It's Not Enough

Two young boys playing cops and robbers in the summer heat
How do you tell them it is more than just a game?
The dichotomy of good and bad, criminal and innocent are alive and real.

Sweat pouring down a young mother's brow in labor
this moment of joy almost overshadowed by the fear in her heart.
Her future filled with conversations prompted by questions of why...
"Why does Billy's mom not let him come over to play at night?"

It's not enough to say things have changed.
To raise a fist, post a comment, write a poem.
It's not enough.

A father fingers a wad of sweaty cash on the corner
waiting for the next round of fiends to pay him for the
single moment of peace he supplies.
All the while his mind ponders the familiar thought
How to teach his son another way of life.

It's not enough to tell young men the way of their fathers
does not have to be their own.
To speak of education, bootstraps, and potential.
It's not enough.

Brothers working two jobs, hustling on the side
providing money for their babies and baby mamas
hoping their babies remember their faces,
sweat dripping, wrinkles deepening
unlike their own dad's unknown, empty silhouette.

It's not enough to simply hope for men to become fathers.
To theorize about responsibility, parenting style, pride.
It's not enough.

The smile of a baby born with the skin of his father.
The skin of his grandfather; like any other infant.
Now unaware that this same skin that carries the pride of generations
marks this child as different, other.

It's not enough to be colorblind.
To claim the skin color of that child does not matter and in the same breath
dismiss the centuries of hurt, pain and journey experienced in that skin.
It's not enough.

Such skin color reckons back to the generations of survivors.
Men and women born in quicksand with the screams of
"pull yourself up... and quickly."
the only sound echoing through their conscience.
But they remain. But they persevere.

And each generation of young men playing a simple game
of cops and robbers faces the reality.
With each game, they are rehearsing life.
BANG!
...but instead they never choose their role.


~Mackensey Carter

Maybe

Teach a man... he'll conquer the world.
What if this man must conquer such world to be taught?
One child in a classroom
one plus one does not equal two
As his stomach grumbles with only remnants
of last night's frozen dinner.
'something ain't' not 'something isn't' right
As his deep muddy eyes strain to see the scrawls etched
on the not too distant chalkboard.
lincoln was martin luther king jr on that morning in gettysburg
As he tries to remember the winter morning when he last saw his daddy
but can only see those flashing lights.
The classroom bleeds onto the streets.
Teachers become brothers.
Grades are issued with the finality of a bullet.
Yet if only this young man could conquer the world.
Then maybe, just maybe it would teach him.

Silence.

I haven't been writing much recently but I'm hoping to start back up again during this season of Lent because I have had so much on my mind with everything that has been happening in Chicago.  This morning I jotted down this poem. 

One day.
One day a child. 
One day a child in Chicago...
One day a child in Chicago will not fear the streets that birthed him.
One day a child in Chicago will not hope for his 18th birthday but will dwell in its certainty.
One day a child in Chicago will no longer orchestrate a war zone with spray cans.
One day a child in Chicago will be taught dignity, pride and honor in the classroom or the living room instead of the backroom of a closed down store front.
One day a child in Chicago will be able to call this city his home and not his prison.
One day a child in Chicago will hope to look into the eyes of his father instead of merely grasping his memory through a ripped photograph.
Today.
Today is not that day.
Today is not that day in Chicago.
Today a child in Chicago will be shot, beat, humiliated.
Today a child in Chicago will wonder what law he broke placing him within the prison of these city limits.
Today a child in Chicago will cry out to a god that he knows simply forgot about this city just to release the anger of generations built up in his heart.
Today a child in Chicago will be suspended for failing to do homework he was never taught to do in the first place.
Today a child in Chicago will become a man: wielding the tool of his father, carrying the burden of his family, risking his life for his brothers.
Today this child in Chicago shot a child in Chicago.
And today the world keeps turning.
And today the world keeps turning with nothing to say except the whispers of: oh, that's just how some children are meant to play.