-Poetry
It is a courageous battle we fight
To bear utter darkness and hunger for light
To look beyond this cage into the stars
We dare to dream behind prison bars
To embrace the beauty beneath our scars
The audacity to hope within lock and key
To create harmony in this turbulent sea
To understand who we are
Value who we could be
Though physically confined, we are spiritually free
I once was blind, but now I see
The tiniest seed becomes a tree
We learned a truth, do no harm by touch
Do not judge anyone but lift everyone up
To not be a hurdle, strive to be a bridge, in the least a crutch
To reach out, make amends to person we caused grief
Through humility, patience and forgiveness, we turn over a new leaf
To bring healing where we caused hurt
To own it when we were unloving, abusive, and or a jerk
To revisit the places and spaces where we did the most dirt
Remorse takes, often, brutal honesty
But we are committed to the work
To accept our role in glamorizing violence, and crime
Help restore the community we destroyed time after time
We were self-destructive infecting our neighborhoods with drugs
Infested our community schools with thugs
Desensitized to death, indifferent
To loving hugs
From Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde, in the blink of an eye
The Frankenstein alter ego we used to deny
We would reject the truth to live a lie
Create subcultural rituals when the “homie” die
Forgot how to laugh, toxic macho-isms wouldn’t let us cry
We never gave up in the past we intentionally failed to try
From positive role model to acting strange
Walking by churches, but running to gangs
And now we boldly fellowship, courageously devoted to change
Working toward long range goals, achieving short range
We examine the abstract within the soul to make sense
Creating Picassos out of consequence
As we water the grass on this side of the fence