A.L.M

How youthfulness suffers,
In the life of he who’s poor.
Naiveté and innocence…lost!
And will be forevermore.
Replaced by poverty’s torment.
Depression knocks perpetually at his door!

How would you explain?
To a child who is hungry.
That he shall go without,
While his neighbor’s kids…sundry!
Why his feet are bare?
His back unfurnished with laundry?

How he is just as capable,
If only on his lessons he’d focus.
When at school he is famished.
As classmates gorge, like locusts!
I’m better off dead!
His thoughts sometimes implore thus.

For he is a statistic.
Bound to be ‘no human involved’!
A classification unrealistic!
To which a black man’s murder has evolved
As black victims of homicide,
Become cold cases! Forever unresolved!

Considered to be savages.
Simply part of flora and fauna.
While their Caucasian counterparts.
To the country clubs.
Wives to the sauna!
A scripted wealth divide.
The creator of such melodrama!

This economical lynching!
Exceeds a public death!
For a ghost amongst the living
Is he who has no fortune!

Did Nicola tesla not posses
More genius than ‘the best’
Mastered electrical energy!
Yet poverty laid him to rest!

So why should I aspire,
Or dream to acquire greatness?
When money is all that counts!
The lack of which is my great weakness!

Am I not an Einstein?
A genius undisclosed?
Who could say I am not?
When to opportunity, I was never exposed.
Where is my people’s, 5 acres and a mule?
To us credit is never disposed!
Denied access to rule!

Why do we get nothing?
After giving our everything?
Lazy good for nothings!
That’s what we are.
To those who’s inherited from,
Our blood, our sweat and our scars!

They say we should forget
The torture, murder rape.
When the children of the ghetto
From poverty shan’t ever escape!