Beware There's Danger-Borderline

By Solo

Th e poetry in this book was written at diff erent times in my life, through the
good and bad times, some I lost in my years of moving around. Some of my
earlier writings, I have just asked to be returned to me from my cousin, who
eventually lived at my grandmothers apartment but has moved forward. But
my earlier stuff never returned. Interject here, she texted and said she doesnt
know where they are at. My soul is well with that, and I know God will allow
me to write some new stuff to be encouraging for that is my main intention.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 10, 2018
• ISBN: 9781465387004

Book preview

Beware There’s a Danger: Unconditional Love

Come go with me through forty years of trying to make a point and finalizing after the death of my only child. It is a process to healing, and I believe it will be a lifetime for me and that I accept one day at a time, knowing that is the easiest, and sometimes I have to break it down to one minute, second at a time. Take your pick, but choose wisely. It could be different daily, whether to take it a day, a minute, or a second at a time. Depending on your own personal circumstances and your dreams and aspirations, keep hope alive!

Lost and Found

Lost but found—speech to be made at sister’s graduation ceremony could not find, so I did not speak; and happy to add here, as a beginning that’s inspiring and hopefully shows you do have a choice. Choose wisely!

The road you trudge was all uphill. Today we celebrate and commemorate mountains climbed, hills behind, and new discoveries you will find. Tomorrow promises the attention you will give because of who you are. Babies’ laughter returned, and in ages they will learn—beginnings are so special. I’m proud to have seen a vision, a dream, the dedication it took, and the discipline you stepped up to with open arms and a little armor but with the sure will and grace of a scholar. Sometimes I watched you, and it made me wanna holler, sister, but I refrain and stood back instead and prayed. When you were young, I knew this day would come—from gifted student to a fantastic scholar and etched in our family’s book, the first greatest of all, and education is what it took. God be with you! This was written a month before graduation dinner but added on date below to book, upon finding it.

August 22, 2011

October 3, 1999 4:45 a.m.

All thanks goes to my mother for the help she was to me in raising my son, echoes through my mind as I think back to the graduation dinner my mother gave my sister. When in all actually the day at hand, was my sister saying, thanks to my mother for all the help she was in her acquiring her medical degree;. I felt like shouting from the back row where I had decided to sit after realizing I wasn’t seated at the table with my mother but instead her sister and brothers and family friends sat all together looking like the picture of well-wishers, who could have wished my sister more than I. Wasn’t I the one brought her first baby shoes, now cast in bronze, my mother so lovingly did for her as a baby; I wanted to shout over to my mother as she sat there with a smug smile of happiness for her youngest daughter, my sister. Yeah Ma, On the other hand, thanks for the abandonment, neglect, and abuse I received. I felt like shouting across the room full of well-wishers. My mother gave me one invitation and I did not have one to bring a guess, after I had offered to share the expense for the dinner, She was like no I got this and politely gave me one invite."

Before you draw any conclusion, I must admit, my mother conceived me during her adolescent years at a tender age of seventeen. Teenage pregnancy—I know now they are the worst because I would inevitably follow her footsteps, becoming a teenage mom. Trying to raise a child while coming into adulthood myself without guidance or should I say proper preparation.

Must I be kind so this book can be one of enlightenment, inspiration, and encouragement? Nonetheless, I will be honest to myself and whole no grudges. As for my father’s abandonment, neglect came easier and earlier for him. When my mother told him she was pregnant, he ran home and had his father, who was a preacher, marry him to another woman whom they had no children and would not for at least ten years later. But during my early twenties, my father and I would start developing a relationship; and I would respect dearly his words of wisdom given over the telephone through the years, which I followed, and I called them my dark age—1955 to twenty-first century. Angry with the man who impregnated and dumped her, my mother gave birth to me and left Alabama, her place of birth and mine, heading for Georgia and then Florida with a bundle of joy—God’s gift to her. I imagine a young lady, with tears in her eyes and shame in her heart, forging ahead to mold a new life. Unprepared, this would end in the Big Apple, of all places.

Oh my, I was destined for a life of resentment and challenges that would scar me from infancy to midlife. Teenagers, think twice or more before bringing life into this world, unprepared and mentally not ready for God’s gift to you. A baby is a bundle of joy to be cared for and nourished to maturity with love and understanding. And on the other hand, my mother had a life with a daughter whom she would never understand and a daughter who would be angry with her even after her death and unable to break the mold. Who would try to raise a son who felt the same about her as she had felt about her mother? You can’t give what you have not received unless a whole lot of cultivation from the family or the village is given.

In New York City, there was no family. They were all dysfunctional and had no village. There were mostly addicts in the streets of New York City during the coming of age for me. It was the sixties through the seventies where liberals ran free expression, free love, free to get high, and free to live. After the death of Dr. Martin L. King Jr., the village was without a leader and the message was a silent whisper and the calling was a loud shouts to be liberal minded and the hippies ran around preaching free love and the freaks came out at night streaking. Mimicking liberators of their time, blacks in the village on the blocks begin to send mix messages to young minds as quickly as they mislead them and abandoned them toward paths of self-destructive behaviorism through drug use and perverted idealism and there begins the deterioration of gifted but deviant behavior of young minds.

All would not be lost, but many would take a long time to go back to our forefather’s way of the good ole Christian ways. The impressions that looked up to gangsters, driving Cadillac’s and other well-known fabulous cars, and other older fabulous hood pimps, wearing big hats and gold chains as exemplified on big movie screens, and prostitutes with skimpy clothes and naive peers went astray. Thank God my mother was slow to allow me and my brother to have freedom to the outside on the block streets. But she would lose the battle with me and my brother because we fantasized this outside view through the windows of our apartment and begged daily to go out there, and with persistence and age, we would be captivated and granted permission to roam and be misled. My mother would win the war with my baby sister, coming of age in the eighties simply because she would not be granted that permission to roam the streets of Brooklyn, New York, and never appeared to want to anyhow. My mother’s blessing came true. She’s still the shining light that even her time would not be ready for because her brilliance outshined so many. I pray she learns to understand her coming of age and what it means to be from that age. Men, or even less now than they were back then, as the bible says, They will get wiser but weaker (meaning men, and women, children are not left out); so with more flesh being revealed daily, the mind became willing, but the flesh weak. Not all, but many men, and many became professionals, but still a minority in the hood, but now educated or blessed to become professional athletes or rappers, seek the glamorous or light-skinned black, Puerto Rican, or Caucasian—what the media displayed—but on a pedestal the men hungered for. At least back in the days drafted into war, many had the excuse to either be combat-wounded from Vietnam War and addicted once back home and shell-shocked, and more prisons were built and jailed many men of my era. Let’s not forget the confused same-gender roughneck brothers. What a waste. But now many are disillusioned and not looking for the finer and intelligent women, but for streetwalkers and women of leisure—to be more kinder, women who are easier to manipulate and accept behaviors, which consist of doing whatever the men liked, mostly to be in non-committed relationships (meaning the men these days) majorly because the women outnumber the men with high ratios. My, how the times has changed, but still many things have not changed. My era girls ruled, and they still do, with more intelligence. But rumor has it that they are missing the better part of finding mates that seek the intellectual, but the Dumb blonde rule still applies drastically. It’s just that the teenagers now don’t have to be tricked into deviant behaviorism. MTV teaches them very early how to strut their stuff and they are well prepared by adolescence. Be careful of what you allow your children to watch on TV/DVD/SAT, Wii, Xbox and such.

Four years after my birth, my mother would have another child. My Brother was born in Florida, where my mother took me as a baby to escape the shame of my dad’s betrayal in Alabama during the fifties—my first place of abuse. He would be killed in New York City in 1988 during the war on crack, shot in the head because men robbing the drug spot said, give us your money or we shoot the lookout guy, they said, shot him and they did, one bullet to