I was readin on somebody on here talkin about hood coppin. How they scared due to race, apearance, how they will stand out and all that. I dont want to tell them that they can be jus like the bum they step around on the corner some day. Not tryin to be somethin they aint, but a real , live, hood rat, scramblin thru the trash piles every day like its just another part of life. It takes time but youll see it. I guess I rather not tell em. Keep em to their over price bundles and coppin in the nice part of town.
..............
I aint somebody whose roots is outside the hood so maybe it makes me different than some of the rest of yall. I dont know. I know there is a select few on here who knows wat it is like to not be viewing it from the other side of someone with no bizness bein on the block. Some of the earliest memories of my childhood is in paterson n Ive always felt, na known, in my heart that it was home, even tho I moved away at a young age, i still spent about half my time down there back and forth as i got older. It was never too far away, and it was never a place i thought of as soemwhere to get drugs...It was just where we went when we needed our car fixed, or to buy a car, or to visit family, or watever it was, paterson was home base even after leaving. so i never viewed it as the place that some of yall did. as a "scary ghetto" or a place to get drugs. It was just , paterson. The place my heart is born from.
As I got older and heroin took hold I realized there was a whole lot more to the city than my cousin on Montgomery st. tho.
Anyways , My point is, I been doin this shit so long, Im in it for life now. People in the hood know me. Everytime Im down there whether its coppin or for watever other reason Im there for, I see people I know. I dont even mean my friends, I mean jus the people on the street, the people in the stores, I see people I dont even know, who know me. "Hey ma I seen you on broadway last week!" "Mamichula U was at the bar on lafayette and e. 19th last time I seen u!" people is suprised cuz Im white. They remember my face but they see me over and over and kind of wonder wat the hell she is doin down here anyways.
Like I said. I lived on North 3rd st cross street with jefferson for a lil while. Well, If you dont know about northside, thats on you. I aint one of the kids from fair lawn or wayne who goes from my nice coldesac over to the hood to cop and then share my bricks with my collar poppin tanning bed slut guys n girls. I hate those people. I know they gotta get their fix just like me, but it hurts me, it feels like they are using my city, and it aint even my city to say i own, but damn. Think of it as something more. It makes me sick the whiteboys who drive thru to cop their dope and laugh at the milk crates nailed to the telephone pole for a ball game, who start cussin 'Fucking lazy nigger!" When their guy dont pick up the phone. Ugh. the word makes me sick inside , thinkin of my best friends, maybe someday my daughter or son, having to hear those words against them. So easy to come here and take wat you want, and leave wat you dont. The people here, aint got that choice. Only to keep on trying , prolly off your dirty dope dollar.
People come to use and abuse. To take pictures of the projects for their deep and thoughtful photo albums. whether they realize it or not, thinking they are sympathetic to the people there, thinking I dont know the hell wat, I want to tell them get the fuck out. For every "touching" or "symbolic" moment that lense and shutter snaps and freezes in time, there is a 100 fold repetition of the same ol shit, every damn day, all over the city, just a part of life, outside that liberal college students camera.
A real life that goes on and continues and hurts and bleeds and suffers and cries, whether or not there is a audience to witness it and comment on some stupid fuckin blog about the subject and composition of the photo. To come in as spectators and all watch the way "the forgotten class" lives. Well I dont want you watchin me and my moves and the moves of all the lost and disconnected souls wanderin in and out the projects and buildings and porches of Silk city.
I might not of spent every moment as a kid raised in paterson. I got raised with the hood values and the usual shit. lights gettin turned off, waitin on the check to get some food , nothin for lunch but crackers and water and drinkin Kool Aid without no sugar in it cuz we didnt have none. But it was outside paterson. the disconnect put me away for a few years. but dope brought me home in a funny way. it dont make a difference. My address on my driver license might say that I live in a po dunk town in north jersey, a place where suburban kids drive their parents escalades to paterson to cop, but when Im back in the hood its flowin thru my blood like I aint left. silk city in my left tittie til the day I die.....
You spend enough time on the streets , you become the streets. I dont feel like I can ever go back. My mother tried to move me away as a kid so the streets didnt get to me and change me as I was growin up but it was too strong and as soon as I was old enough I was gettin into that shit anyways. Nothin can change the inevitable. I dont feel no fear of the unfamiliar walking the block. Just the same old heavy-ass weight in my chest knowing wat Im doing is slowly killin me shot by shot. But shots or not, Ima still be on the block. i cant live without the corner store, the rubber band nappy head of my best friends daughter while i sit on the porch and watch her hair get twisted into some bouncy lil braids that will flop up and down while she skips up the street to the stop sign. I cant breathe without the pink tinged sky of the night time, without the hot breeze thru the dark streets makin me feel like I live forever. The trees growin up thru the windows of the house across the street are just a friendly reminder that everythings eventual and its comforting in a way that we all someday gonna turn into decay. My house sits on a piece of grass. A deck in the back. Only gets robbed once a couple months. I got the online and the cable TV, I dont know for how long with how money is right now but, We aint taping garbage bags over broken glass windows for now. But my heart beats in time with the streets, too far gone to change, the mark is permanent, a wall built up over years and years, eyes dried from tears and empty of fears. hardened n wiser, cool talkin smooth walkin with a dip in my hip and a smile at my lip, aint scared to stand proud as wat I am, not so much a stranger but a daughter come home to a land I made my own.
..............
I aint somebody whose roots is outside the hood so maybe it makes me different than some of the rest of yall. I dont know. I know there is a select few on here who knows wat it is like to not be viewing it from the other side of someone with no bizness bein on the block. Some of the earliest memories of my childhood is in paterson n Ive always felt, na known, in my heart that it was home, even tho I moved away at a young age, i still spent about half my time down there back and forth as i got older. It was never too far away, and it was never a place i thought of as soemwhere to get drugs...It was just where we went when we needed our car fixed, or to buy a car, or to visit family, or watever it was, paterson was home base even after leaving. so i never viewed it as the place that some of yall did. as a "scary ghetto" or a place to get drugs. It was just , paterson. The place my heart is born from.
As I got older and heroin took hold I realized there was a whole lot more to the city than my cousin on Montgomery st. tho.
Anyways , My point is, I been doin this shit so long, Im in it for life now. People in the hood know me. Everytime Im down there whether its coppin or for watever other reason Im there for, I see people I know. I dont even mean my friends, I mean jus the people on the street, the people in the stores, I see people I dont even know, who know me. "Hey ma I seen you on broadway last week!" "Mamichula U was at the bar on lafayette and e. 19th last time I seen u!" people is suprised cuz Im white. They remember my face but they see me over and over and kind of wonder wat the hell she is doin down here anyways.
Like I said. I lived on North 3rd st cross street with jefferson for a lil while. Well, If you dont know about northside, thats on you. I aint one of the kids from fair lawn or wayne who goes from my nice coldesac over to the hood to cop and then share my bricks with my collar poppin tanning bed slut guys n girls. I hate those people. I know they gotta get their fix just like me, but it hurts me, it feels like they are using my city, and it aint even my city to say i own, but damn. Think of it as something more. It makes me sick the whiteboys who drive thru to cop their dope and laugh at the milk crates nailed to the telephone pole for a ball game, who start cussin 'Fucking lazy nigger!" When their guy dont pick up the phone. Ugh. the word makes me sick inside , thinkin of my best friends, maybe someday my daughter or son, having to hear those words against them. So easy to come here and take wat you want, and leave wat you dont. The people here, aint got that choice. Only to keep on trying , prolly off your dirty dope dollar.
People come to use and abuse. To take pictures of the projects for their deep and thoughtful photo albums. whether they realize it or not, thinking they are sympathetic to the people there, thinking I dont know the hell wat, I want to tell them get the fuck out. For every "touching" or "symbolic" moment that lense and shutter snaps and freezes in time, there is a 100 fold repetition of the same ol shit, every damn day, all over the city, just a part of life, outside that liberal college students camera.
A real life that goes on and continues and hurts and bleeds and suffers and cries, whether or not there is a audience to witness it and comment on some stupid fuckin blog about the subject and composition of the photo. To come in as spectators and all watch the way "the forgotten class" lives. Well I dont want you watchin me and my moves and the moves of all the lost and disconnected souls wanderin in and out the projects and buildings and porches of Silk city.
I might not of spent every moment as a kid raised in paterson. I got raised with the hood values and the usual shit. lights gettin turned off, waitin on the check to get some food , nothin for lunch but crackers and water and drinkin Kool Aid without no sugar in it cuz we didnt have none. But it was outside paterson. the disconnect put me away for a few years. but dope brought me home in a funny way. it dont make a difference. My address on my driver license might say that I live in a po dunk town in north jersey, a place where suburban kids drive their parents escalades to paterson to cop, but when Im back in the hood its flowin thru my blood like I aint left. silk city in my left tittie til the day I die.....
You spend enough time on the streets , you become the streets. I dont feel like I can ever go back. My mother tried to move me away as a kid so the streets didnt get to me and change me as I was growin up but it was too strong and as soon as I was old enough I was gettin into that shit anyways. Nothin can change the inevitable. I dont feel no fear of the unfamiliar walking the block. Just the same old heavy-ass weight in my chest knowing wat Im doing is slowly killin me shot by shot. But shots or not, Ima still be on the block. i cant live without the corner store, the rubber band nappy head of my best friends daughter while i sit on the porch and watch her hair get twisted into some bouncy lil braids that will flop up and down while she skips up the street to the stop sign. I cant breathe without the pink tinged sky of the night time, without the hot breeze thru the dark streets makin me feel like I live forever. The trees growin up thru the windows of the house across the street are just a friendly reminder that everythings eventual and its comforting in a way that we all someday gonna turn into decay. My house sits on a piece of grass. A deck in the back. Only gets robbed once a couple months. I got the online and the cable TV, I dont know for how long with how money is right now but, We aint taping garbage bags over broken glass windows for now. But my heart beats in time with the streets, too far gone to change, the mark is permanent, a wall built up over years and years, eyes dried from tears and empty of fears. hardened n wiser, cool talkin smooth walkin with a dip in my hip and a smile at my lip, aint scared to stand proud as wat I am, not so much a stranger but a daughter come home to a land I made my own.
