You lay with him willingly, his seed growing inside you, running around you, the pitter-patter of their little feet trampling an almost sure path to the same place that the man they call father took. He’s a known gun “tooter” but you wash the blood out of his clothes, you spend his “blood money” and you cry “we want justice”, and “him innocent” when fi him time come, fi get “done”, when you KNOW he was the one who held up and killed the hard-working, upstanding citizen; not leaving him to work another day, to feed his grieving family.
Your son creates havoc and leaves dead bodies all over the place, “mekking duppies” yet, you turn a blind eye, until someone else “done him” and THEN we see you on the news bawling fi murder. The livity in the inna city nuh nawmal; man and man get caught up; sometimes by the head shotta dem weh demand dem fi guh “crush some ends”. Sometimes the choice is to legguh bout deh, rather than to join the sleep-a-day-watch-the-cornas-a-night-possie.
But truth be told, there IS a way out; other than via the prison system or six feet under. Baby mamas; stop washing out the blood from his clothes and spending money made off other people’s grief. Break the chain, demolish the cycle, and give your sons and daughters a fighting chance by changing the trajectory of their lives.
Mothers, stop shielding your sons, while they tote the guns; carrying them around as if it’s their lifeline, as all it does is ensure that they, too, will be one of the “duppies” someone else will eventually and inevitably make.
Young men, mi heart bun mi, as I see your trod into criminality begin earlier and earlier, and not even the early demise of those who were “foot soldiers” before you, give you NO pause or thought for living your life differently. I tire of walking into lock ups and prisons, and seeing the “endangered species” staring back at me from inside cells; the lines of time not evident on their faces; instead you can almost see their mama’s breast milk spilling over from the sides of their mouths; signalling that the presence of youth, barely moved from the infancy stage, and yet, there they are; age ranged between 18 and 25 crammed into spaces that make claustrophobia claustrophobic and where so many return over and over, becoming repeat offenders, as rehabilitation is seemingly nowhere in sight. .
Bredda-bredda, when the big man step off after stepping tuh yuh, you are NOTHING but a statistic, another meal ticket; someone he made a buck off to make a duppy of another brother, and then shortly after, to become a duppy yuhself.
WISE UP, YOW; baby madda. madda, bredda-bredda; cause the system DREAD nuh blurt neet, is SOSO blood a REDDEN the streets, and to WHAT end iyah???? My heart BLEEDS. SELAH!!!!
