Slum streets, cracks in the concrete to break
your mother’s back if you don’t watch your
step.
But you do watch your step. The slum taught
you early on how to live in a war zone.
Your mother’s back will break anyway, as well
as your father’s heart, and your siblings’ spirits
and any dreams you may have had about living
a better life.
Slum days – tumble down tenements, rubble and
weeds, hunger, danger, misery, poverty.
Slum nights – gang bangs and drive bys,
loneliness, helplessness, hopelessness.
Slum delights – not very many, in fact hardly
any. Not until I got into a television contest
and answered a number of extremely simple
and useless questions which any moron could
have answered and won millions of dollars –
plus saved my true love from the neighborhood
gangster/drug lord/pimp master, just like in
the acclaimed novel (Q&A) and the blockbuster
movie made from it which was a big crowd
pleaser and sold lots of popcorn and won
many Academy Awards and made everyone feel
better about poverty except the poor.
Well OK, that story is impossible. I got out
of the slums and made my billions because I
eventually discovered, when I was fifteen,
that I was born with a brain that rivaled the
greatest living scientists and mathematicians,
and Harvard and Yale and Princeton and Brown
and all the ivy league schools offered me
scholarships to study with them. The rest being
history of course with the money I made from
technology and engineering.
I’m kidding. I made my billions through my
athletic talents – boxing champion (like Rocky)
basketball superstar, football hero, baseball’s
“best player.”
Yeah right.
Just like that movie I’m pulling your leg.
What would help me and my friends get out of
this ghetto is a raise in the minimum wage.
That would be a miracle.