Monday, October 26, 2009

Lost Count: A Love Story

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-trice-26oct26,0,5353399.column

Today an article was written in the Chicago Tribune about a poem I performed for Brave New Voice Poetry Slam in 2008. The piece is about youth violence in Chicago. Check out the article and poem if you get a chance.

Nate.

2 comments:

Diva Marie Carla said...

This is a comment from my co-worker who is blessed to have a daughter in college.

-----Original Message-----
From: Dee Turner
Sent: Tuesday, October 27, 2009 12:45 PM
To: Carla Harris
Subject: RE: Poets tell story of Chicago school children killed


Awesome. This is what the vast majority of our children should be
doing...something constructive, creative and memorable for all the right
reasons. We are slow becoming "the extinct race". Our children are
literally killing off their own brethren.
Black children stopped being "black children" a long time ago when the
schools stopped prayer, stopped big mama from coming to the school to
whoop some tails, stopped parents from getting in their children's faces
and getting them told in front of the whole class, stopped our children
from taking ownership and responsibility for their actions like you and
I had to

If we created a situation we had to figure it out for ourselves because
our parents had already warned us against whatever it was. We've fooled
ourselves into believing that we will always be here because we have
mixed our blood with the races of so many others. Unbeknownst to us that
is how the race becomes so thinned out that the race its culture,
values, scruples, morals and traditions evaporate.
What our children don't realize is that they will never ever have to
worry about the "White Man" killing us off because they've got us fooled
real good into thinking that children don't need traditional discipline
like butt whoopings, community work (raking your neighbors leaves) and
being put on punishment...no instead we "leave them alone" to work out
their differences and concerns and we sprinkle a little therapy on top
of the trash that we and our kids have fed into since the first slave
said "give us our free".
I am in mourning not for the children we have lost to senseless violence
but for the children left back to try and survive to reach adulthood
which is legally age eighteen. We have finally reached full circle and
regressed to the old west days when men rarely reached the age of twenty
because by age ten they'd already done their first kill.
The humanity problem exist on a much greater scale but the problem of
our children's lack of fear of parents, schools, other authority
figures, church and God that we share as a community of black people has
got to be addressed, assessed, discussed and at last slammed right out
of the universe. Our children's idea of love is distorted. They lust for
the flesh and long for the rest. The adults in the picture are either
strung out or out working, working, and working. If only we could be
respectful enough of each other to do things the old fashioned way when
it took a "village" to raise a child. Amen for your baby's poetic
justice. Awesome.

Dee

-----Original Message-----
From: Carla Harris
Sent: Tuesday, October 27, 2009 9:30 AM
Subject: FW: Poets tell story of Chicago school children killed

Unknown said...

So moving.