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by Robel Haile

I wanna tell you a story
Of myself
I’m a person who is hungry
Hungry with a big dream
Dream like the American dream
“The African Dream”
Peace, peace, and peace
My dreams are heading back to home
Heading back to the East
To the origin of Lucy and Selam
To the origin of culture and people
Where my ancestors grave
Where my umbilical cord is buried
To the Horn of Africa
Lakomenza, Abyssinia
Land of Habesha

I wanna tell you a story
Of myself
My life in foreign land
Where it seems a happy land
But it’s not like that
Not like my native land
What is wrong with me?
This is my home too
But I don’t call it home yet
It’s cold and dark
I look through the mirror
What is written on my face?
I see soul and faith
And I look through my colored skin
I see my heart is pumping
Blood that is mixed with
Mississippi and Blue Nile
But I can tell which is which
I look down to the bottom
I think about myself
How I look when I walk
I try to show no emotion
No weakness at all

I wanna tell you a story
Of myself
I’m in 97217
My people are back in Agergizat
That’s what I call home
If I started missing my people
Who are back home
Nostalgia would kill me
Right now my body is resting
Lost in the deepest part of the delightful night
My night and my dreams
Far far away…

Darkness
The orange I Wear
Shows no color.
I don’t know if He is
Alive or Dead
Out of state or In.
But what I do know is that I can’t Eat or Sleep.
I can’t Speak right
When he’s not Around.
Tasteless
The words I speak
Leave me incomplete.
The crystal clear speeches that usually seep out
Of my cave like mouth
Come jumbled, in a trance
Focusing
I can’t think straight
Or remember what I did this weekend.
I’ve been tweaking out but I know it’s not ADHD
I’ve been checked for that.
Chinese
I got a fortune and
It
Said
“A day of disappointment awaits.”
Garfield
You got to love him
He speaks the words of a true poet
“I HATE MONDAYS”

I hope Nate’s okay
Without him I am destroyed.
I’m incomplete
I love him
In brotherly way
Happiness
As I met him
Spring came early
He is most like me.
Family
The gracious professionalism of mother and father
Couldn’t have made a better creation
Mother and father of a bird in Distress
Always caresses me when I’m over
The dwindling of the threads called my mind
Leave me in a predicament
My lifelong quest
All in all he truly is my best friend
I hope he is okay
*Sorry Phelan

I found the picture in a magazine:
light poured into a silent hallway
from the many open, dusty doors
interrupting the shadows
on the doors across the hall.
As I carefully drew each shadow
the desolate dust became flooded with light,
and I wondered
how a photograph was so silent
that I could hear the water,
the wind,
the birds
and the fresh sun beyond the door.

Walking up to the corner of Ainsworth and MLK Avenue shows so many choices. Walgreens pharmacy, Safeway grocery, Starbucks coffee, and my favorite Popeye’s Cajun chicken and biscuits. One night I was in the mood for a catfish po’boy. I slapped on some headphones, because I find that it is the best way to find myself. On this short seven-block walk I like to think I am changing the world by what I am thinking. The next thing you know I’m at my favorite corner. I take two crosswalks to get to my destination. I am stopped by a man in dreadlocks and bloodshot eyes. He asks me for a dollar. I am usually generous in these situations: I open my wallet and hand him a Washington. He sees an opportunity. He asks for more. I am outraged. “Is that not enough?” I thought to myself. I walk away. I faintly hear “God bless.” I walk into my favorite Cajun establishment, take my order and my seat, and it hit me: He needed more, and I had more. Whether he was going to buy a bottle of water or a crack pipe, he needed more and I had more, but I didn’t give it to him.

My name is Kenia Quesia Basagoytia. I am 15 years old. I turn 16 December 10th 2007. I am a teen mother. My son’s name is Gabriell Levi Alexander Hernandez. He turned a year old March 14th 2007. That means I got pregnant at age 13, but I turned 14 during pregnancy. When he was 9 months I turned 15. I know what you’re thinking. You’re probably wondering how it happened. Well my life hasn’t been perfect.

When I was little my mom use to beat me and my brother. His name’s Alex Rene Basagoytia. We had a little sister, too, but for some reason she never got spanked or beaten. Well I wouldn’t really call it “spanked” because she would use whatever she could find to hit us, like shoes, belts, extension cords, sticks, brooms. She had a bad temper. For example if we didn’t want to go to church or we misbehaved in church, she would beat us.

But my mom had a hard life too. She really didn’t go to school because she had a big family and they were poor…I’m talking about dirt floors poor. She had seven or eight brothers and sisters and her youngest brother died. She worked at age seven to help her parents. And then she got older and found a job cleaning offices and that’s how she met my dad. They started seeing each other. A year later she got pregnant with my brother and 4 months later she got pregnant with me. Her mom said that if she got pregnant without being married she was dead to her, so she moved in with my dad. But my dad had a wife and three kids that my mom didn’t know about. In El Salvador, when you’re a dentist, you make a lot of money. So my dad kept my mom at one house and his wife at another. Then somehow my mom found out about his double life and she didn’t want anything to do with him. She wanted him to buy her a plane ticket so she could come to the U.S.A. He said, “The only way you’re leaving me with my son and my unborn child is if I kill you,” and he took a gun out and hit her with it. It accidentally fired and a bullet grazed her head. Then she came to the U.S.A, and then I was born and she met my step dad, they fell in love and got married. Five years later my mom had my little sister. I also remember when my mom was pregnant this guy broke into our apartment and stabbed my mom. My step dad wasn’t there because he was at work. I also remember when I was seven or eight, my step dad and a couple of my uncles got arrested for selling drugs to a narco (undercover cop). He got deported and we had to borrow money from people for two or three months until he got back. I remember seeing them do weird things like crushing up white powder. And I was curious so I went into their room when they weren’t there and I found a gun and I found lots of drugs like weed, crystal meth, crack cocaine, heroin, ecstasy, acid-all the drugs you can think of. I was little. I didn’t know what it was, but now I do.

And I know you probably have a big question mark in your head. When my mom and my step dad broke up she got a job, but she worked graveyard shift. My step dad didn’t care what I did because I wasn’t his responsibility. We stopped going to church and I finally had time to kick it with my homegirls. The only problem was I didn’t have a way to get ahold of them, till one day I was walking to the park and they were all there. We started kicking it a lot and well we all started smoking and drinking. I never got caught doing it because I would only do it when I was staying the night at my home girl’s house. Until one day I couldn’t stay at my home girl’s house so we had no choice but to go to my house. I went home and I got caught. My mom had this long talk with me. She told me that if I kept doing what I was doing, I would either end up in jail, dead, or pregnant. My mom knew every thing I was doing. She new I was in a gang. She knew I did weed and crystal meth. She knew I had an alcohol problem. She knew. At first I was just kicking it with my homegirls. They weren’t that bad, but then I started kicking it with my brother’s homeboys. They were gang members.

I liked it. I wanted in so they jumped me. That’s when they beat the mess out of you for as long as you can take. I took 13 minutes exactly. How much time do you need to do to be officially in the gang? I got jumped into a hood called Sur Trese Locoz. My nickname was Lil Gigglez. My mom was really worried about me. She didn’t know what to do. I would only come home to take a shower, change my clothes and get money so I could go get high or buy alcohol. Sometimes I would stay the night at my house but only because I was going to sneak out to one of my homeboys’ houses.

I would always get caught for being out past curfew. I had lots of those on my record, and I also had a lot of Minor in Possession (M.I.P). Finally I caught doing something big with my hood. I got 18 months’ probation and 48 hours’ community service. I got into a fight. I caused a riot and I trespassed on private property.

Well, that day was the day I got together with my son’s dad. Then a month later I found out I was pregnant, so I stopped the gang banging, I stopped the drugs and alcohol and I turned my life around. Just like my mom warned me, I had got pregnant. Now that I’m clean and sober I can think clearer. I got a reality check, and yeah, I do wish I would have listened to my mom because I know I hurt her and I know she’s had a hard life too. All the stories she’s told me, they affected my life too, like I feel like I wasn’t worth anything to my dad because he hasn’t even tried to keep in touch, like I barley even know his name.

But like I said, I wish I would have listened to my mom because it’s hard taking care of a baby, but I am happy God blessed me with a child or else I think I would be in jail or dead. So I thank God for giving me my son-he’s my inspiration for everything. Everything I do is for him.

So for you girls out there trying to be bad, I hope this story inspires you to change your life around. Still to this day we all remain a happy family.

There I lie in the tree, on the limb the limb of time.
I praise the trees that touch the sky. The sky that is a deep blue with white thin clouds stretching out across the great expanse.
I praise the celestial starry space, so beautiful and mystical.
Its constellations bringing great thoughts of wonder and awe.

I praise the fungus that grows among us, in our homes, and in our bread and wine.
I praise the chant of the eagle as it flies high in the sky, wing’s expanded to great lengths.
I praise the predator’s eye and the prey’s mind.
They dash and weave hiding and preying.

I praise the worm for the soil, the soil of fertility and decomposition.
I praise the flower,the flower of peace and love
I praise the leaves a reason to be green.
I praise a seed a reason to plead for a world of peace, and filled with love.

I praise the birds that soar high in the sky. A expanse of blue that stretches out to the horizon. As it extends to the horizon the deep blue starts fading into a light blue until it reaches the horizon at a whitish-blue.
I praise the sun for it spreads its joy to you and me.
I praise the moon for its night light. The moon shining down on all the homes. People of the town sleeping deeply and soundly.

I praise my mind to let me be free and allow me to see the free world, the world of nature.
I praise for it to let me fly high in the in the deep space we call the sky, and allow me to be me, and you to be you.
This is my reality to become one with mother nature.

I draw two people
face to face.
Contour lines
almost touching,
stories intertwined
into the shape
of her mouth
his eyes.
Two lines
all I know
of the secret
written there.