Through Gritted Teeth

© 12 January 2007, The Griot Poet

I stole a photo cutout of her in nurse’s white: her graduation as an LVN.

She was so beautiful then, but the most beautiful I’ve ever seen her is in a nursing home bed smiling at me in her right mind recognizing that I am her son…

So, imagine my rage when the report comes that someone at 5 AM on 5 January of this New Year… some young PUNK tried to break in to my childhood home…

Leaning on the back window from the oil tank, he was outflanked by the ADT alarm.

Though my mother wasn’t there to be harmed… thank God! What if she’d been?

I felt like catching a red-eye special, steeling my warrior vessel supplying myself with one hundred and twenty five of Ninjitsu’s deadliest weapons.

Dressed in black I’d bivouac beside that same window hidden in the shadows… and wait! Kill or be killed, mate!

Though I cannot relate to the demons that cast sorcerers’ spells in crack pipe smells over his very soul…

Like him,
I’m from “the ‘hood.”
If you’ve seen “The Wire,” that’s outside my living room.

“BOYZ ‘n the ‘Hood”: my life’s story. Though I’m sorry the brother’s fallen on bad times… this is MY mother!

Though for my father I had reverent fear: a promised 38 to my forehead stating no drugs will be done here, it was the love of my mother that steered me clear of things that led him to… this.

Though I cannot in my wildest dreams relate to the doublethink demons casting sorcerers' spells in crack pipe smells over the life of this young bro’…

Through gritted teeth I reach within for spiritual strength I’ve only believed to be from Job…

And I pray for this young addict’s soul!