Recently I have been embroiled in an issue that pertains to a poem I wrote about a childhood friend named Robert James. He was killed when we were 14, like so many other black boys succumb to the mystery of urban amorality and find their fangs at that age, making the conscious choice to do more than survive, but to live aggressively, to predate. I penned a narrative poem about his death that said, in some detail, how he was killed and the madness that he came from, that all those tragic young boys come from when they find that killing is for the killers. I posted myself reading the poem on Youtube about 2 and a half months ago. Sometime this week Robert James’ niece, who is twice as old as he was when he was killed, was told that the posting existed. She contacted me. I learned through our conversation that other people from my neighborhood had become aware of the piece and were upset. I can see them being upset for Robert’s death was such a tragic event in our lives. Robert’s murder, only a year or so after the murder of another childhood friend, Tyson Kuumba, was the one of the profound happenings that introduced us to our mortality, introduced us to the deadly randomness, and stole our innocence.
In the fire of the throes of the give, and mostly take, that has taken place over the last day or so with cats from my old hood, suffering their vitriol, the battle has been clearly defined in an odd way. I have come to understand that the true import of this mess is how we are going to speak fondly of our hood; will we laud the good times and people and live in that beautiful regret and loss, or will we do as many black communities do, colloquialize the bullshit trouble we had to suffer growing up urban, make it a cute series of adventures that somehow define us racially and regionally, and mute down crips and bloods to being lovable outlaws who laced our existences with excitement? What tale shall we tell, one that charts the herculean efforts of working class Black people in underserviced areas who fought the encroaching darkness daily and let us know that the world existed and needed us and our best effort, or do we lay in the decorative damage and blissfully spin the more convenient yarns of the very rats and roaches who cannot allow our reflections on our childhoods, for fear of indictment, to be a real mirror of the times and people? Gangster life has usurped the Black experience and come to color our memories. They now revolve around the infamous gang members who lived in our communities. We have, through the lens of an outlaw’s selfishness and lack of sensibility and our own ritualized fear, criminalized our past.
So I stand here today saying fuck them! You should join me. Put up the proverbial middle finger to all the people who sold crack and aspired to be pimps and thugs and the rancid madness, woeful ignorance, and generational illiteracy they grow like cancer from. I have vowed to never tell another story about Sintown, where I grew up, and speak of hoodlums in ways that, by default, mitigate the evil they did in our communities. And this isn’t being judgemental. This is about standing with the victims of gangs and celebrating our survival. This is simply choosing to be honest about people who, in their strength, were licentious predators, yet now, as we are grown, eat at the legacy of my Pomona by living in the shadows and lies of our cultural conceit.
This entry also pertains to South Central LA, Compton, Lynwood, Inglewood, Gardena, Wilmington, Carson, Long Beach, Ect ect ect. Take back your streets! But also take back your histories!
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