The Urban Time Bomb

By D'Persona

The UK is witnessing a significant rise in gang culture and the urban violence is spreading through our inner city streets at alarming rates. Post codes have become ‘red flags’ and our youth are becoming increasingly synonymous with bulls raging in a bid to defend their own territory. Our children, our teenagers (and oftentimes even younger kids) are caught up in an environment that remorselessly breeds societal depravity and decay. Our babies are having babies, drugs are readily available, promiscuity is commonplace, racial prejudice is still a part and parcel of today’s society and peer pressure is running amok in high schools all across the UK. Nothing shocks our children anymore and its getting worse by the day. Smouldering just under the surface of almost every inner city pavement in the UK is an urban time bomb just waiting to explode in our faces.

• Language: English
• Publisher: D'Persona
• Release date: Sep 13, 2011
• ISBN: 9781906439453

D'Persona

Hi, I am Donna Parkinson AKA D'Persona...a 43 year old self confessed accidental poet and the owner of Mad Jock Publishers. A family run self publishing business. I am here to share some of the poetry that I originally took up when my best friend Angela Edgar "inspired" me to write after her 1st book launch. Since taking up this writing lark in February 2008 I have written in excess of 1000 poems and have self published 4 books of my own... I write mainly about gun and knife crime,peer pressure,social responsibility and gang affiliation in a style that todays youth can clearly understand and hopefully relate to. I write to make a difference to our streets and to effect change in our communities. I believe we need to re-educate this generation and save then from themselves as the social realities envolved in our collective failure to do so is way to ugly to comprehend for our childrens children. Eventually I want to set up some Poetry/Music workshops with disadvantaged children in my local area. Its been a mad 2 and a half years for me as I just kind of fell into poetry... in fact my friends call me the accidental poet!!! I never knew that I had the ability to write until Angee was interviewed at her book launch and asked what would make all the hard work she had put into her book worthwhile... and she said that if she inspired just one person to start writing as a result of reading her book it would have all been worth it.... I looked around the room and remember thinking.... "bloody hell I better write something cos I don't think any of this lot are gonna do it"...so I went home and wrote her a poem and sent ot to her the next day telling her that she had inspired me to write... She said that it was actually really good and asked me to do another... and then another and before I knew it I was 'writing to order. Colleagues were giving me titles at lunchtime and I was knocking them out pieces and before I knew it I had written loads of stuff and was actually enjoying it..... WHO'D HAVE THOUGHT EH? 6 months down the line I had enough material to self publish my first book..... and the rest as they say is history!! By day I work as a Field Services Director in a London based Market Research agency but as I said above I also own a small self publishing company called Mad Jock Publishers. They published my first 2 books and then the originator k, Rols Sperling found it increasingly difficult to secure the time needed to dedicate to the project along with juggling his fulltime work and family commitments. Mad Jock had historically helped budding authors ( like myself) by making it possible for them to have their works published in a book that they and their family could treasure for generations at a very affordable price, so when I heard the company would probably close I decided to buy it myself and try to keep the sentiment going.... For the very ambitious writer, getting a first foot on the ladder and being able to send an already published work to major publishers and or media wheeler dealers, is no different than an actor turning up to an audition or a model attending a professional photo shoot or an artist sending copies of their portfolio to a prospective employer, So Mad Jock Publishers is there to serve the authors of this world... So thats me... if you want to know anything else just ask xxx

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Introduction

The UK is witnessing a significant rise in gang culture and the urban violence is spreading through our inner city streets at alarming rates. Post codes have become ‘red flags’ and our youth are becoming increasingly synonymous with bulls raging in a bid to defend their own territory. Our children, our teenagers (and oftentimes even younger kids) are caught up in an environment that remorselessly breeds societal depravity and decay. Our babies are having babies, drugs are readily available, promiscuity is commonplace, racial prejudice is still a part and parcel of today’s society and peer pressure is running amok in high schools all across the UK. Nothing shocks our children anymore and its getting worse by the day. Smouldering just under the surface of almost every inner city pavement in the UK is an urban time bomb just waiting to explode in our faces.

There is no denying the fact that rising unemployment levels, the lack of positive role models (particularly male role models), limited recreational resources, peer pressure, diminishing family values and the sheer fear of the ‘unknown’ can cause alienation from what we have come to know as mainstream society. And this in turn contributes to today’s youth seeking to find a ‘sympathetic ear’ on the street as some sort of a survival mechanism. Many of our children are turning to the concrete for guidance. The urban time bomb was penned with parents and teenagers in mind with a view to addressing the problem two fold. As parents we need to take responsibility for the social development skills of our offspring, encouraging, educating and cultivating their minds from a young age. This book is a critical and poetic look into today’s youth and as a matter of moral decision it, in places, contains strong language and somewhat graphic descriptions.

I understand that as a parent you may say I don’t want my kids subjected to bad language, sexual metaphors or explicit imagery, but lets for a second just face the facts here; today’s kids speak today’s language and live today’s life. They are consumed by the Medias usage of such idiom; contemporary films, modern music and video games often assume the moral low ground so our kids are already surrounded by such things in their day to day routines. Some of our kids don’t even bother to read books anymore as they are not written in ‘turns of phrase’ that they can relate to.

The words ‘Fuck’, ‘shit’, ‘bitches’, ‘ho’s and the likes are regularly used as tools of expression by our children whether we like it or not. Alarmingly enough, In their circles the use of this verbal communication is deemed as socially acceptable as carrying knives, stealing phones and ‘rushing’ kids from other areas. So the seemingly obscene words that you will see scattered across these pages are nothing more than common phraseology and the collective norm that I have used in some cases as a means to contextualise and familiarise the circumstances or events that form the atmosphere within that particular piece of poetry.

Our children don’t believe that as adults we are ‘on a level’ or that we are able to understand their day to day struggle and therefore shy away from ‘opening up’ to us. I have found that if you adopt the kind of dialogue that they can relate to, you will reach a wider audience. I don’t apologise for my using this type of language in this instance if it instigates the child’s imagination, or gives them an affiliation with the text they are reading.

This book is about ‘urban behaviour’, ‘peer pressure’ ‘gang culture’ and the kinds of societal temptations that our youth face everyday and if my choice of words gives our children a real ‘connection’ to the piece it is more likely to persuade him or her to take a deeper look into the types of things that we are trying to tackle. My aim is to encourage our youth to take a more candid look at the urban lifestyle that they may have already adopted or be on the periphery of and to try to deter those children lucky enough to have not yet been touched by the long arm of the street.

Economic downturns, social acceptance, Gang culture, restrictive government policy and sheer ignorance have created and fostered conditions that strangle and suffocate their generation. Clearly change is in the air, is this not the right time to take up arms against this downward spiral? I personally feel that it is overdue and time to realise that violence is not ordinarily rooted in the human mind but more so firmly planted there by the structure of our society. I believe that it’s high