8MILE & CALDWELL

Crackheads in yellow stained t-shirts,
ride their bicycles in and out.
Trading the last of their dollars,
for a high they'll never reach.
The dealers lean against stolen
cars on cinder blocks.
Their expensive,bright colored outfits,
remind me of clowns,against such
a depressing backdrop.
"Ghetto clowns"...
Only nobody is laughing.
Every other house is boarded up.
Once a childhood home for someone,
maybe many,is now a kennel for
illegally raised fighting dogs.
They never get tired of barking
out of the plywood cracks.
My windshield was a T.V screen,
where I watched a world I
wasn't used to.
They oddly,didn't seem to mind
I was there.
An interracial couple argued on a porch.
A toddler strapped in a stroller
between them.
I wish I could have changed the channel,
when the man got up,and flipped
the stroller...Baby boy and all.
The child,
helpless,
squirmed about,
face down.
The woman took her time.
Fixed her weave,
before picking it up.
Two other men on the porch
looked on in silence.
Marinating in their rancid indifference.
The angry man stormed off.
I think about that child still.
That innocent pawn,in a petty rival.
That child would be a teenager now...
If he made it.
He's probably sitting on a porch,
arguing with a woman...
With a kid in the middle.