
And like much of society we too have given up on you
Throwaway
But I dare someone to reach their clean hand into the garbage can and take back our boys and show them how to be men
Stop shaking your head because they are teens reading on 4th grade levels and tutor them
Because criticism from afar won't bring about change
See
The birthing of these words aren't for fame
Or critical acclaim
Rather my mind being shaken from mental orgasms arising from reality relationing my brain
In the middle of morning
And right now I'm in the middle of mourning truth confronting me
A newfound peripheral actuality
When I examine our communities
I see slave ships moving down the street
Except they look like you...and me
I'm just a truth-seeking rational being
Bleeding black representative of the need to go back
Not only to examine the past but analyze the present and force a burial of unequivocal jargon that some of us have "arrived"
I have no PhD yet but I'll assert that 23 years ought to qualify my perspective affirming that regardless of how many advanced degree-getting gated community living colored folk out there
If we still have public school systems graduating fewer than 50% our young men then one of our wings is broken therefore none of us can fly
I open my eyes
Only to see his fist effortlessly pounding another compelling me to envision his future in prison or a mortuary
Little brother
Son of a mother who doesn't care
Conceived of a sperm who ain't there
While last night's dinner and body wash was elsewhere
Because he came to school hungry with unclean fingernails
Didn't physically smell
Yet from the look in his eyes I knew his home life was dirty
For change he was thirsty
But the only water I had to offer were the dried up tears I cried last night as
I pondered the fate of his classmates
The one with the fresh Jordan's who could barely read
The one who uses woman and B.I.T.C.H. interchangeably
The one who has the potential to be a genius unable to focus because of his past
The one who hasn't turned in a completed homework assignment since he's stepped foot in the class
Then I think to myself
What percentage of these boys have never used the word DAD
Some days I try not to care so much
Because when I think of him I find myself unable to focus, losing sleep
But like so many others I can't overlook the reality looking back at me
While aspiring bourgeois wannabes are having tea parties and networking socials
I sit here immobile
Emotion filled with tears because I lack solutions
Wishing it was just an illusion
Yet the conclusion to which I have come is that without mental and physical individual and institutionalized change
It'll be a miracle if one of these boys graduates from college
I don't see him in juvenile detention because Jena's America attempts to sentence 28 yrs for fighting
Some look at me like my vision is skewed for not accepting this version of normality
But It'll never be normal to me because its not supposed to be
Each day I drove from work thinking about those boys I cried the entire way home
And I lived 35 minutes away
Apathetic to his pain
Terrorizing my life
When I leave, I still care
Even after I close my eyes in slumber he's still there
Yes
I understand he just may encounter more crack heads than he does college graduates
Still, I'm angry because he can't read and
HELP ME HELP YOU
Directly, indirectly, subconsciously, spiritually pleading
I wonder if King ever got tired of dreaming
Or illiterate slaves hungry for knowledge got tired of reading
I'm tired of writing but my journey and work has just begun
I'm experiencing feelings reflective of needing an emotional gas station
Instead of the violence perpetuating misogynistic videos BET needs to air my 9-5
Monday through Friday intertwined
Harsh realities
Crisis in the community
Yet how many of us are prepared to dedicate our lives to lending Minds...dollars...hearts...hands
Revolutionizing to give a damn
Longer than two-minute tears
Inactive fears
Complacency for future years
Of witnessing historical cycles remain unbroken
Yorri Berry is a Katrina Survivor and a poet who has granted YourBlackWorld.com permission to offer her thought-provoking poems to the masses. Look out for more of her highly enriching poems. Click here to Contact Ms. Berry.
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