Struggle

STRUGGLE

Erykah Badu said

“Every day is a struggle, is a struggle how to hustle some dough

If you was raised inna hood well then you already know.

It be days when it’s good, but mostly money be low.

Have you ever been hungry before?”

This is not a fairytale.

More like an eviction-notice-on-the-door, back-problem, sanity-snatching, way of living struggle.

Makes you appreciate life, though struggle don’t know.

Like sleeping on a twin air mattress with a 40 year old woman and moving four times in six month.

See struggle’s familiar with movements not upward, only downward, 

and disappoint recognizes bowed heads and lowered knees.

See, I don’t know disappointment only.

Struggle taught me to never cry in front of your mother

or she’ll feel like she’s failed you.

When unemployment neglects to pay her check in its entirety,

make sure you eat before you leave out,

‘cause struggle never goes unfed.

However, food stamps don’t pay rent, and single mothers don’t warm the hearts of slumlords.

They only make statistics.

Struggle only knows how to warm sidewalks with your winter coats,

make homes for sidewalk mice out of your dressers.

Lessons learned tend to question life’s existence and the power of the Holy Father,

because God see’s everything right?

Doesn’t take long ‘til shoulders broad enough to carry the world become weighed down

Takes even less time to realize even those things that shouldn’t be accepted become tolerated.

Children in the struggle understand that they’re not privileged, but blessed.

Cause when gunshots act as lullabies 

and your mothers tears are chopped and screwed beats for your eardrums to thump too, 

you learn to walk a little lighter, 

for paranoia needs space to grow like a bad fungi.

Corner boys tuned kingpins only destroy us because we support them balancing lows by getting high.

The next best place to a casket is jail.

At least there you’re guaranteed shelter.

And

Your heart never experienced struggle  until paranoia and your feet step beat in sync with your heart.

Struggle don’t know nothin’ though,

especially not about breaking homes,

 impregnating young girls who fill their confidence with pipe dreams and urban fiction.

Have you ever looked into the eyes of a single mother?

Black holes filled with hoop dreams and hopes of making it.

Struggle only knows about making warriors and survivors, brick by brick wall by wall,

breaking us down to build us up.

It ain’t too much you can find in failure, when your dreams can’t provide you question your purpose.

When you’re 17, pulling dead weight, you recognize your strength,

and when you got an addict as a mother, you blame yourself.

Know that the only place to get butt naked is on a page, not in liquid containers.

Yet poems don’t save lives, only generate strength.

Microphones are only bullhorns for those who have remained silent in more altercations then just with the feds.

‘Cause genocide is in the hood.

The act of killing our own is far too accepted, 

but struggle don’t know nothin’ but making and killing.

Survivors with plastered lips,

‘Cause if the color of your skin is too dark for the eyes,

they figure, 

ain’t no need for you to speak no way,

but they dont nothin’ like struggle