Generation Awakening: Dear Black Man

What are we going to do about this situation?
I look around each passing day
Constantly confronted with images of desperation.
Somehow it's like we have collectively lost our way
Or is it simply a lack of aspiration?

I'm walking the streets and my eyes are open.
I've been trying to ignore and imagine
I'm seeing a different scene around me
Mothers, inner city mothers with their babies and trolleys
Strolling through life but doing so mostly by themselves.

No man on her side helping her, giving her a hand.
No Daddy for the baby who promised
He would always be there to help her
So tell me, what are we going to do about our condition?

I'm seeing men, young men walking the streets
Walking through life in anger
I'm seeing our youths with their trousers half way down
Their backsides, to their knees
Walking with a powerful swagger
Pretending to be coo
They say this is our new Black culture.

But meanwhile some are silently praying and hoping
That someone, somewhere
Will pull them up off the ground
Their trousers and their lives too!
For deep within as the frustration boils
They feel being 'thug life' gains them respect.
Youths going through neglect
Youths asking for some form of positive intervention

The single mother each day is still crying
She feels like her life is full of struggling
Where is the baby's Daddy?
With the money?
With the plan?
With his precious time?

He's on the street
He's hanging with his 'homies'
While his baby's mother is alone
At home
Wondering how come her man
The man she bore a child for
Can be out on the town so often
But yet can't come home and cook his family dinner

So black man, what are we to do to change this condition?
Our children growing old
Seeing all this stressing, absence and disrespecting
What do they aspire towards?
When so many of our communities are rotting
As we stand around waiting to see what's happening

All our youths can easily all be Trayvon Martin
We must now pull together and spring a new dawn
Some inspirational words, a few kind gestures
Some quality time allocation
And even some mentoring
I ask what are we going to do about our situation
It starts with one of us, then two of us, then tons of us
But it has to be change that we all engage in.

So what are we going to do about our condition?

Editor-in-Chief's Note: All rights to this poem are held by the author and this media house, MNI Alive.