Poetry, Center Stage

Last Friday, January 30, I participated in a Poetry Reading Event at a church in Port Huron. A friend of mine, Richard Murphy, asked me to be one of the headlining readers on the schedule and I heartily agreed. The name of the event was what sold me.

My friend is a relatively well-known Christian HipHop artist around our parts and he wanted to do a Poetry event at his church. He titled it: "Testimony of a Ghetto Child." I liked the theme behind the reading - the desire to intertwine our faith in God with the awareness of the social ills in our society.

I wrote and read the following poem for my spot in the evening's line-up:


GRAND RAPIDS, HOOD LIFE, OVERCOME
(Dedicated to the ‘hood I grew up in)
By Myama Myowne Boone

Where I come from, the place of origination
Can only be truly…understood
If you grew up with more bars and liquor stores
Than churches in your ‘hood…

You can only translate my language,
The words that I write and speak
If you are well-acquainted with
Never ever seeing the change that you seek…

Streets named Wealthy, Lake Drive, and Thomas
Held poverty, thirst, and doubts…
Neighborhoods with more children than fathers
Perpetuated beliefs that the ghetto could spit you out…

There has always been music, sounds, energy
Reverberating from the baseline of life’s soundtrack;
There has always been the struggle for escape
From the ghetto’s pressures, persuasions, and personal attacks…

But in the middle of the raucous rush,
Between the lines at the welfare office on Franklin Street,
Somewhere beyond the gentrified canvases
Of rebuilt mansions in Heritage Hill’s buppie beat…

A little girl, like I was, is beckoned by God now -
Out of the shadows of a city that swallows lives whole,
Out of the cold racial divide, out of the mentality –
Becoming separate from those satisfied with playing a role…

Hip-Hop, Double-Dutch, Food Stamps, Domestic Violence:
Words and names so customarily a part of life –
What she hears and plays and needs and hates
Become words of dual force that can cut like a knife…

For each reminds her that she is ever a product
Of a generation that can hide within itself,
Of a nation that can cover self-inflicted abuses,
As people, like crabs in a barrel, war for wealth…

But she is called to be different, a rare grace,
And the voice of God urges her to live beyond the institution –
Because no matter where she was born or brought up,
Satan and his ghetto enslavement owes her restitution…

The clarion call God has on her life is absolute
For the city in which her foundation is laid;
The brick and mortar of the same ‘hood I lived in is
Where every generation deals with mistakes made…

Madison and Union, Bates and Dunham Streets –
The pavement weary feet have trod down;
The skyline of an untouchable commerce seen from dirty windows
Separating the haves and the have-nots in this town…

She will overcome – run through troops and leap over walls –
Her faith in the God of her grandparents established in truth…
For she knows that there is more to her future
Than what was denied and refused by her parents in their youth…

Little girls with visions grow into dynamic women;
Little boys with dreams become world-changing men…
The circle of life in the ‘hood has the unseen power
To either draw them into success or into sin…

Little girls in the ‘hood can walk righteous;
Little boys in the ‘hood can reject any generational curse…
The story of God’s grace can change lives
Once predestined for a trip in back of a police car or a hearse…

For that little girl so like the girl I used to be
Is one among many today that will transform the ghetto…
God will use her, use them all as torches in the dark,
Declaring that the enemy of their souls has to let go –

He has to let go of the lives crushed by addiction;
He has to let go of the neighborhoods reduced by crime…
He has to release the grip of poverty chaining generations
Because freedom is past due; it has long been time…

For the place where I became the woman I am,
The city that could have devoured my dreams
Is destined to grandly and rapidly
Be touched and transformed by a God Who redeems…