my heart cries tears of black

Deathrow

My life began as a panorama of possibilities. I doubt there was any more or less pain involved in birthing me, certainly less than I have caused throughout my days of living. I was nurtured, loved, cared for, educated, and groomed to become a man.

Choices and decisions soon became mine and only mine to make. Advice from old people was unacceptable. I knew everything and couldn’t be told shit. I often found myself pursued by the avalanche of mistakes behind me. Tripping...and, hell, falling-over trivial things that I often denied as reality. I was haunted by the horrors of my own life, from which there was no escape. Eventually I had to run, run faster than all of them...the rules, the curfews, the truancy officers, and before I realized it the police, detectives, the DEA, other drug dealers...all in a circle, around and around, until the dizziness mirrored in the scenes before me became a blur. Soon it was over. All over. For this, the misfortunes that I and only I created, lived, breathed, loved, and had become completely swept away with, I blamed you. Yes Mama, I blamed you. I was, and have always been, a fool.

I could have blamed the white man. I could have blamed the schools. I could have blamed the church. I could have blamed the neighbors. I could have blamed the life I had in the projects. I could have easily blamed my trifling, no-count disappearing dog of a daddy, but I blamed you simply because you were there.

All this, I said repeatedly, is on your head. It was a result of poverty, improper upbringing, never enough of what I wanted to have. I felt that you could have done better, that you should have done more. I cast blame in your face as if you enjoyed being poor...all the blame that I now willingly accept...blame that is rightfully placed at my feet.

For all these years it was my own doing, my contempt for you, my disrespectful attitude towards you, my eagerness, my hunger, my impatience to have it all now! All that has me here, on death row, waiting, patiently for once, to be executed at midnight.

I blamed you because you did not see the way out of the projects. Yes, you worked three jobs, but you worked for the white man. I, however, had visions of becoming an entrepreneur, dreams of a life in another place that did not resemble a concrete jungle enclosed with iron bars. A place absent of the stench of urine, crying babies, heroine addicts and crack-heads nodding on corners and in the middle of streets, children with no daddies, welfare lines swarming the check cashing place like annoying flies around garbage, somebody’s Mama in the alley selling her food stamps to buy a rock, helicopters with blinding lights pissing off the dealers all night long; police breaking in your door at 3 a.m. searching for drugs and guns, scaring the hell out of little kids, wrecking the place, then failing to apologize when they discover they had the wrong address. All this drama in a place called public housing.

Over and over, time and time again, you said to me, “The way out is education. It’s too late for me, but with these jobs I have, and a good school for you, I can watch my little boy grow into a man, get his degree, and buy himself a house in a better neighborhood!”

You said it each time with great pride. I listened with enormous disregard.

I had my own way, and what whitey was forcing me to learn in his classroom was not the ticket. I took to the streets every day after school as if I owned them. By thirteen years old, education had become pointless. Life became the streets, and me. That’s when the chase began. The chase that consumed...swallowed...my entire life. I felt that I needed to control everything and everyone. Nothing could escape my watchful eye, nothing except my own life.