The Ghetto IS a Gated Community

I reside in the ghetto. I simply reside there because it is impossible to live. There is no real life in my "hood". There is the lifeless look in the eyes of prostitutes. In this ghetto lies the dead and broken streets filled with the pot holes the capture aborted dreams. These streets display damaged homes that house broken families, this place is dead. It is impossible to live. Living is thriving, and in this place there is only survival. 

This dead and cold place is a gated community. This community is marked by gates that have strict entrance and exit policies. These are not the gates of suburbia that are strong and beautiful, rather these gate are wide and rusty. These gates keep us locked in the ghetto and barred from the outside world. These gates are hopeless, dangerous, and impassable. They let you in but they won’t let you out. 

This gated community has special features; it is the only place where playgrounds can be morphed into battlefields. This is the only place where children have 10th grade bodies but read on 1st grade levels. This is the only place where drugs are more mainstream than dreams. This has to be the only place where abandoned homes have more appeal than shelters. This ghetto is the only place where liquor stores outnumber grocery stores. This is the place where your backseat can become someone's bed. This is, no doubt the only place where poverty is the way of life. 

This is the real "city that never sleeps". Sirens fill the night, screams turn sweet dreams into bitter nightmares. If you listen closely you can the sound of hope banging against the ghetto's rusty gates as it tries to get in. Nobody really sleeps. We watch the night grow into an endless feeling of horror and despair. 

Is there a way out? They say it's through education but the schools within the gate are more like prisons with classrooms. Some say that hope can be found in the church, but the church is more like a congregation of the careless. Some say it’s through hard work and ambition, but those ideals left this community a long time ago. There is no way through those gates, unless you tear them down.