Blood on the Bread OR No Street Cred, Only Shame

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

[Update 1/1/2018): Here in London during New Years Eve and early on New Years Day, four young people have died in unrelated knife attacks! More wasted lives, more families left grieving...]

[Update 21/2/2018: Two more young men, victims of knife crime, died yesterday near where I live in Kentish Town, London NW5. So tragic, and senseless!] Two more families and their friends left to grieve.

The villanelle below was written on June 29th 2008. On the previous day, another young person had been fatally stabbed on London’s streets. Tragically, the poem is even more relevant now than it was then.

Official figures released by the Office of National Statistics (ONS)  in April 2017 showed a very significant increase in violent crime across the UK, much of it gang-related. Knife crime alone had increased by 14 per cent year on year by 2016 to levels not seen since 2011; a leap from 28,427 knife offences to 32,448.

The greater tragedy is that gang-related violent crime remains prevalent on the streets of many countries worldwide; such a waste of human lives where, more often than not, contemporary society fails to provide constructive alternatives offering potential solutions.

Whatever, these people commit violent acts by choice and the buck stops with them. If they have a conscience at all, they need to come to terms it, start steering a kinder course through life before they, too, become just another fatality statistic... and what kind of footprint is that to leave behind?

Society as a whole needs to be less complacent, more judgemental and remember hat actions speak louder than words; it is no time to be treading on eggshells for fear of offending the many high profile socio-cultural-religious bigots among us.

‘His [Jack's] mind was crowded with memories; memories of the knowledge that had come to them when they closed in on the struggling pig, knowledge that they had outwitted a living thing, imposed their will upon it, taken away its life like a long satisfying drink.’ - William Golding [Lord of the Flies, 1954]

  

BLOOD ON THE BREAD or NO STREET CRED, ONLY SHAME

Don’t carry a gun or knife,
a young friend said;
show more respect for life

I want a career and a wife
(and a four-poster bed)
don’t carry a gun or knife

Let years of pain and strife
stand peace on its head?
Show more respect for life

Though gang rats run rife,
and blood on the bread,
don’t carry a gun or knife

Let me look, dress how I like
if it makes me feel good;
show more respect for life

Streets of fear, tears of grief,
saw him shot him dead;
Don’t carry a gun or knife;
show more respect for life

Copyright R. N. Taber 2008; 2017

[Note: This poem first appeared under the title 'Blood on the Bread'' in Poetic Expressions, Poetry Now, 2009 and subsequently in my own collection, 'On the Battlefields of Love' - Assembly Books, 2008.] 

Extracts From A Prison Diary

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

Listening to a group of youths chatting amongst themselves on a bus, I was appalled to hear how they all but revered one of their friends who had recently been jailed for a knife attack on someone. 

I bet they wouldn’t think prison was so good for street cred if they were there, locked up for much if not most of the time and deprived of their freedom all the time...

The majority of young people are decent, hard working, good people. The tragic irony is that the relatively few bad apples in the proverbial barrel have the same potential if only they would acknowledge the common sense in getting their priorities right, the courage to resist peer pressure from the wrong parties and make the most of that potential instead of whining about how the better opportunities never come their way.

Prevention is better than cure. True, luck can play a part in whether or not opportunity knocks at our door, but mostly we have to take a good look around, see what there is to be had that we want and is worth wanting, and ... 

GO FOR IT.

Did I say it was easy ...?

EXTRACTS FROM A PRISON DIARY

A neighbour slipped out to buy bread

and…was shot dead;

Hoodies cheered, one waving a gun;

(Who’s next? Could be anyone...)

I thought I knew that hood inside-out

till I heard a devil yell, “Shoot!”

A face in shadow, but I knew the voice;

what happened next, my choice

Mates say guns are a must (gang culture),

a necessary feel-good factor;

suddenly, blood on my designer shoes;

heads cops win, tails I lose

Emergency sirens blasting at my head,

(Like it was me shot someone dead?)

I knelt by the body and called out a name;

the only answer, howls of shame

I was told to wear a white shirt, black tie

for the funeral, but it was a lie;

what difference if I’m dressed up smart?

Better jeans, hood, a caring heart

Later (crying in cuffs) taken back to prison,

old mates, some hoodies, looking on;

Drugs, booze, skipping school, what matter?

It was my finger on the trigger

The idea of prison hadn’t bothered me

(I’d seen cool shows on TV);

the reality? I am as meat in a lion’s den

only…torn to pieces by men

Oh, to be a schoolkid again, a wiser one,

who would never carry a gun…

nor would I mistake everyday life for dull,

but get an education, enjoy to the full

Like bile on the tongue, every word written

for tears and fears I keep well hidden

or drown in each lonely day’s angry swell

crashing down on this, my life, my cell

[From: Accomplices To Illusion by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2007]

Profile of a Hotshot

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For a minority of young people, being in a gang is exciting, even glamorous; a life of crime, even violence, brings them local street cred. For some, too, it provides a sense of belonging that, for various reasons, may be lacking at home; invariably, they discover soon enough how seriously flawed this simplistic perspective can be, paying for their mistakes with prison or worse...

There is no excuse for gang crime. A prevailing irony and tragedy lies in the fact that, given an opportunity, most gang members have a positive contribution to make in the very society that condemns them.

There are two sides to every divide and both need to find a way to be reconciled. Society needs to ask itself where it is failing some young people to drive them into a gang culture; what does a gang offer them that it cannot, and why can’t it?

For their part, gang members need to ask themselves what they really want from life and make a bigger effort to find it; they certainly won’t find it by using weapons, shooting drugs or compensating for their own fears by terrorising others. The chances are the false security of being part of a gang, and the price they must pay for exercising their contempt for society's better values, will come back to haunt them in its prisons, those universities of crime that major in the art of self-delusion.

Meanwhile, the majority of decent young people remain under threat of being stereotyped by a mindless minority.

  

PROFILE OF A HOTSHOT

We called ourselves the Hotshots,

my gang and me

Upholding the right to use a gun,

in our constitution

We’d pick fights on street corners

and raid stores

If some little old lady or a war vet

in the way…too bad

We were the Hotshots, graduated

from school to streets

No one could touch us because we

had youth on our side

Looks, girls, designer gear and guns

made us invincible

We even hit prime time News once

(fame at last)

Then a hotshot turned good citizen

and grassed us up

Disbanded now, gone to this prison

or that graveyard

Me, once Mr Fox, now chickenfeed

among old lags

We were the Hotshots, thought guns

were cool

[From: On the Battlefields of Love by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2010]

Lament for an Endangered Species

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We worry about endangered species across the animal and plant worlds, and rightly so, but what about us? Yes, we are right to be concerned about climate change, but aren't we, too,  an endangered species given the way the world’s governments carry on? (Mind you, who elects them...?)

Ah, but we should be wary of playing the blame game as the final stages may well be played out on our own doorsteps. Across the world, including here in the UK, a significant number of young people are losing the plot.

Street crime and gang culture are on the rise especially among young people, and those involved need to ask themselves some important questions, not least what they really want out of life. If the answers include blood on their hands, possibly an early death and/or a long prison sentence... then I guess they will go ahead... throw their lives away and the lives of others while they're about it.

I'm told it's all about acting 'big'. Well, there is nothing big about it at all of course although I suspect that in many cases it is all an act. Those who see sense walk away before it's too late. Now, that's big.

LAMENT FOR AN ENDANGERED SPECIES

I walked out early one morning
and heard a lark singing
a song I’d only vaguely heard
before, its melody
of a curious beauty, yet weeping

blood and tears

Once, I'd get on with whatever
presents itself  at the time,
only vaguely conscious of feeling
all the more inspired to surpass
at the task in hand for a song worthy
of reassuring lost souls
at Heaven’s door kept waiting
for an answer...

Once, I'd roam territorial streets
find sounds of laughter
lifting me till someone's crying
moves me to follow
the awful sound down side roads
and back alleys, leading
to a human being left bleeding 
from knife wounds

Eyes wide open, lips appealing
to our common humanity
for help to see out another day,
hear what a skylark
has to say before too late,
world already darker,
its streets busy ringing war cries
between phone alerts

Now, I roam the streets at twilight
wishing I’d arrived in time
to save the young man who died
in my arms… wondering who
could have had such little respect
for human life as to rob youth
of its future, family life of its soul,
friendship of a like spirit?

Born to achieve this or that goal,
he had but found himself
in the wrong place at the wrong time,
no lark’s song of hope and glory
come close to gang culture’s senseless
prose and blank verse

Come night, a star for every lark come
to sing us to our graves

Copyright R. N. Taber, 2019