One bedroom apartment for three. 
One bedroom apartment, mommy and me.
One bedroom in an apartment, two adults.
One home and all its making confined to one bedroom.

Room.
There never seems to be enough of it.
Scores of people stacked upon each other in housing subsidized by the government.
Over-saturation.
Osmosis can’t occur.
Baisley is my reality. This.
Towering buildings of poverty, unrequited dreams.
Even worse, an abyss of hope.
A black hole I call home.
With no room for me.
Growing up, I always felt different.
I played once in the playground, got bullied and was never again allowed
out, of scope I can feel in a place where everyone knows your name but nothing else.
Unconnected.
I feel grounded in reality that can push me towards my purpose but leave me unconnected from this existence.
A community I have no common ground with aside from this overpopulated actuality.
Yet is it real or fantasy?
Because when I drive by and all I see is n*ggas on the corner season after season, year after year, life after life.
After another life is taken.
And the cops are permanently planted.
And my cousins bury another friend, a mother another child she birthed in the 80s.
And kids have no respect for their elders.
Because their mothers put them out from sun up to sun down,
And when its cold these hallways become their playground.
Their de facto daycare center, where nothing is said and anything goes.
And these kids don’t respect themselves.
And the grounds are a mess.
Because used condoms, dog sh*t and chicken bones litter the hallways and streets.
And I feel overwhelmed.
Because this is where I call home.
And I feel disconnected yet this is where I come from.
When I enter other arenas, where people have houses with whole families inside them, with fathers, with room, with breathable space, with ownership, with the pride of hardwork.
I feel disconnected because that isn’t where I come from.
When people refer to the a project mentality
I feel offended because this is where I come from.
And when these people around me conduct themselves with such ruckus and lack of concern about the past and the future, hazed over in the present,
I refer to the project mentality yet this is where I come from.
When I smell the fresh morning dew of despair.
The sentiment of another morning here in this place.
With nowhere to go.
No sky above, no dream over the horizon.
Just a ceiling topping off confinement.

When the history of a proud people,
A strong people
Who worked sun up til sun down, trapped in the shackles of chains
And still dreamed of a day when
freedom would ring and they could hear the bell and spell the word
and own that bell.
A mighty people who survived forced transport across that ocean of hell.
Who withstood outrageous injustices
Who buried son after son and left that casket open for proof of the harm done.
Now when the descendants of these people have no dreams nor can they spell it.  
When the communities that held us up through times of heartache and no end in sight,
Are left in shambles.
When fathers, whom once fought to be kept with their families, willingly depart.
When mothers, whom once offered themselves to a white man to keep their children, shrug off.
When freedom has rung but none of us can read it and don’t want to learn how.
With Obama up top,
In this post modern world
When I’m trying so hard
To climb my way out
But am caught between the realms of have and have not
With my body in this place that has no space
With my head in these clouds of ambition
With my heart pleading for success
With my lungs suffocating from the stress of the daily struggle.
In this place with one bedroom with no space.
In this apartment, with a family in one space.
In this place where all families have no space.
Room.
There’s a shortage of it.
Hope.
There’s an absence of it.
Cope.
But, how?

One bedroom apartment for three.
One bedroom apartment, mommy and me.
One bedroom in an apartment, two adults.
One home and all its making confined to one bedroom.
Room.
There never seems to be enough of it.