The Ghetto’s Heartbeat

Constructs of stone, mortar, asphalt and glass    
rise from the rubble, giving birth to a new breed      
of poet or bard, philosophers of the street;    
poets with a new mindset and a distinguishing class.    
     
From the struggle and the strife,    
broken homes or a hard working life,      
they come to knowledge hungry,      
with a vision seeking the insight.      
     
The ghetto, long used to stigmatize      
now emulated by many to seem fashion wise,      
has been and will always continue to be      
the place of forgetting those we desire not see.    
     
I was born and raised in the ghetto tenements      
where clothes hung out the windows and firescapes,    
the balcony of the poor on hot summer nights,      
the closest we would ever get to a star gazing site.    
     
The music would blast from speakers the in windows      
and in barrio the congüeros rhythm would repeat,      
the tum, tum of their drums, the ghetto’s heartbeat,      
melded together hispanics, negros and mullatoes.      
     
Whether *Chi Towns north side or the *“da” Bronx’s south side,    
my home was wherever the rhythm brought us to reside,      
the heartbeat of the ghetto that would not subside      
because, it is deeply ingrained in my heart and mind.    
   
   
   
   
Note:  
*Chi Town(Chicago, Illinois)  
*Da Bronx (Bronx, New York)