You left me 18 years ago on this day. Your death was my first time reckoning with reality. When you died I learned that nothing lasts forever and that we are all on borrowed time. You taught me the importance of enjoying the people you love, “now” because “later” lingers and limps in the air; eligible to get cut down by a “bad day.” In the face of tragedy I’m frequently told, “things get better.” What I should’ve been told is that, “sometimes things get better, and sometimes they don’t,” which would’ve been the truth. Trauma repeats itself, and sometimes I wonder if the repetition of that trauma is trying to teach me something.

Everyday since your passing, no matter if it’s just for a split second or for hours, I find myself creating meaning out of what’s left — memories. The memories we share are pigeonholed to a blip of our youth, but at times it feels eternal. I find myself chaperoning those childhood memories. Memories of us plotting long past our bedtime. Tiptoeing into the kitchen, rolling on the floor, ducking behind couches and cabinets, and crawling to the fridge to sneak juice. And you always ratted us out; not with your words, but because you always peed in the bed. Yeah I peed in the bed too some nights, but I was slick enough to get up and change my underwear. Sometimes I blamed the piss stains on you. Memories of us riding our bikes together down Patterson Park, reaching the top of what we called “canon ball hill” where the Chinese pavilion sits. Memories of us entering bakeries in Canton and running out with the tip jars after we spent the money our parents gave us. Memories of us throwing pebbles and eggs at speeding cars on Orleans street. Memories of me putting the chip in your back to cuss out adults walking up and down the block. Some lacked a sense of humor, and some laughed louder than us. So many memories that couldn’t fit in this letter even if I tried.

Memories can create freedom, or they can railroad you, while your only escape is backdoor parole. Memories can be a different type of prison. They can satisfy you, help you appreciate the good times, or they can have you yearning for a feeling that might never exist again, at least in this lifetime.

When I’m in search of inspiration, I stare at old photos of you and value the light in your eyes. The way you were able to look out into the world with out doubt and fear. Maybe it’s because you were a child. Or maybe it’s just because you were born a fearless slick nigga. You are the reason why I get out of the bed in the morning, and the reason that keeps me tucked in. You’re the reason I wake up, upset; because I didn’t see you in my dreams, or because I did, and didn’t want to wake up. You’re the reason I talk too damn much, and the reason I put my phone on “do not disturb.” You’re the reason I stalk emotions and words just to unearth the exquisite intricacies of who you were, and what our relationship meant to life’s bigger picture.

When I first started writing, I struggled with sharing stories about you. Mainly because sharing stories about you, meant sharing my vulnerability. It didn’t take me long to realize that when you keep shit bottled in, it prolongs a war that could’ve been dealt with. Lao Tzu once said “even if you have already fired a bow several times, continue to pay attention to how you position the arrow and how you flex the string.” There will always be bloodshed, but when you speak your mind and get free — the blood spreads evenly. Now, I write about you non stop. I pay attention to how I position my words and how I flex my language. I study; so I can become a better writer, to write about you more beautifully. When it’s all said and done, you will be my most written topic.

As much as I wish you were here in the physical sense, there are moments of joy I have surrounding your untimely departure. I can’t help but to be grateful that you were never a part of that 300-plus-homicide-a-year-talk. Thankful that you didn’t have to deal with the repetition of losing loved ones to prison cells, long drives up the road to share words through muffled phones and crummy glass. The repetition of being court-side at candle light vigils and burial sites, mourning and plotting on revenge for your homeboys and homegirls. The repetition of seeing your childhood friends replace the older drug addicts in our neighborhoods that overdosed, or died from drug related incidents. Glad you didn’t halve to deal with half of what we go through. It’s fucked up down here. But you can see that.

Paradise means to have plenty. And the memories and imaginative possibilities I own through my words as it relates to you, is paradise. Paradise wouldn’t be paradise, without a little pain. Angels don’t always sing, and the sun don’t shine in heaven, all the time. You died an angel, my nigga.

Since a child I was fascinated by finger rings because my grandmother wore a handful. All gold. All Godly. Some shy. Some gaudy.

One day I was sitting with my grandmother in the living room. She was on the couch, smoking a Newport and drinking corner-store-coffee, I was sitting on the floor dipping french toast sticks in King syrup. Mid way through her puff & sip I said, “Grandma, can you buy me a ring? I want a ring like you.” My grandmother always played her cards right in regards to how she answered my requests. I’m gonna guess it’s because she never wanted to get my hopes up, or let me down, with a binding response. She smiled and answered with a simple, “we’ll see.” My grandmother thought she was adept at keeping her finances classified — but she wasn’t. At age 11, I knew that we were poor. It’s like, when you know, you know.

My grandmother’s obligations were simple; she wanted to give me more than what she was given by her parents, and to give me much more than what she gave my mother — even though my mother was a “bad girl,” who blossomed into a “bad woman,” who then got whipped into the shape of a “bad mother.” I guess you can say that my grandmother was a lover. Love in my house meant giving: clothes, cigarettes, tennis shoes, money, headaches, money for clothes, heartaches, money for cigarettes, hard times, money for tennis shoes. At the expense of my grandmother wanting to be a “good parent,” she borrowed, lended, and spent money that she didn’t have, to give love, that she found in the pit of poverty, just to distribute to a little boy, me, who was birthed by a “bad woman.”

Maybe 5 minutes or so passed, and my grandmother took one last pull of her cigarette and said “throw some clothes on, we going to the pawn shop.” I destroyed the rest of my french toast sticks, drunk the syrup off of the plate, and got dressed.

We arrived at the pawn shop, I hovered over, and left hand prints all over the glass counter that was securing a ring that I would soon call my own. One particular ring smiled at me, I smiled back, “Grandma, can I get this one?” She asked for the price, and it was a little over $200. I tried it on, the perfect fit. My grandmother pulled cash out of the back pocket of her favorite jeans and paid the clerk.

The ring was gold, of course. It had a few diamonds. Where they real or fake? Who cares. I was icy just like my grandmother, and you couldn’t tell me nothing.

I completed my homework with the ring. I went swimming with the ring. I played tag in traffic with the ring. I ran from the cops with the ring. The ring was wild, and so was I.

Nothing lasts forever.

Me and my grandmother later had to put up my ring for sale, and put the proceeds towards bailing that “bad mother” out of jail. To love, is to give.

Kondwani Fidel is the author of his published collections, Hummingbirds in the Trenches (2018), and Raw Wounds (2017). Fidel has captivated audiences at conferences, literary events, and has lectured and taught classes at the University of East London while touring in the United Kingdom. In 2018, The Baltimore Sun honored Fidel in its heralded ‘Best of Baltimore’ issue for his courage, innovative thinking, and leadership in local schools and communities. Fidel’s work has been featured in The Washington Post, The Atlantic, CNN, The Root, The Independent, Mic, and Baltimore Magazine. Fidel is an M.F.A. candidate in Creative Writing and Publishing Arts at the University of Baltimore. He was most recently honored for his work with the Baltimore Civil Rights Literary Award.

Website: http://www.kondwanifidel.com

Instagram & Twitter: @KondwaniFidel

Baltimore City students have been getting pistol whipped and robbed of their education for many years. Baltimore is currently trending in the media due to the ice-box-conditions in some of the public schools — some thermostats read 30+ degrees.

Pictures of injustice made a lighting attack across the internet — snapshots of Baltimore students wearing gloves, coats, and hats, and pictures of the damage caused by broken boilers and bursting pipes. A similar story emerged in September of 2017 when classrooms inside of Patterson High School reached over 100 degrees for consecutive days, where students sweat bullets attempting to learn while being smothered in Satan’s arms. The system’s chief operations officer Keith Scroggins had said, “We are doing everything we can to install air conditioning in our schools to make them more comfortable.” and with “limited funding, the process is expected to take five years.”

Baltimore is the largest city in the richest state in the U.S. and our children are forced to sit in these horrific conditions disguised as schools, and the excuse is “limited funding.”

This might be someone’s first time hearing about students being forced to flirt with death inside of public schools, however, America has maintained racial inequalities in education for many years.

On April 12, 1860, The Mississippi Senator, who later became president, Jefferson Davis, delivered a speech objecting a bill funding education in Washington D.C. In his speech he stated, “This government was not founded by negroes nor for negroes but by white men for white men…the inequality of the white and black races was ‘stamped from the beginning.’” Davis, along with many other racists in this country, have and still currently believe that black people are biologically distinct from and inferior to white people. Therefore, handing something over as powerful as education to a group of subhuman black monsters would be blasphemous, and it would debunk their beloved white supremacy.

November 1, 1864 was Maryland’s Emancipation Day. In the book Stamped From The Beginning, Dr. Ibram X. Kendi wrote that the newly-free people flashed and paraded to the President’s house where Lincoln gave a speech and encouraged them to improve their moral character and intellectual capacity. Lincoln said this, but supported Maryland’s constitution, which didn’t allow blacks to vote or attend public schools. Lincoln expected newly-free blacks to two-step into freedom without a stumble after being desecrated by slavery. That is the same ideology that people have when they expect students in Baltimore public schools to receive a quality education in heinous environments — only to blame the children, and not the school system that enslaves, oppresses, and mis-educates the children of color.

I’ve spoke at several schools in Maryland, from suburban to urban, from majority black to majority white schools. The suburban and majority white schools have floors clean enough to eat off of and are equipped with state of the art technology. When I’m in the urban and majority black schools I can’t decipher whether the schools look like prisons, or the prisons look like these schools. The students read from ancient textbooks with missing pages, sit at the same desk that our great-grandparents sat, and are being taught on 100 year old chalkboards.

In early 2017, The Baltimore Sun released an article that stated, “In the seven years since the first of Maryland’s six casinos opened, they have pumped $1.7 billion into the state’s Education Trust Fun.” The audacious claim that the state has “limited funding” is an insult to the people of Baltimore. Using the term “limited funding” is an escape to avoid providing a legitimate educational environment for Baltimore City students, forcing them to suffer in cruel conditions. Being as though it is politically incorrect for racists to use the “N-word” and call us biologically inferior, they swap it out with terms that drip with racism, such as “limited funding.”

When talking about “low test scores” or “disruptive black students,” the basic resources that these children lack always gets left out of the narrative. The state of Maryland opened a $35 million youth detention facility in Baltimore, but officials say that it’ll take up to five years for the city schools to have something as basic as air and heat. This sends a message to the entire black community — the U.S. government is more focused on padlocking black youth to prison cells, as opposed to giving them valuable education. We don’t need anyone to say, “America doesn’t care about black people,” when actions — or lack thereof — speak volumes.

Black people in Baltimore have a long history of taking matters into their own hands when systemic oppression pops off its face mask. It brought me immense joy to see Samierra Jones, a senior at Coppin State University start a GoFundMe and raise over $40,000 with the help of a few other Baltimoreans — one of them being Aaron Maybin who teaches at Matthew A. Henson. This caught the eye of many celebrities, including Chris Brown, who shared the GoFundMe to his 41.4 million Instagram followers. The money that’s been raised will be used to purchase roughly 600 space heaters and winter outerwear for Baltimore City students. They are still accepting donations here → GoFundMe

There is a rotten myth that says in order for black people to have a fair shot in the country, new laws need to be passed. To those who believe that, I say this: If the government isn’t currently enforcing the laws that are supposed to provide black people equality and protection from racism, why do you think they will enforce additional laws? America is morally obligated to find new and creative ways to exclude black people from laws that are said to be in their favor.

In oppressed communities, real change always happens on the ground level. In fact, Huey Newton once said “The revolution has always been in the hands of the young. The young always inherit the revolution.” Seeing the progress that Samierra and other fellow Baltimore residents have made in a short amount of hours to help aid our students during this icy-crisis shows me that there is hope in my city. The kind of love that black people have for one another during tough times is unmatched, euphoric, and revolutionary. In America, black people are born into legally binding relationships where they get enslaved, tortured, and oppressed on various levels. On each of these levels it calls for individuals who are willing to fight and to share resources and skills to people who aren’t afforded them. For example, I play my role by devoting much of my time to teaching students the importance of literacy and storytelling which gets them excited about reading and sharing their own stories. Getting students to understand the importance of these things will grant them critical thinking skills, and with those skills, I believe it can help them maneuver more efficiently through systemic oppression. There is an ongoing war between the education system and black communities, and it is a war we’re going to ride out together.

Kondwani Fidel, author of Raw Wounds and founder of ‘READ’ (a clothing company that’s mission is to promote literacy) has been featured in Washington Post, Mic, CNN, and elsewhere, and has made a television appearance on RT America. He has been published in The Root, The Afro, and City Paper.

Fidel is a 2016 recipient of the ‘Ford: Men of Courage Award,’ and a M.F.A. Candidate at the University of Baltimore, concentrating on Creative Writing and Publishing Arts. He is from, and currently lives in, Baltimore, Maryland.
Follow him on Instagram, Twitter, Snap, and Facebook: @KondwaniFidel

YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgVbrGMmZa8

My heart was pounding like the paws of a panther chasing its prey — it was 5:33 in the morning. I kept waking up in 60 minute intervals. “Why the fuck can’t I sleep?” seeped out of my crusty brown lips. I went to the kitchen to grab a bottle of water, but there weren’t any left. I stuck my dome underneath the faucet, cranked the cold water, and heard my dehydrated insides throw a party. “Damn, I need to start drinking more water.”

I went back into my room and sat on the end of my bed in silence while Big K.R.I.T.’s Drinking Sessions spilled through my mini speaker. After spinning the song a few times I attempted to get some rest. As soon as I shut my eyes, my cousin’s dog who lives right above me squirmed in her cage. Her cage continuously rattled for roughly 35 minutes. Another 35 minutes that’s thrown into my box of sleepless nights. The entire time I was cursing her out in my head: “I hate this bitch. She always trippin when I’m trying to sleep.” “Why did my cousin even get a dumb ass dog?” “I just wish that she shut the fuck up.”

I ended up not going to sleep but taking a small nap until the 7:00am-sun pierced through my curtains. I woke up thinking about Summer. Summer is the dog’s name. I was wondering why is it that she makes the most noise when it’s bedtime, then it hit me.

My sleepless nights lead to random walks throughout the house, shutting doors, faucet turns, and tip-toeing on creaky wooden floors. I’m pretty sure that this keeps Summer from enjoying her sleep, just as much as she keeps my eyes wide open during bedtime.

I realized that me and Summer are both pigeonholed to a prison.

My mind is caged by permanent paranoia — I’m surrounded by bloodshed — When will I get popped by a killer cop and look down from the heaven skies and watch my 24-year-old body turn into a hashtag? — What family member or friend will overdose on fentanyl today? — Who’s gonna jam a pistol to the back of my head when I’m walking to Pizza Bolis? — When am I going to make enough money to move my family out of the trenches? — When will happiness be a day-to-day feeling? — When will I be able to substitute the noodles and crackers with ribs and shrimps?

Paranoia has me in a headlock.

Dear Summer, I too know that it is hard sleeping in a cage.

A sickness kicked my mother in the belly in 1992 while she was getting her hair done by her friend Tina. My mother walked to Johns Hopkins Hospital, got seen, and found out that she was pregnant. The wind danced around my mother as she marched her pudgy belly down Monument street, heading back home. Although my mother was now eating for two, she didn’t bother to change her unhealthy eating or drug habits. For 9 months I kicked, screamed, cried, and gagged in a cocaine and heroin wrapped placenta. My life was non-existence way before my sugar brown eyes kissed the sun light.

June 3, 1993 my mother gave birth to an “at-risk” youth. My mother couldn’t stay sober long enough to get a job, let a lone raise a child. Around the time of my birth, my grandmother had just been offered a job promotion that she later declined. Not only did she decline the job offer, but she quit her job and started a career as a daycare provider so she could keep the cash flowing and so she could work out of her home to take care of me, my mother, and the other children who came later.

I hit many stumbling blocks growing up: selling heroin and cocaine to my friend’s parents and grandparents, joining a gang and being blood affiliated, and getting arrested — all before I hit the 9th grade. However, I have many friends who had it worse growing up.

In Baltimore it is almost impossible for young people to grow up in the city and not indulge in “trouble.” Trouble whispers. Trouble screams. Trouble becomes your best friend. Trouble becomes your enemy. No matter what trouble is disguised in, you will have a date with her, one day; while living and dying under Baltimore’s skies.

Despite the issues I faced growing up: abandonment, child neglect, mental abuse, and the trauma of loosing friends and family to murder and prison cells; I’ve had so many friends who struggled much more than I did, while having less. Less food in the pantry. Less love behind the peephole. Less clothes in the closet.

Some of my friends were raised by both parents and some weren’t. Most of the time their parents were present physically, but not spiritually and emotionally, therefore they were absent, leaving my friends to raise themselves.

I live in a city where children take care of themselves, then get enough money and enough age to take care of their parents and grandparents.

My grandmother played an important role in my life and always made sure that I had the basic needs. I’ve never starved, like many of my friends. I’ve never had to jam pistols to skulls in return for money, like many of friends. I’ve never been homeless, sleeping in the cold rain, like many of my friends. I’ve never had to drop out of school to be “the man of the house,” at age 14, like many of my friends.

If it wasn’t for my grandmother I would’ve been living and dying, like many of my friends.

In many black communities grandmothers have always been the backbone of the family, and the community.

Whatever I end up calling this piece; a letter, a song, or a poem, it is to give thanks to my grandmother. If it wasn’t for the love she had for my mother and her unborn son in the early 90’s, I would not be the person I am today.

Always remember to be thankful for what you have because someone else out there has less.

“In this country a black man only have like 5 years where he can exhibit maximum strength and that’s right now while you’re a teenager, while you’re still strong, while you still wanna lift weights, while you still wanna shoot back. Cause once you turn 30 it’s like they take the heart and soul out of a man, out of a black man, in this country, and then you don’t wanna fight no more.” — 2 Pac

I wanna die fighting. I wanna die young.

I don’t wanna grow old. I don’t want life to suck the marrow out of my bones how vampire bats inhale blood. Is that weird? I mean, the odds have to eventually win one day, right? I’m fine how I am now and I wanna die like this.

Growing up in Baltimore I’ve seen the odds shoot first and ask questions later. I’ve seen the odds shatter Freddie Gray’s voice box and smash his spinal cord. I’ve seen the odds kick down doorways and slam little unarmed babies to the ground because they looked “dangerous.” I’ve seen the odds get shoved up black nostrils — slow blinks until that last breath, yeah, that fentanyl is spine-chilling. I’ve seen the odds blast baseball-sized-bullet-holes through my homie Khalik’s Honda coupe. I’ve seen the odds pick away at family trees like dollar scratch offs — black bodies are dirt cheap in cities like mine. The odds forever win big around here.

A few years ago three guys in black hoodies rode through an East Baltimore neighborhood on small bicycles bangin’ guns. Bullet’s stabbed my friend’s Darius’s chest which cracked open his 19-year-old heart. You’re damn right he died.

Dariu’s death drove his brother Damon crazy, in the literal sense. To an outsider you would’ve thought the two were twins. They looked alike, shared the same smile, and it’s rare that you caught one without the other. This was Damon’s 11th friend that he lost by the time he turned 20. For the past few years, Damon has been in and out of psychiatric institutions because that large lump sum of friends he lost, and God knows whatever else he dealt with, has drove him crazy. I’ve seen it happen right before my eyes.

The odds made the description of Damon change from “the coolest guy ever” to a guy “who wasn’t always like that.”

About a week ago I was riding passenger with my homie Pea (another close childhood friend) speeding through the streets of East Baltimore. I needed a seat belt. Not as if I didn’t have one on already. I needed another one because that’s how loud his speakers were blastin’ Lil Boosie’s song “I Know.” I saw Damon stumbling inside of a nearby liquor store, and I made Pea pull over so I could holla at him. He looks the same as he’s been for the past few years since the death of his brother. “Ayyeee Koni, that’s really fucked up what they did to Darius ain’t it?” is how he starts off every convo. He then repeatedly says his brother’s name, head trembling, while dry crust and drool hangs out the corner of his 22-inch rim-sized-mouth. Damon’s body odor used to smell like expensive cologne — it’s been replaced with the stench of cigarette smoke, the cheapest liquor on the planet, rotten eggs, and dead rats. As Damon stumbled away and I walked back towards Pea’s car, I heard people from the neighborhood whisper “Mmmm, that boy wasn’t always like that.” A phrase that I say to myself a lot referring to Damon. I’ve seem him transform from a happy loving big brother and son, who’s always cracking jokes, to a crazed drunk. Damon has been fighting the odds since he peeked his chocolate-rello-colored eyes out of his mother’s vagina, just like the others who grew up in poverty. Some beat the odds, but majority of the time most don’t.

I’ve seen several friends and associates fade into a foreign mental state. I know so many young women and men who “wasn’t always like that.” When you know that African Americans who live below the poverty level experience extreme psychological distress, then you can not help but to see why many black people die young or either wanna die young.

I’ve seen the odds slurp up vulnerable bodies, break their bones using its tongue, then spitting out the remainders into that dark hole that “life’s troubles,” carves out for its victims. I guess the bright side to entering this dark place is that you’ll never be alone.

The odds have back-to-back triple doubles around here. Around here, the odds score all net. The odds perform no-look-alley-oops around here.

That’s why I wanna die young. I don’t want the odds to even think twice that it’ll do me like the rest of them. I don’t want my future to get straightjacketed by the odds.

I wanna die like this.

I wanna die 5’9–152 lbs — with a loud mouth — unapologetic and filled with energy on my worst days — humble — writing and saying whatever I want, when I want, how I want — lion-hearted, and turnt. I wanna die turnt.

I don’t want the odds to bury me alive. I wanna die who I am right now. I wanna die young.

Kondwani Fidel, author of Raw Wounds, has been featured in Washington Post, Mic, CNN, an elsewhere, and has made a television appearance on RT America. He has been published in The Root, The Afro, and City Paper.
Fidel is a 2016 recipient of the ‘Ford: Men of Courage Award,’ and a M.F.A. Candidate at the University of Baltimore, concentrating on Creative Writing and Publishing Arts. He is from, and currently lives in, Baltimore, Maryland.
Follow him on Instagram, Twitter, Snap, and Facebook: @KondwaniFidel

YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgVbrGMmZa8

Tickets for #UntilTheEndOfRhymes — —> http://bit.ly/2zUUSEr

If the sounds of gunshots were generated into song sales, Baltimore would’ve gone triple platinum by now. Murder has been opening its mouth like a hungry lion, eating away more than 220 lives in 2017, and it’s only August.

It was 3:00 a.m. and I was laying down on a pint-sized mattress in a cramped dorm room at the University of Illinois at Chicago. I had a long day of writing workshops, so I decided to hit up the The Violet Hour, a bar in Wicker Park, where I guzzled 4 vodka gimlets to end my late-night/early-morning. I was plastered, numb to all misery, until my phone buzzed. I checked it, and an alert read, “Man killed in Greenmount Avenue shooting becomes city’s 200th homicide victim.” I stared at the ceiling as cold tears slid down my cheek, chilling the back of my neck. I started to reminisce about all of my family and friends who expired on the streets of Baltimore. Depression crept down on me, hope seemed futile, and I wanted to fade out like Robin Williams. I called on God, but his phone was on do not disturb; it seems as though he always ignores me when I need him the most. Every time a body drops in my city, no matter if it’s a loved one or not, a piece of my sanity is chipped away.

We live in a country that marks black babies at a popular price of null and void.

Since I was a small child, I’ve had family and friends murdered under these Baltimore skies, and it’s been killing me, literally.

It was the summer of 2003 when bullets snatched all 26 years of Trav’s life. Trav was my aunt Lisa’s boyfriend, and my uncle Neil’s best friend. Trav treated me like I was one of his own, and the love was mutual.

I was 10 years old, and school had just ended for the year. I was chilling with Uncle Neil at his crib, waiting for him to get dressed, so we could go back around my way and meet up with Trav. I was awakened out of my sleep by a loud, “Nooooooo, not my nigga!,” an introduction to a phrase that inevitably became commonplace as I grew older. His shriek suppressed the lyrics of 50 Cent ’s Get Rich or Die Tryin’ that was blasting through the speakers. I woke up and saw Uncle Neil pacing back and forth throughout the living room while veins bulged out of his sweaty forehead. I was afraid to ask what was wrong. But my childlike curiosity burned. “Unc, what happened?”

A minute or two passed, and he sat on the couch beside me and cried. I didn’t know what was going on, but I felt his pain, and I started to cry, too.

“They killed Trav,” Uncle Neil said, as he struggled to get the three words out. This was also my introduction to “they.” “They” is a person or person(s) that I too would hear stories about for a lifetime.

Uncle Neil and I walked on Hillen Road and flagged down a hack, and were driven to my house, two blocks over from where Trav was murdered.

When we arrived, the entire neighborhood was in shambles. I can’t remember a soul who wasn’t crying. For the next few weeks I witnessed how Trav’s death tore Uncle Neil apart. The harsh smell of rotten teeth mixed with Steele Reserve 211 was rushing out of Uncle Neil’s mouth every time he spoke. Liquor was his fling turned wife.

This is my earliest memory of being spiritually and emotionally connected to death in Baltimore, and also my first time seeing how it affected the people around me.

However, this wasn’t my last. My aunt Lisa on the other hand, has had three of her significant others slaughtered in my city. Because her chin is always parked in the air, she doesn’t ever show the slightest glimpse of grief, but I’m sure she’s afflicted with pain.

My second encounter with death was later that same year of Trav’s farewell. This time, it wasn’t a close friend, and it wasn’t murder. It was my seven-year-old little brother Fidel and his 11-year-old brother Davon.

It was approximately 4:00 am when ambulances and fire trucks rushed the block. A firefighter pulled a limp salmon pink object from the hell-fire which ended up being Fidel. Some minutes later, they yanked out Davon.

The following day I walked to Johns Hopkins Hospital to visit Fidel. At this point, Davon had already succumbed to his injuries and died in the hospital before I had chance to see him a final time.

All of Fidel’s hair, gone. His head was swollen. Blisters the size of boiled eggs covered his baby face. Large tubes took an excursion through his throat, nose, penis, and other body parts. I shook his body with my small palms, as I whispered, “Fidel…Fidel.”

He didn’t budge so I shook him a little harder and my voice got a little louder. “FIDEL!…FIDEL!”

He didn’t respond or budge.

Later the next day, I received a call from my grandmother. She said, “Fidel died…We had to pull the plug.”

I wasn’t familiar with the word ‘suicide,’ but I knew that I didn’t want to live any longer, and I was coming up with all sorts of ways to make that happen.

After Trav, Fidel, and Davon all died a few months apart, I knew for sure that I was gonna bite the dust soon.

Keon was 16 years old when a bullet struck his dome while standing on an East Baltimore corner in 2009. I was 16 at the time too. Hours before his brains splattered on dirty marble steps, Keon rode through my block to holla at me.

“Yo, Ima bring some girls through the block later, they bad as shit.”

“Bet, just hit my phone, I’ll be around,” I responded, as I gave him a fist-bump and watched him wheelie away on his silver Mongoose.

A few hours later, my homie Dre ran up Jefferson Street wearing a sweaty grey wife beater. In and out of deep breaths, Dre said, “Yo…Guess What?…Keon…Just got popped!” I dropped my iced tea, and my homies and I sprinted towards Linwood Avenue where Keon was hit. As soon as we arrived, the street was decorated with yellow tape, blue and red lights, and women in pj’s, shaking their heads while tears drained from their ducts. A sight that became a day-to-day thing.

A white sheet covered a body, which I denied was Keon until I scanned the premises and saw his lone green 498 New Balance sneaker napping in the middle of the street. This was my first time seeing a visual representation of the term, “Blow a nigga out his shoes.” A phrase that’s popular in conversation in my neighborhood and in rap songs.

Where I come from, crying is a sign of weakness so I routinely rubbed my eyes, making sure no tears fell.

Keon was gone, and all I kept asking myself was, “Will I be next?” To hide this pain, I was freakin-off with a massive amount of women, I barely was eating, I drank Four Loko long past after my kidney felt like it was gonna burst, and I smoked hella blunts. I had hopes of going to college, but I just knew that the streets would do me in before freshman orientation because everybody’s melon was gettin’ cracked. Death was all around me, and it didn’t have an age limit or gender preference.

April 14th 2014, I was sitting in Gateway Hall, a dormitory at Virginia State University. Thanks to my ambition, and luck, I made it to college. I was working on promotion material for a collection of poems I was planning to release. I received a call from my little brother Antuane. “Yo, Shad got stabbed.” Shad was my best friend. We shared clothes, shoes, and money. Shad’s grandmother sold weed, but she always gave us dimes for free. One night she gave us something close to an ounce, and we shared it with these two sisters from our neighborhood and ended up bangin’ them both on the same bed. Shad was a friend that I’d give my last. My last kidney, my last shot of yak, my last piece of chicken, you name it.

I instantly hung up the phone with Antuane and started praying. I got another call from him 10 minutes later and I heard him crying through the other end. I screamed, “Don’t do this to me Tuane, why the fuck are you lying?” He continued to cry, then he said, “Shad is gone my nigga.” I left out of the lounge area and started walking back to my room. My motor skills conked; you would’ve thought Mike Tyson punched me in the stomach the way I dropped to the floor. My tears flooded the floor, as people walked passed, looking at me as if I were crazy. At this point, I wouldn’t have disagreed with them. I was broken.

I went home and found out that Shad got into an altercation with a guy at a gas station. A fight broke out and Shad got jabbed in his liver several times with a small sword. He crawled into his car and locked himself inside to escape the clutches of his new found enemy. Shad’s suede seats chugged liters of his blood, and he slithered into the opening arms of the grim reaper.

Ya’ll know what I did for the next few months: gave no fucks, and went to class drunk damn near every day, as professors gave me side eyes. I know they smelled that sauce seeping through my pores.

Every day for the next few months, alcohol bit a hole in my pocket, and I routinely locked myself in my dorm room for many nights with 2 Pac’s “Thugz Mansion” and Rihanna’s “What’s Love Without Tragedy?” on repeat, as I killed myself. They were the only two songs that could understand me.

I got disconnected from many of my college friends because I inched further away from the guy they once knew.

I became careless and dispassionate when it came to school and relationships. I wanted to be by myself, and many people just couldn’t understand. I thought that I was gonna drink myself into casket or die from stress before I even made it to senior year. I was ready for the ride.

D was 21 when he got splashed in West Baltimore. It was January, 2015.

I had just returned to my neighborhood after performing some spoken word poetry to a group of students. I was standing out front of JJ’s carryout in East Baltimore, watching cars bounce down the lumpy roads of Monument Street as I waited for my chicken box. Fifteen minutes passed and I walked into the store to check on my food. “Ayyeee Mama! Those 4-wings-and-fries ready?” I said, as I tossed my ticket into the circular plexiglass portal where money, food, and arguments about wrong orders get exchanged. I received my food, left JJ’s, and stopped inside of Rod’s Barbershop, which is a few stores down. As I gave dap to friends and associates, I received a call.

“Yo guess what?”

“What’s good?”

“You heard D got murked last night?”

I hung up my phone in disbelief and shrieked, “Fuck!” while everyone stared. I left the barbershop and did what I do best to cope. I hit the bar and grabbed a pint of Absolut and a pack of Black & Milds, and started my healing ritual.

D, Shad, and I all hung in the same camp. Every time I looked at old pictures of me and my friends, I saw fewer people, and I couldn’t help but to embrace an early death. I mean how could I not?

Suffering from the mental and emotional pain that stems from murder and violence is one of the many ways that black people die in America.

Every single day I ask, “Will the murder ever stop?” and the more I learn, I understand the hard truth, and the answer is, no.

Aside from the names of the people I mentioned above that died, there are countless of deaths that troubled me while living in Baltimore and being connected to her hip. I have stacks of obituaries, and I can’t count how many funerals I attended.

A list of things I’ve seen at funerals: fist fights amongst friends, family, and I’ve even seen a pastor get knocked out by a quick jab. Drunken fathers have jumped in the ground screaming, “I want to be buried with my son,” at burial sites. I even know of some people who committed suicide after losing a loved one. When anger has been bottled up for ages, anything is liable to take place.

I can’t count how many shoulders I cried on, nor the amount of people I lent shoulders to.

Everyone in my city knows someone who’s been murdered. Thousands of people are suffering from some type of mental anarchy that stems from violence. As I started to do research on violence and murder, the tragedies in Baltimore started to make sense.

I stumbled across an article in Bloomberg that said, “Baltimore is the worst place in America to grow up poor and male.” I know that my city is extremely difficult to survive in, but I never knew that it was the worst in the country. I did more scholarly lurking, and discovered that, Harvard economists Raj Chetty and Nathaniel Hendren researched a child’s chances of future success by collecting a list of the 100 largest counties in America.

The two economists studies show that “Baltimore is at the bottom. But It’s really at the bottom for boys.” This is a result of what I call “zip code genocide.”

Baltimore is a city where “everyone knows each other.” This city has roughly 620,000 residents, and 63% of those people are black. The black people stay and hang out where they live, and vice versa for white people. Baltimore has two identities, and depending on where you reside, depends on what you call it. My friends and I call it ‘Bodymore Murderland.’ The white people call it ‘Charm City.’ We eat chicken boxes and other phony foods while standing on small blocks-adjacent to dice games-under blue lights, and we converse about: who got murdered the night before, the new chicks who moved in the hood, who got beat up by the cops that day, and we drink cheap vodka that burns our chest, and temporarily scraps our heartache.

White people walk their expensive dogs, do yoga, have avocado food fights in Whole Foods, and drink Non-GMO-Glutten-Free Pinot Grigio, I think. Nonetheless, there are two Baltimores, and your zip code determines whether or not you live or die.

Poor and concentrated poverty communities have lower employment, lower educational attainments, higher crime, and poorer health outcomes than other areas. The History, Public Policy, and the Geography of Poverty data reveals, “About 80% of Baltimore City’s poor live in a poverty area, whereas across the rest of the State, 17% of the poor live in a poverty area.”

Poverty is a modern day slave-ship with a little more leg room.

Poverty imprints barriers that deny black people the opportunity to achieve promising education, well-paying jobs, and sanity, which leads to murder, depression, and suicide. Suicide doesn’t always come with a rope, pistols, or prescription pills. In poor living circumstances, suicide is masked-up in drug addiction, self-doubt, murder, and other things, which stifles black progression and strengthen black people’s despair.

The large majority of Americans expect black people to “pull themselves up by the boot straps,” and become “better people,” and that will amend poor black people’s economic status, the racial disparities, and the racial discrimination they face. Placing these incriminations on black people and not the systems that enslave, murder, and oppress black people, is criminal. It is also one of the many racist ideas that keep black people chained to an inferior status in this society.

Poverty will remain undefeated, squeezing people into emergency rooms and graveyards. By the end of this year, if this pace continues, the death rate will be swollen like broken jaw bones, making 2017 the deadliest year ever in Baltimore. Grandmothers will outlive their grandkids and the smell of sizzling flesh will dangle over nappy fades and colorful barrettes.

However, I’m supposed to pretend that I’m happy, while I walk on ground where shy blades of grass grow plump from swallowing the blood of babies.

I’m supposed to pretend that I’m happy, while I wait on bus stop corners where deflated balloons choke dirty light poles, and hard melted candle wax covers marble steps; the cries of mother’s attending vigils ricocheting on my ear drums.

I’m supposed to pretend that I’m happy, although a million screams from absent sons and daughters ride my brain eternally. I’m supposed to pretend that I’m happy, while envisioning the faces of the crying children that killed you: the ones who pop pistols shed tears, too.

I’m supposed to pretend that I’m happy, knowing that death has said its farewell to “around the corner,” and is now dancing at my peephole. I’m supposed to pretend that I’m happy, knowing that many parents don’t have a fair chance at raising their children productively in this smoky city.

I’m supposed to pretend that our zip codes don’t determine whether or not we live or die? I’m supposed to pretend that zip code genocide doesn’t lead to depression, suicide, and homicide? Nevertheless, I don’t have any more patience in me to be fake-happy. I’m aching, my sanity has been shattered, and I don’t mind accompanying the rest of them in paradise, if there is one.

This isn’t a sob story, just my self-expression. I don’t want you to “feel me,” because 9 times outta 10, you won’t be able to do so anyway. Your harm reduction strategies won’t work around here because this is a no heal zone. There is more than 16,000 ran down vacant homes in my city, and we lose loved ones to murder and drug overdoses every day. Where I live, there are no “safe spaces.” Where I live, yoga can’t stop bullets from piercing through the livers of my homies. As long as there is poverty, there will be murder, and where I live, blood will continue to shed.

I don’t have a one-sized-fits-all solution to these problems. I do believe that as a people we need to get the ones who don’t understand the importance of literacy on board. This will lead to critical thinking, which leads to effective decision making; I believe in that, lies hope. Being devoted to changing the world using art is hard for anyone, especially a twenty-four-year-old like myself. Just like SZA, “I’m prayin that my 20-somethings don’t kill me.”

Rest in peace to all of the children who were born — a bullet wound, a bad day, a bloody skull, a body bag.

As long as guns thunderclap, striking holes through flesh; so long live the lost black angels, and the ones who are next. I hope that this song serenades forever.

Some locations and names have been changed.

Kondwani Fidel, author of Raw Wounds, has been featured in Business Insider, Mic, CNN, and elsewhere. He has been published in The Root, The Afro, and City Paper.
Fidel is a 2016 recipient of the ‘Ford: Men of Courage Award,’ and a M.F.A. Candidate at the University of Baltimore, concentrating on Creative Writing and Publishing Arts. He is from, and currently lives in, Baltimore, Maryland.
Follow him on Instagram, Twitter, Snap, and Facebook: @KondwaniFidel

YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgVbrGMmZa8

Tickets for #UntilTheEndOfRhymes — — > http://bit.ly/2zUUSEr

The sun dripped on my body like hot butter. You know, that summer time sun that drives children to swimming pools and emergency rooms. I stumbled out of North East Market, still drunk from the night before. I swallowed my chicken salad sandwich in 5 minutes tops, as if I haven’t eaten in months. I opened my Twitter app and was punched dead in my face with a story headline: “Seattle police fatally shoot black Seattle mother.” I clicked the article, waiting for it to load, praying that it’s click bait. However, the mundane stories of cops killing Black people is something that’s almost always true. I started reading, and my tear ducts became heavy like burdens. I discovered: a Black woman named Charleena Lyles called the police to report a burglary, and two cops pulled their triggers, murdering the 30-year-old pregnant-woman, in front of three children (ages 11, 4, and 1).

In these type of situations, I always ask myself, “why couldn’t the cop use a taser?” She was a small pregnant woman, surrounded by three kids, like c’mon? Then I remember, when police officers see Black skin, they black out, and hunt for the smell of Black blood. Lives are taken, all because a racist coward killer cop “feared for his/her life.” Check this out: in America, it is acceptable for trained cops to panic and act on impulse, stripping someone’s life. But, nonthreatening and untrained citizens have to keep calm while cops poke pistols in their face. After seeing innocent Black people who mirror you, get murdered by police; how can one keep calm when their life is up for grabs?

Situations like Charleena Lyles and the countless others, traumatizes the family of the victims, and the bystanders who witness. These devastating experiences also create a peculiar psyche in the minds of Black people. I can’t help but to think, “Will I be next?”

Charleena Lyles family noted that she suffered from mental health issues. But wait, there’s more… The Seattle Police Department has an ongoing federal consent decree, after a Department of Justice investigation found a pattern; officers engaging in excessive use of force, against people with mental or substance abuse problems. Therefore, Charleena was not the first Seattle Police Department’s victim, and she will not be the last.

Tamir Rice was a child at a playground, Kathryn Johnson was 92-year-old woman, chilling in her own home, Philando Castile, who’s murderer recently walked away with no convictions, was in the car with his girlfriend and child, and Charleena Lyles was pregnant. Racist institutions and killer cops DO NOT HAVE ANY PICKS. Any day, at any moment, your Black ass can be a hashtag, or a forgotten one. Your college degree, financial status, or your love for pumpkin spiced lattes can not, and will not save you, if you are non-white.

We are born into a world where there is a universal belief that is nourished in the minds of Americans: There is something wrong with Black people. By consuming this racist idea, when a Black person is MURDERED by a killer cop, people ask, “what did he/she do?” or some say “it was a justified killing.” In America, the word “justified” has racism scribbled all over it.

Hanging Black people by trees, dousing them in gasoline, setting their bodies in flames, cutting open pregnant bellies, and stampeding on the fetus — these were actions that was supported and sustained by America. And that’s exactly why police can murder Blacks, and don’t get convicted, because killer cops have been replaced with lynch mobs. Sandra Bland, Korryn Gaines, Charleena Lyles, and the other unnamed Black women throughout history; their deaths fit into the historical pattern of them committing the same crime, and that is being a Black woman in America who resists white supremacy. And Black women who resist white supremacy are the biggest threats, because to a racist, Black women are scums of the Earth, and to murder the “loud mouth” ones are a mean of social control. The murders that cops commit are warning shots to Black people in America. “Hey this is what will happen to your Black ass if your rise up against White Supremacy.”

Moral of the story…

Calling the police can cost you your life, if you’re Black. And at the rate that this country is going right now, you most definitely can be next, sooner than you think.

My heart goes out to every family member and friend of a victim who has been strangled to death by the iron hands of systemic oppression. I don’t have a one-sized-fit-all solution to this problem. However, let’s continue to educate the youth and show them the importance of literacy so we can groom them to be critical thinkers, which I believe can better their chance of rising above their poor living conditions.

Make sure you pursue your passion today…

“He says he wants to protect the Christian people. He says he wants to protect those who are being prosecuted, but he’s really just sending them back to danger…” Joseph Asali told NBC, after his Christian family was detained at Philadelphia International Airport for hours, then sent back to Syria, due to Trump’s executive order.

Let me make this clear: being Christian has never stopped racist policies and ideas from enslaving, murdering, and oppressing other Christians of color. I have family and friends who have been forced to live in inhabitable housing, due to segregation and racist policies, which were enforced by white Christians. I have Christian ancestors who got raped, castrated, and slaughtered by white Christian slave masters. In 2016, Terrence Crutcher, “a God-loving father of four who sang at church every weekend” was slaughtered in cold blood by the killer cop, Betty Shelby, who is a Christian.

Christianity has never stopped racism in America, and it never will.

For some white racists, the word ‘white’ is synonymous with the word ‘Christian.’

During the 14th century, European travelers, philosophers, and other racists believed that Black people were the cursed children of Ham. This biblical myth was used so that Africans would accept their inferior status as slaves. Stamped From The Beginning describes that, during the 15th century, Thomas Key, a Newport News legislator, had a baby with an African woman. Before Thomas died, he made arrangements so his biracial daughter, Elizabeth Key who adopted Christianity, wouldn’t be enslaved by the time she turned 15. Her master disobeyed and kept her in chains. A few years later, her baby and the father of her child successfully sued the estate for her and her child’s freedom. This created confusion amongst many. Because now people wondered, could you make a Christian a slave?

This Christian-slave idea stopped being a dilemma when British author Richard Ligon released A True and Exact History of the Island of Barbadoes. Stamped from the beginning reveals that Ligon composed Exact History in 1657, the same year that Key’s case was settled. One story recounted the events of Ligon telling Sambo’s master that he desired to be “made a Christian.” The master said by English law “We cannot make a Christian a slave. Ligon corrected him and said that he desired him to “make a slave a Christian.”

This new idea allowed slaves to now get baptized, which will “save their souls.” There was (and still is) a universal myth that African people are naturally submissive, people without a God, filthy, and uncivilized. Therefore, Christianizing them will not only make them more compliant servants, but white men enslaving the ruthless-ungodly-beasts, will bring the beasts closer to God because that’s what God wants.

White men created the image of God’s son, Jesus, in the image of themselves. If you resist your slave master, that means you resist Jesus, and that is to resist the will of God, and to Hell you go.

A painting of Donald Trump and Jesus guiding his hand as he signs a piece of paper, has gone viral. Some people claim that they are happy about having a man of “God,” in the Oval Office. The God they are referring to, is the same God that we are supposed to believe, included the enslavement and torture of Black people in his master plan. Listen to this: If Jesus, a saint, was alive, he wouldn’t agree with the racist policies and ideas that Trump exudes; nor would Jesus be able to enter the U.S., during this #MuslimBan because, he’s not from here, nor is he white.

Christianity will never overthrow the wickedness of racism in America, especially being as though the laws of Christianity, enslaved millions of Black people. Some racists still believe those false ideologies today, and pass them down like alcohol addiction, keeping Black people systematically oppressed.

My heart goes out to the people who are being detained at airports; interfering with your jobs, education, and family time here in the U.S., due to Trump’s executive order.

For the people in the back, who probably have trouble hearing: Take a look at history and this current moment in time, and you’ll be able to see that Christianity, or the “goodwill” of religion will not save you from racism, islamophobia, or any other prejudices in America.

Christian: cops, real estate agents, politicians, scientists, and other racists will continue to murder and oppress their other fellow Christians, of color. Again, and again. Better days will come, only when we see and treat every walk-of-life as human.

Kondwani Fidel is a writer, speaker, and spoken word poet who holds a B.A. degree in English from Virginia State University.

His work has been featured on The Root, Business Insider, Huffington Post, and elsewhere.

He has lectured and shared poetry at countless universities, conferences, and literary events around the country.

Fidel is the author of Raw Wounds.

He is from, and currently lives in Baltimore, Maryland.

Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat: @KondwaniFidel

www.Facebook.com/KondwaniFidel

Email: BookingKondwaniFidel@gmail.com